The summer drought has been once in a lifetime – I hope – and it has been an impossibly challenging year. On my own farm, even irrigated crops have only performed to an average level because the high daily temperatures have failed to allow the crop to grow.
Thankfully, retailers are now starting to support growers both with spec changes and price.There were even reports of McCain increasing prices by 20%, but I gather this does not affect the contracted crop, which is the vast majority.
The biggest concern that has hit home to me is the margins in vegetables are so low that none of us have any fat left for a disaster like this.Hopefully, the reality check we’ve all had is an opportunity to re align the market to more realistic prices.Looking ahead to winter we use a lot of straw to cover our carrots and the price of this is through the roof as everyone fights for fodder.
On another front, I was recently interviewed by the BBC about ideas for grant funding. I am sure in the new round of reform there will be some funding for our sector but this must not be linked to the creation of more jobs! The horticulture sector is massively short of workers and we’re all looking for ways to reduce the numbers of workers we need.The way to reduce unit cost and increase production is by investing in robotics and automation; while this will reduce overall numbers of workers, it will create newer, more skilled roles in our sector.
Finally the lack of labour continues to raise its head and it’s frustrating when ill-informed ministers think we could easily automate our production. I would like to invite Mrs May and her advisers to our pumpkin fields in October and explain exactly why this is not the case! We must keep banging the labour drum with government at every level.