Horticulture Crop Protection Ltd, the new company set up and supported by grower organisations to take over from AHDB the job of securing new ‘minor use’ crop protection authorisations (EAMUs) for horticulture, says it’s hoping to recruit the AHDB staff who have been doing the job up to now.
“As we are transferring an existing service to the new organisation we are required to offer the jobs to those who are doing them already,” said Jack Ward, chief executive of British Growers Association. “But we really do hope they will take up the offer so they can bring their accumulated expertise, crop protection and horticulture industry contacts, and that all-important ‘organisational memory’.”
He added: “These crop protection authorisations really are vital for growers and we need to carry on the work as seamlessly as possible. It would be a huge task if we had to rebuild this from scratch.”
He welcomed the agreement reached last month with AHDB to transfer ‘in the region of £1m’ of accumulated unspent levy funds to the new organisation. “It gives us a degree of confidence on cash flow for the first couple of years,” he said.
“But it doesn’t take away the need for it to be fully supported financially by growers right from the start as that is the only way it will survive. So far all the indications have been good in terms of feedback from growers via their crop organisations.”
Read more news and features from the protected crop industry in our monthly publication The Commercial Greenhouse Grower.