My Father David Burgess was born in 1939, Farming is his life, childhood, career & retirement hobby.
He remembers the spring of 1947 and the summer of ’76 but he reckons the combination of the wet, cold and very late spring and since then the drought and heat combines to make this the hardest year he’s seen in his farming life.
Back in ’76 the farming world was a very different one, [virtually] no-one had irrigation, produce sales were still dominated by the wholesale markets and the emerging multiple retailers all bought from them, prices fluctuated daily, there were literally hundreds of growers and sellers of veg; a true and real time supply & demand model. Potatoes were sold for £400/tonne, the equivalent of £1500 today!
Now in 2018 we have a massively consolidated retail sector which has forced consolidation for efficiency reasons, you wouldn’t dream of growing veg without the insurance of irrigation & the market now operates on a forward priced tender system, the supply and demand cycle has moved out to a 3 year timescale and tenders are won on large volumes at very thin margins based on the assumption that everything goes well.
When a year like this occurs it is imperative that the Great British Retailers stand up and support the growers who supply them, we have all incurred massive extra costs for irrigation and other drought related issues, yields of Potatoes, Carrots, Parsnips and Onions are all forecast to be down, there is a real danger that if this support is not forthcoming then there will be growers who can’t afford to plant all of their crops next season.
In the year of Brexit this would be a complete travesty.
Let’s hope we can praise our retailers for doing the right thing for UK growers, time will tell.
Andrew Burgess