The heads of Britain’s six top supermarket businesses have been invited to give evidence at the House of Lords horticultural sector committee’s inquiry in July.
The committee was set up at the beginning of the year to consider the challenges, opportunities and risks the industry faces and has already taken evidence from a range of organisations. But committee chair Lord Redesdale said it had become evident it would be impossible to consider the sector’s development “without taking formal oral evidence from the six supermarkets who hold an 81.1% share of the grocery market in the UK.”
Invitees include Lord Stuart Rose, chairman of Asda.
The committee has received more than 50 submissions in response to its public call for written evidence. Much of the evidence addressed issues with education, training and recruitment; grower returns; and gaps in R&D funding.
Hillier Nurseries said the lack of skilled people was the ‘single biggest threat’ to the business’s continued growth. “We are finding it nearly impossible to employ skilled horticulturists,” it said.
It wants the restrictions on non-UK nationals employed as seasonal labour to be reviewed. “The restrictions and consequent availability of seasonal labour have led to challenges at peak with more added value production being sacrificed in order to manage the day-to-day peak pressures, with the growth of the business inhibited,” it said.
The crop association British Berry Growers said it wants to work up a scheme, which may involve financial incentives from government, to encourage educational establishments to offer practical courses that result in useful and well-paid employment in the sector, rather than courses which it claims teach “dead-end skills with no applicability in the workplace.”
Richard Napier, of Warwick University’s School of Life Sciences, highlighted a void in knowledge exchange since AHDB Horticulture was wound up. “Nothing has taken its place at a time when community action and leadership are needed to help steer a strategy for the sector,” he said.
He recommends the establishment of a partnership or council to bring together key representatives from the stakeholder groups and the research and innovation community “to formulate an informed voice for the sector.”
The inquiry continues.
