Farmers tearing down apply orchards over production crisis

KentOnline / KMTV

James Smith, a fifth-generation fruit grower who runs Loddington Farm in Kent, has ripped up three orchards because apple production is no longer financially viable.

Transcript

00:00 I'm James Smith from Loddington Farm just outside Maidstone in Kent.

00:13 Historically I've been a commercial apple grower but now farming a very diversified

00:17 farming business and with our own farm shop so concentrating on retail and growing all

00:23 sorts of things from eggs, pork, still growing some apples, cherries, pears, apricots amongst

00:29 other things.

00:37 We're in the process of taking out quite a lot of our apple orchards and we have downsized

00:42 the size of our commercial apple growing operation by about 90%.

00:46 So the orchards we're retaining we're converting to organics and many of the other conventional

00:54 intensive orchards we're in the process of pulling out.

01:06 Fundamentally the changes in our weather patterns making it increasingly difficult to be sure

01:12 of producing a crop so the risks associated with the weather are increasing.

01:16 And then we have labour shortages, since Brexit we can no longer access the seasonal labour

01:23 that we used to during the harvest period.

01:26 So I don't know if the weather is going to let me grow a crop.

01:29 If I do grow a crop I'm not sure if I can access labour to manage it and then pick it.

01:34 Once we've done that we then can't afford the electricity prices to put the fruit into

01:38 our cold stores which we need to do in order to market the fruit in good time to our consumers.

01:45 If I manage to grow a crop, harvest it, store it, I know full well that at the end of that

01:51 the UK retailers won't pay a profitable price to us as a business.

01:55 So when you put all of those things together there's not many reasons to keep going.

02:06 I think it would be really useful to see some sensible governmental support in terms of

02:11 policies around fairness in the supply chain with UK retailers.

02:16 I don't think the retailers are ever going to change on their own but the UK retailer

02:22 business model for those of us as primary producers is just a deeply unpleasant way

02:27 of doing business.

02:28 So I think there needs to be support for business to be able to keep producing food whilst working

02:33 on nature recovery rather than just focusing on nature recovery and assuming that we can

02:38 import all of our food from somewhere else.

02:40 So I think meaningful support, making sure that there's fairness and then ensuring that

02:45 Britain can keep producing its own healthy food.

02:48 Thank you.

02:49 Thank you.

02:54 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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