History shows that co-operative ventures in the UK have enjoyed mixed fortunes over the years. Expansion plans and policy changes often seem to have created as many feuds and grandiose schemes ending in failure, as successes. But I would agree with the pundits from the platform at the English Farming & Food Partnership (EFFP) conference on Tuesday: at last this sector - as far as fresh produce is concerned - seems to have thrown off the shackles of concern with protectionism to take on the competition head on.

So horticulture can feel proud of itself this week when three of the UK’s leading lights, namely G’s Growers, KG Fruits and Worldwide Fruit, all came in the EFFP top 10 list of grower-owned organisations making headway in a changing world increasingly without agriculture subsidy of one form or another.

However, it is perhaps ironic that at a gathering which is credibly designed to help protect British farming, success has come to these fresh produce organisations because they have all, in their own way, recognised the value of expanding into an international dimension.

G’s has a strong producer base in Spain which, with its own UK farms, provides year-round programmes for its multiple customers; KG has forged links with one of the biggest berry-fruit breeders in the world providing new, better tasting and more profitable berries for its members; and major top-fruit supplier Worldwide Fruit has benefited from its association with New Zealand.

Indeed, it is already the view in the Netherlands - where businesses have earned a reputation for being more internationally minded than most - that such broad-based partnerships will be crucial to withstand the impact first from eastern European production on western markets, and in the more distant future, from China.

But Hans van Es of the Dutch Produce Association identified another dimension, which must be both sensitive and often worrying for our sector. Whereas other farmer-controlled businesses, as the EFFP prefers to call them, are seeing value added by food processors of milk, meat and cereals along the supply chain, fruit and vegetables are sold in effect as nature intended. In simplistic terms, this means that growers as they expand can expect to face more direct competition from multi-faceted importers and distributors to serve fewer larger supermarkets already operating across national boundaries.

So will grower-owned groups in effect be forced to make a complete transition? And in so doing will they not only come closer together internationally, but end up as new types of hybrid marketing organisations, reminiscent of the large-scale produce marketing boards? Only time will tell. But one thing which is certain is that supermarkets will still be looking for ways for their suppliers to cut costs and shorten the distribution chain. In that aspect growers should be the best placed and become, as the EFFP hopes, more closely integrated.

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