Protected cropping is where energy is making a big impact in the horticulture industry and participating growers will be bearing the brunt of increasingly steep energy costs, according to Chris Plackett a consultant at Farm Energy Centre.
With “energy intensive businesses” such as tomato cultivation using up to 800 kwh/m2 every year alone, the demands on resources are vast, as are the costs of operation. Plackett said: “That two or three years ago would probably have cost them less than £5 a square metre a year. But it would probably cost more than double that now.”
Plackett said while there were only a small number of high energy users, they were using vast amounts. So cutting the cost of their biggest expenditure would naturally be beneficial in terms of maintaining profits and the environment.
Plackett explained that conservationists would advise the use of Batneecs (best available technology not exceeding environmental cost). But he suggested most people were using Catnaps (cheapest available technology narrowly avoiding prosecution).
He warned that rising energy costs would continue to cause great concern.
He said: “Energy in the world is becoming a rare commodity with rising demand from emerging markets like China. We are seeing problems in places like Iraq and add all those together and they give us increasing pressure on what is already a tight supply and demand equation.
“We are for the first time this year set for a situation where the North Sea is not increasing in production and the UK is set to become a net importer of energy so we’ve got a problem.”
The debate would be whether to accept this fact, and price increases of approximately 30 per cent, or find alternative energy sources he said. People would be very lucky to pay anything less than 40p per thermometer and prices would continue to rise in the future.
But taking into consideration inflation, energy levels are actually lower than before - 80 per cent of the levels stated in 1990, Plackett said.
And in fact only road fuel prices have kept pace with inflation. So people are led to believe that energy prices are still too cheap. However, with product prices driving so low, energy is still high profile.
Plackett said the industy has made energy savings in part due to milder weather and restructuring of the industry to more energy extensive products, with energy intensive products being grown by fewer larger businesses.
But he claimed growers should be addressing the issue of technological development.
“We are not seeing the rapid advancements in production that we’ve perhaps seen over the last 15 years so the additional energy input we are making into the industry we are not getting the returns for.”
Plackett said a full climate change agreement was in negotiation between NFU and Defra and he expected the horticulture industry would see the effects of that within the next 12 months.
He concluded that the industry was in danger of becoming low tech, and simply growing energy extensive products would make it appear to be without vision. “We must innovate to stay ahead,” he said.
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