The UK’s retailers spend a lot of money bankrolling so-called merchandising experts. So why does it appear that the only way to promote fruit and vegetables in any form is to price cut?

The lack of promotional innovation on display across the board is staggering. On-pack promotions offering holidays, kids-go-free etc.. are rife, but all too often shoved to the back of the shelves while the BOGOFs and three-for-twos take centre stage.

Next week is National Organic Week. The ideal opportunity you might think for retailers to put their extensive organic portfolios into the limelight and encourage the consumer to eat organic fruit and vegetables through thought-provoking messages and eye-catching displays in-store.

The national media and organics lobbyists will be creating demand in their own inimitable ways. Surely the nation’s supermarkets can ride on the back of that; using their in-house skills base and knowledge of their customers to drum up significant additional trade in organic produce at the usual prices.

Not likely. The opportunity to sell extra volume is always met with the same response. Cut prices.

Consistently, retailers do not display the confidence in their own ability to programme larger volumes of organics - or any fresh produce segment (remember the Fairtrade price cuts earlier this year) - into their stores and then sell them without chopping prices and supplier margins. Even when the product has a very good chance to more or less sell itself.