Without me really noticing, my interview with Jane King begins with her doing the interviewing. What’s my background, she asks, how do I like the fresh produce industry? It’s an indication of King’s clearly ingrained background as a journalist (she edited Farmers Weekly for over 30 years) that I sit up straight and slip happily into answering her questions, before remembering it should be the other way round.
When we do get round to business, the topic of our chat is the major restructure King has been spearheading since she took on the top job at the Agriculture & Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) earlier this year. According to King, the restructure is “a journey of transformation, moving from six quite separate organisations to join them up and gain best practice and best value for money for levy payers.” Essentially, it involves a shift to what King calls ‘functional working’ among AHDB headquarter staff, with more streamlining of knowledge across sectors.
There are no planned job losses, King confirms, and the move seems to be primarily a behind-the-scenes re-organisation, although growers and levy payers will no doubt appreciate the sentiment behind it. “We’re not under pressure financially, but like any business we have to take a good, hard look at ourselves,” says King. “We will, quite rightly, be under scrutiny from our levy payers, to ensure that we deliver effectively for them. The industry is facing a lot of challenges, but there’s a lot of opportunity as well. What we need to do is constantly review what we do, and think about how we can deliver more with what we’ve got.”
What AHDB does have is a £60 million income from compulsory levies across the horticulture and agriculture industries, and which, King stresses, are not about to rise. “At the moment there’s no discussion in any of the sectors about a levy review. It’s really about sweating the assets we’ve got,” she explains.
To back up the newly rebranded image of the AHDB, including matching AHDB sector names, a recent open day allowed all sector boards to mingle and network, learn what each sector’s biggest challenges are and find common themes. It was a success, King believes, and the AHDB is keen for this sector collaboration to trickle down to other areas of the organisation.
King herself seems very aware about the specific challenges faced by the fresh produce business. “The big challenges are similar to other sectors – productivity, profitability, labour issues, new technology, use of inputs, regulation, constraints of supply and demand,” she says. “The fresh produce sector is very diverse, and that’s one of the challenges for us is making sure we are very respectful of each sector’s discreet needs, but also recognising where there are some common themes.
“Consumer insight is an area that historically we probably haven’t embraced very much in horticulture and fresh produce. But a lot of the other sectors lean heavily on our market intelligence team, to understand consumer trends, what’s coming over the hill in terms of what consumers want, and opportunities to grow and develop other markets.”
King swings from thorough and detailed analysis of current industry conditions and present-day planning, to crystal-ball gazing about her vision for the future. Exports is an area she is particular interested in, and she’s already established a ‘new markets’ team at AHDB with a remit to scope out market potential both overseas and at home.
“I think we have to look at exports in fresh produce. We need to equip our levy payers with much more information about what everyone else is up to, and really inspire everybody to say, actually, why aren’t we competing in that space?
“When prices are this depressed and there is a lot of hardship going on, it’s very hard for levy payers in certain sectors to see the wood for the trees. Some of these grand ideas about going into China and capitalising on foreign markets seem a long way away. So a big part of what we have to do is to create more of a compelling picture of what the future could look like, and how we could get there.”
“The other opportunity is around Red Tractor,” she muses. “It’s good, but one wonders to what extent we should be more ambitious. If you look at the Bord Bia scheme in Ireland, it is seriously motoring in terms of capturing new markets overseas, through the development of quite a concerted brand for the Irish orange and green. The Red Tractor’s new chairman Jim Moseley is very ambitious for the future, and very excited about the exports opportunities.”
Communication is another big focus for King, who believes it’s crucial that the AHDB reaches out to industry levy payers through open days, benchmarking groups and conferences, whenever possible. She is open to the use of technology, outlining a potential idea for an AHDB podcast or more video content, and discusses how new collaborations with colleges or even commercial partners, while retaining independence, might become possible.
She is also keen to continue and build on the ‘monitor farms’ concept, where growers host trial sites, facilitated by AHDB. “Monitor farms are going very well, and there is a lot of momentum around them,” she says. “It’s very much about looking at business improvement, and being quite open and transparent around benchmarking between businesses. There’s a lot of enjoyment from that programme among growers, and our satisfaction scores in that area are really going up.
“It’s quite a lot of sitting round the breakfast table challenging each other about their costs of production, and why the machinery costs are higher in that area.”
King seems truly determined to transform AHDB’s huge network of knowledge, expertise and consumer insight into a more proactive and efficient industry resource. For something that has its roots in often very traditional crop sectors, modernising AHDB isn’t a job for the fainthearted, but King is clearly the person to
do it.
As one of the founding members of industry group Women in Agriculture, she believes women have a key role in such change-focused roles. “What women bring to the table is the softer skills, which actually are so fundamental if you want to affect change.
“It’s not just about the harsh realities and the business bit, it is about how do I influence people, how do I negotiate and how do I persuade? Can I see the bigger picture and how can I describe it? And I think those skills, women are actually really good at,” she says, before adding in a whisper and then cackling infectiously: “Often, dare I say it, better than men.”
King wears the crown...
I work with some awesome people at the AHDB, who absolutely care so much about making a difference to the industry. That is the best bit and I’d like to have more time with them really.
A lot of my time is spent at government level at the moment, but I’d like to spend more time with the workforce.
I’d also like to get out more and see more of the work on the ground. I haven’t been to many grower businesses full stop, and I’ve been talking about how I can do this.
There is no glass ceiling, it’s just about encouraging women to believe in themselves. When you look at agriculture and horticulture there are a lot of very dynamic women – Christine Tacon, Liz Truss and Caroline Drummond are all great role models.
AHDB is not a lobbying body, that’s not our remit. We’re here to support lobbying organisations such as the BGA and NFU, as we can equip them with tools and information to build evidence for something.
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