NFU Horticulture and Potatoes board member, Derek Wilkinson, explains why innovation must remain at the front of everyone's minds.
There’s a lot going on in horticulture at the moment. Over the last 10 months since the Brexit referendum we have spent our time focusing on issues including seasonal labour, EU trade deals and grant funding. We also have to spend time dealing with the loss of vital pesticides that our industry require. All this effort - and only if we get all these issues sorted out - will at best only maintain the status quo pre the Brexit vote.
Whilst we are dealing with all this, we are not spending enough time focusing on innovation in our businesses. Personally, two years ago, with my management team at Sandfields Farms, I was giving this whole area some serious focus and we have made some progress, but recently things have started to stagnate.
As an industry we have lots of examples of great innovation, but we are not progressing nearly quickly enough. There are too many crops still being produced - and I have some of them - with the same systems as they were 20 years or more ago. Yields and efficiency of production in particular have not moved forwards nearly quickly enough. Complacency is a serious risk, just look what happened to Nokia! Ten years ago everyone had a Nokia phone and then they forgot to innovate and the Apple smart phone came along and took their market! At the heart of it, our innovation must always be focussed on what the customer wants, whether that be taste, quality, low cost etc.
Working closely with my team, we have decided to put some renewed focus into the area. The objective is to produce our crops more efficiently in an environmentally sustainable manner.
The starting point is the soil – we have invested in equipping ourselves for applying compost and using cover crops to enhance the soil. This is having a positive effect but we need to do more and refine techniques so we have a blueprint for going forwards. We also need to be focussed on reducing waste. The simplest way to achieve this is to produce a more consistent crop for harvest and improve continuity. If we can achieve both of these, it will give us the confidence to reduce cropped area and avoid the 20-25% that we overgrow in order to guarantee continuity of supply.
We will be looking at lots of technologies and visiting other businesses across the world. Visiting other businesses is something I particularly enjoy doing, and I can honestly say that I have never visited a business and not learnt something. We can all become blinkered in what we do, so I would urge you to do this, it might just open your eyes to alternative solutions to challenges you may be facing.
Finally I have re-formed a working group with my farm management team to drive the process forward. One notable difference this time around is that we are getting the younger members of the management team more involved. Currently I am lucky to have two of G’s Farm management trainees, who are full of energy and ideas, working in the business. Our young people are the future and we must allow them to have a voice and let them try new things. Young People is another subject that I will talk more about at a later stage….