The broccoli crop has been sporadic in its early growing season and has already experienced a few peaks and troughs, says Steve Whitworth, sales manager at Oakley Farms. “There was a bout of wet weather when plants needed to establish themselves in the ground and this could well result in sporadic supply throughout the broccoli season.”
Oakley Farms is a privately owned company situated on prime agricultural land on the fertile Cambridgeshire/Norfolk border. Owner David Brown began growing a small acreage of courgettes in 1980, initially supplying the multiples through other supermarket suppliers. By the 1990s the company became direct suppliers to high street retailers and Oakley Farms is now one of the largest growers of courgettes in the UK with more than 120 acres in production. It is also one of the larger UK pumpkin growers, with 110 acres in production.
To date the company farms in excess of 800 acres, 450 of which is owned land. The main crops are courgettes, broccoli, pumpkin and marrows. All plant raising is carried out at its own nursery and as plant raiser, grower and packer Oakley Farms is able to offer full traceability for all its crops.
Aside from the difficulties with broccoli, courgettes and marrows are both running late at Oakley Farms. Wet weather in the planting period and not enough warm nights so far this year have meant that volumes currently being harvested are 10 days behind last year. “In terms of tonnage we would anticipate approximately five tonnes of class I product per acre on courgettes,” says Whitworth.
If the weather stays as it has done recently - with coolish nights and not exceptionally hot days, Whitworth predicts that expected volumes could be achieved as long as the season is extended. “Last year, because of the hot summer we finished harvesting courgettes in early September but yields were still achieved,” he says. “If everything goes to plan then our small, culinary pumpkins should be ready in mid-August.”
Pumpkin is an ingredient that has been attracting increased interest in recent years and along with sweet potato, Beacon Foods is supplying roasted and char-grilled diced pumpkin for use in a variety of products. It is already popular in sandwiches, soups, pies and other food items. “Manufacturers are definitely being attracted by the delicate flavour of pumpkin,” says Beacon Foods’ new product development manager Diane Bailey.
It has been a fairly difficult season thanks, in part, to the weather, says Julian Pitts, marketing director at VegUK. “The early part of the season, when produce was being planted, was very dry and so now it looks as though cauliflower and calabrese will have a gap. But the weather has changed recently - it has been wet and we have had some cold nights so overall I would say that it will be a mixed year with some gluts, but also some shortages.”
P Caunce & Son is due to start harvesting leeks next week. “In the north west we had rain at the right time,” says partner Martin Caunce, “and so we didn’t need to irrigate as much. The produce is bulking off well, but it is still a bit light because of the time of year. As time goes on the weight goes up.”
In addition to 40 acres of leeks, the company also produces carrots and has just started harvesting its early varieties. “Prices have been disappointing,” says Caunce. “In fact I have never known the price of carrots to be so low. From Christmas 2003 up until the end of May carrots were fetching the same prices as they were until 1983. They were the best carrots we had ever grown, so it was not a problem with quality, simply that the demand was not there.”
Among the wide range of summer vegetable lines, potatoes enjoy a popularity that shows no signs of abating. “The potato crop is progressing particularly well, and prices are higher than they were last year due to last year’s crop holding up in price,” says Pitts. “Demand is also up and there are not as many growers in production. A lot of smaller companies have now stopped.”
Where once producers were able to grow on a speculative basis, this is no longer the case. “Nowadays people grow to certain programmes or for their existing customer demands and it is not like it used to be in the past. This means there can often be large shortages but then people can’t grow 20-30 per cent extra any more because they might not be able to sell it and make a profit,” says Pitts.
WJ Olivers deals with a wide range of potatoes, including salad varieties. Manager Timothy Oliver says: “There have been problems because it has been so dry. From mid-April until the last few days of May it hardly rained at all so the season has been lagging and has started later than it usually would do.”
WJ Olivers is situated between Helston and Penzance in Cornwall. Says Oliver: “There are not many growers in the area who have irrigation and because of the lack of water the produce has struggled to reach the sizes that they should have, although, thanks to later harvesting they have all got to size now. We did have some rain a few weeks ago and are currently digging and harvesting.”
This year early potatoes have done fairly well and salad potatoes have enjoyed a reasonable demand, says Oliver. “Out of all the niche markets or at least out of all the potato types in the retail stores, salad potatoes seem to be increasing in popularity,” he says. “We sell our set-skins washed and put into one kilo punnets. We are expecting 2,000t of our own produce, and we also market for other growers.”
P Caunce & Son also produces salad potatoes and although the crop looks promising, prices do not. “The cost of potatoes dropped by £50 a tonne last week for unwashed new potatoes,” says Caunce. “Unfortunately that is just the nature of the industry. Prices have been good for the last couple of years but the produce is still shifting and more will come onto the market in the next few weeks.”
This year P Caunce & Son will not be growing lettuce as it has done in the past. Instead, it has subcontracted out its land to a larger lettuce grower. “The market for iceberg lettuce is terrible and we just could not make it pay,” says Caunce. “We handed it over to a larger firm who do a lot of bagged lettuce including speciality leaves.”
Whatever summer vegetable lines companies are involved with, it is crucial to be able to supply product on a consistent basis.
Oakley Farms’ aim, says Whitworth, is to achieve continuity, guaranteed freshness and excellent quality. In order to achieve this the company continuously invests in people, land, specialised harvesting machinery and buildings. To ensure that its products are as fresh as possible its courgette fields are within two miles of its packhouse and the company also places a high emphasis on accreditation and has achieved BRC (Higher Level), Nature’s Choice (Gold Award), Assured Produce and Assured Food Standards. It also has accreditation for growing and packing organic produce.
The main site covers five hectares of which 2,170 square metres are dedicated to cold storage and a packing facility with a capacity to hold 400 pallets in cold storage. A further 2,000 sqm of pumpkin curing facilities are also on the main site. Other sites house a workshop facility, a controlled atmosphere coldstore, accommodation for seasonal labourers and a nursery for all plant raising and bedding plants. Oakley Nursery is an eight acre site, of which 65 per cent is under cover of either polythene or glass. Along with growing all Oakley Farms requirements, the nursery also grows in excess of 200,000 trays of spring bedding plants.
The farm operation has a range of specialist harvesting machines - a fleet of ‘cup’ rig harvesting machines for broccoli and ‘arm’ rig harvesters for courgettes and marrows. “The inception of the ‘arm’ rig harvesters for courgettes enabled us to instigate the field packing of courgettes, allowing the product to be handled less, causing less damage and a longer shelf-life. We also have a mobile washing rig for our pumpkin production allowing the product to be cleaned at point of harvest resulting in less handling and a cleaner product. We employ up to 120 seasonal staff for crop harvesting,” says Whitworth.
It would seem that the demand for prepared summer vegetables continues unabated.
“Prepared food is a good market to be in for salad and vegetables because no-one wants to peel and wash vegetables,” says Caunce. “These days using produce has to be as easy as opening a bag of peas. In that respect we are 10 years behind the US, but we are catching up. The catering sector has gone mad for salad potatoes because there is no work involved.
“In the last five years we have been drifting towards the processing sector. We are a farm, not packers or choppers but a lot of farms seem to do that. It seems that growers are becoming much more specialised in order to survive.”
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