Karen Colcomb

🥔 The UK no longer has any small or medium farms growing new potatoes. 🥔 Guy Singh-Watson founder of @Riverford said this is the first year it has been impossible to source British early potatoes for his boxes. He called it part of a wider “tragedy” of smaller UK fruit and vegetable growers quitting in the face of low returns, post-Brexit labour shortages and extreme weather. 🥔 A Riverford survey found that 49% of horticulture companies fear imminently going out of business. “Indeed, they are going out of business. Around the south and southwest, there were lots of small family farms, who grew 10 to 100 acres of potatoes. They just all got fed up with the returns and the work and they have given up. The last one who grew down on the ‘Golden Mile’ down near Penzance gave up last year and we haven’t been able to find [any],” said Singh-Watson. A large number of the farmers who brought tractors to a protest in London in March are in the horticulture sector, and fruit and vegetable shortages in supermarkets last year were linked to declines in the sector. Smaller new potato farmers have tended to be on the coast because they are frost-free and can harvest early. “These early [new] potatoes have traditionally been grown on family farms, originally dragging seaweed off the beach to fertilise the farms. Those are the ones that are particularly suffering. The whole middle of horticulture has been hollowed out,” said Singh-Watson. Jersey Royal potatoes continue to be produced from the self-governing crown dependency. But in the UK, production appears now to be left to larger growers with thousands of acres in east and central England, Singh-Waton said. Gerard Croft at the British Potato Trade Association said even bigger players had few new potatoes this year because the ground was so waterlogged in spring after months of rain. “The southwest has been the worst hit, it’s had a torrid time. A lot of the crop went in very late. Supplies have been very, very hand to mouth: supply is tight,” said Mark Taylor from the industry group GB Potatoes. But the area of land used for horticulture has shrunk by 6.3 per cent since 2022, to just 2 per cent of all agricultural land in England. Rebecca Laughton, horticulture campaigns co-ordinator at the Landworkers Alliance, said shoppers could help smaller fruit and vegetable growers by avoiding supermarkets and buying direct from farmers and box schemes. Labour has promised to help growers with procurement rules for hospitals, schools and the public sector to get 50 per cent of their food from local or sustainable sources. “But it needs to be enshrined into law. Because otherwise who is going to enforce it, who’s going to monitor it? There needs to be budget for it too,” said Will White from the charity Sustain, who was speaking at the Groundswell Agriculture Festival on June 26. thetimes.com/article/346b979…