Angus Fruits managing director John Gray has published his Nuffield Farming report ‘Fresh produce excellence: Growing our share of the value chain’.
Sponsored by The Royal Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland and The Worshipful Company of Fruiterers, the objective was to understand how we as growers can increase our share of the value chain through focusing on breeding, production, and marketing of fresh produce.
John travelled across the world meeting breeders, growers and marketers and noted “New techniques in breeding, namely molecular-marker-assisted breeding and gene-editing are speeding up the development of new berry varieties. This is likely to bring benefits to growers in terms of higher yields and improved disease resistance, which should allow for lower production costs”.
“The UK berry sector is facing extremely challenging times. After many successful years, the past four years have seen costs of production increase by approximately 40 per cent. At the same time, output returns have increased by approximately 20 per cent, resulting in a significant margin gap”.
While in the UK most berries are produced in polytunnels, in the Netherlands intensive glasshouse systems are more common: “These systems, whilst initially a lot more expensive, allow for larger yields per hectare and should a cheaper source of energy be available, then these systems represent an opportunity to increase efficiencies and to extend the season of availability of UK berries”.
John also noted that the growing markets for berries in the Middle East and South-East Asia: “These countries have rapidly expanding middle classes who are prepared to pay the same or more than European consumers for berries and, due to their tropical climates, will import berries for many years to come. These markets represent an opportunity for UK growers to spread their risk and ultimately add more value to their businesses”.
The full report is now available on the Nuffield Farming report library, with a report video available via the Nuffield Farming YouTube channel.
