The one thing I would like to make clear, on a subject that is bound to maintain the attention span of the industry over the coming months, is that I applaud the commitment that DEFRA secretary of state Hilary Benn’s task force is showing to solving the greatest problem ever to face this country’s fruit and vegetable industry.

Namely, it is how to square the circle when it comes to producers, packers and wholesale distributors making a profit, while at the same time encouraging increased consumption of British produce.

In my view, both aspects have always been as intertwined as the tendrils of a runner bean, so that it is almost impossible to separate them.

To emphasise the point at a time when the DEFRA task force held its first meeting earlier this month, I came across a BBC TV crew at my local farmers’ market collecting material for a programme to be shown early next year, exploring if and how niche market growers might take the next step and introduce their crops onto supermarket shelves.

This has never been as easy as it sounds, at any level. For the smallest growers, it moves production into a scale that many find they are hard-pressed to achieve, let alone facing the disciplines and often hidden development costs that such forays bring.

I also question, despite all the retail PR out there, how many retailers are really able to deliver genuinely locally grown produce into nearby stores, simply because of the logistics problem?

Additionally, if these growers are brave enough to take the chance, there is no guarantee - whatever their scale or expertise - that an initially welcome market will still be there in even a season’s time.

The same is also true for large-scale commercial production, where there is also always the same peripheral risk, even on a national scale - which at worst can also literally sow the seeds of a potential disaster.

In both scenarios - unlike even 30 years ago - success can often be short-lived because the timescale has quickened between the introduction, and often subsequent disappearance, of novelty lines, as well as because of changes in major crop varieties. The other caveat is that any success will often attract cheaper and competitive imports.

Meanwhile, to my mind, hitting the target of increased consumption, while politically attractive, almost falls outside any practical advice of the task force. Every producer obviously wants to sell more, and the distributive mechanism is delighted to assist - but by its very nature this role, regardless of the praiseworthy activities of groups promoting UK producers, falls within the province of the multiples.

As Christmas approaches, retailers are already slashing price tickets to bargain basement levels in an effort to win sales. The first question to be answered, which will extend into the new year, is whether UK consumption, which still sits below most of Europe, will rise as a result.