Data from Defra shows a 4.9% year-on-year drop in vegetable yields and a 12% decline in fruit production last year, which has been blamed on the wettest 18-month period on record, which reduced yields and delayed, and in some cases prevented, harvesting, as well as having knock-on effects for the current season.
The yields of individual crops have been reduced by between 0.4% and 9.2%. With the impacts of climate change predicted to increase the number of extreme weather events, including more frequent flooding and droughts, the farming industry is calling on the new government to help build increased resilience in fruit and vegetable production.
“These stark statistics are sadly not a surprise,” commented Martin Emmett, chair of the National Farmers’ Union Horticulture and Potatoes Board. “Recent shortages of some of the nation’s favourite fruit and vegetables show that we cannot afford to let our production decline and that we must value our food security. The UK horticulture sector has the ambition to produce more and is an area ripe for growth, but it needs investment from the next government to match our ambition by backing our horticulture strategy”.
Guy Singh-Watson, the founder of Riverford, told the Guardian that the data was a “wake-up call showing the dire state of British horticulture”. He urged the next government to plan to safeguard food security, saying: “We urgently need a long-term and legally defined plan from government – not just on the environment, but to tackle the exploitative practices of supermarkets and their suppliers. It’s high time we reinstated honesty and decency in our supply chains”.
