The last few weeks, which saw temperatures of 40°C in parts of the country (some unconfirmed reports from on-farm weather stations reported 40.6°C, even higher than the ‘official’ figure of 40.3 °C from Coningsby in Lincolnshire) has shown just how vulnerable vegetable production in the UK is to changing weather patterns and water availability. While many irrigated crops, particularly potatoes and carrots, are reported to be doing well, many unirrigated crops are suffering, with potatoes showing signs of early senescence.
Ironically, some of the most productive soils for vegetables, peat and fenland areas, are also those which have historically released the highest levels of carbon into the environment as they were drained to facilitate farming. As a recent workshop near Peterborough heard, the higher the water table, the more carbon organic peat soils retain. As a result, many environmentalists are looking to re-wet historically drained areas of fenland as part of responses to climate change.
But as recent trends in food price inflation and food security show, we must maintain a balance between providing sufficient affordable (and healthy) food for a growing UK population while also looking to enhance the environment, reversing biodiversity loss and tacking climate change. Finding that balance will not be easy, but large-scale changes to large parts of fenland landscape are not short-term and must not be taken based on one or two seasons. Longer term strategic thinking, led by a sound food and public health policies are required alongside environmental targets.
Science and applied research will have a vital role in helping farmers and growers adapt to growing in new and challenging environments, whether they are wetter fenland area or drier regions. Since the demise of the horticulture and potato sections of AHDB, there has been much discussion about how the void in directing and funding industry R&D will be filled.
Many have always felt that the grower associations represent the best and most democratic method of managing such activity going forward, and the recent news that a number of organisations, including British Tomato Growers Association, Cucumber Growers Association, British Apples and Pears and British Berry Growers have decided to collaborate is to be welcomed. A voluntary levy for R&D was also discussed by the Asparagus Growers Association, which is another positive step, but also demonstrates what many will view as the danger of too much cross-collaboration, as the R&D needs of asparagus are very different to tree fruit, with little apparent overlap.
Details of the new collaboration are still sketchy, and many vegetable growers will want to see more details, particularly about the eligibility for R&D tax credits, but the overall signs are positive. Potato growers are also starting to establish their own voluntary R&D organisations for both seed and ware production, and with no existing equivalent to the grower associations in potatoes, many of these new organisations are also taking on other important activities such as promotion and political lobbying.
These are positive moves, although there are still unanswered questions, such as what happens to industry-wide research funded by a voluntary levy if that levy is not voluntarily paid by the whole industry? There is still much to do, but the early signs are that those who predicted that UK horticulture was too disparate to manage its own R&D activities without an organisation like AHDB are being proved wrong.
The forthcoming months and years will see more developments and proposals for collaborative research and funding, and the early signs are that many growers still value such an approach.
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