Horticulture and Potatoes Board Chair, Ali Capper, talks about the busy apple and hop harvest on her farm and the fantastic level of media interest this September that is raising the profile of the industry.
It started with a live broadcast by BBC Breakfast News of our hop harvest on Friday 1st September (the third day of our harvest!). What a professional crew. They broadcast live from the farm 3 times an hour from 6am to 9am throughout the programme. What great publicity for the British hop industry and we were so lucky with the most beautiful sunrise and a brilliant blue sky morning. It is with huge thanks to the NFU for their excellent media training – it is entirely due to that investment that I can actually say I did enjoy it. Nerve-racking, but fun.
The same day I recorded a piece for the BBC One Show resulting in a very nice broadcast on the 7th September of a “harvest” piece that included the cereal harvest and the sweetcorn harvest. We have also hosted the BBC local radio teams, pre-recorded a piece for BBC Midlands Today and a piece for BBC Radio 4’s On Your Farm. Country Life chose to feature hops and beer in a recent issue too.
The question of who will pick our crops continues to be the number one issue for our farm and indeed all the growers I speak to. We, like every other farm are short of pickers this year. An early apple season has coincided with a well-rewarded soft fruit season, meaning that many pickers left early this year, having earned all they needed. One local large soft fruit farm told me that the cost of picking has increased by 20% year on year this year due to the extra costs of recruitment, training, rates of pay and overtime. This is NOT sustainable. I am dealing with about 5 media interviews a week on the subject and numerous government briefings. We will need a workforce for the 2018 season as well as after March 2019 when we exit the EU – we need government to recognise this need.
So how will we fare with our harvest? At the time of writing it is a mixed bag. Great looking hops but a market that is heading for oversupply means prices will be hard to achieve. A short dessert fruit crop – but great quality and a challenging cider harvest ahead of us. Happy harvest to you all. If you would like to discuss anything, do get in touch at: YWxpY2FwcGVyQG1hYy5jb20=