Collective promotion in the fruit trade is not a new idea. One of the stumbling blocks, apart from the cash, is to create a platform where all participants feel they are enjoying a similar benefit. Indeed, there have been some short-lived examples.

Long ago, New Zealand Cox growers at the start of their summer season linked with their British counterparts as the last of their crop was sold. Avocado organisations have regularly exchanged crop information at annual conferences. Citrus growers around the world have similarly talked loud and long about the possibilities. The community has even ploughed millions of euros into generic campaigns, although I have never seen any evidence to quantify what value, if any, this actually had.

However, the latest concept launched at the Global Berry Congress recently, where major exporters in often highly competitive countries have agreed to join forces, adds an entirely different dimension.

Promoting the range of soft fruit throughout the year is highly appealing as the route to increasing sales at a time when all producers and distributors are helplessly watching their costs rise.

But while this in itself is highly commendable, the question in my mind is whether the results, if successful, will diminish the value of seasonality or enhance it in the consumer’s mind.

In the same week, the opposite view has again made itself felt by our own tomato industry, which has fiercely fought for its corner against allcomers for almost as long as I can remember, basing many of its arguments on taste. This time the primary message coming across, however, seems to have been the increasing danger of lack of profitability - a subject shared by other food producers. Here consumers may be sympathetic but, caught in a similar economic spiral, they are likely to have little or no influence.

I have long held the view, regardless of the differences of opinion between sectors, that the key for all is to create a mechanism that would make the public realise and recognise that fresh produce is always in season somewhere. From this stems the opportunity to encourage a more vibrant marketing approach.

Column inches in the media certainly can play their part, as any cranberry grower will tell you, but that unexpected pre-seasonal rush to the counter triggered by Delia Smith some years ago was the exception rather than the rule, which is why it is remembered.

In the main, our major retailers commendably blow the trumpet loud to herald the arrival of the first British strawberries, apples, asparagus, Jersey new potatoes, and a few others.

But the bulk of the several hundred lines on display are simply identified by lacklustre labelling indicating a new season when they first surface. And with the majority of stores being self service, there is little opportunity for staff to help spread the message - assuming they are enthusiastic enough to do so anyway.

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