Exploring Sussex

MAKING A DIFFERENCE

A Taste of Sussex was relaunched five and a half years ago to promote the many types of food and drink available in the region that stretches across two counties. Here, leader of the regional food group Hilary Knight talks about the fresh produce in the area.

A Taste of Sussex is a project funded and run by the local Chamber of Commerce’s Sussex Enterprise and I was brought in to start the initiative up again after its previous equivalent had ended several years before that. Our main role is to create opportunities for producers and processors - as we cover the complete range of food companies - and make sure those businesses remain viable and profitable.

We have a very large membership of 400 companies and 20 per cent of those are involved with fresh produce. There is a great mix of different types of fruit and vegetable businesses in Sussex, but we mainly work with smaller growers trying to get their feet off the ground or make sure they continue to be profitable in this competitive environment. These smaller companies usually serve or are looking to serve the local hospitality and catering sector. We work hard to link them up with grower co-operatives, wholesalers, box schemes and the like. That is not to say we don’t encourage our members to work with the multiples. On the contrary, we run a series of workshops teaching our members what supermarket buyers look for and the kind of challenges or constraints they operate under.

There is an enormous range of fruit and vegetables in Sussex and the diversity of the region is amazing. Down in West Sussex, there is a huge amount of salad product grown including lettuce, celery, tomatoes and cucumber. The area is on an alluvial plain and has a microclimate environment, which is ideal for those kinds of crops. In the east, the land near Kent is more suited to top fruit, with many growers specialising in apples and pears. There are also some cherry growers left in the area, but this industry has been in decline for many years. You also get everything in between; we have vineyards in Sussex, which is a relatively new industry that came to this region in the 1970s, but has recently become very commercial. The region’s award-winning sparkling wine is likened to champagne and is sold in Waitrose throughout the UK.

The local marketplace is undergoing a transformation. There are more than 60 farmers’ markets and an enormous number of farm shops have opened lately. A lot of people want to grow their own product, but can’t or don’t have the time, and going from a farm shop or farmers’ market is the next best thing. Large growers in Sussex have managed to diversify their offer for the major multiples. The Sussex celery offer has done very well and companies like Langmead Farms have become specialists in that area.

We can signpost fresh produce companies to sources of funding, subsidised training and also organise Meet the Buyer events. We tend to do this face to face, rather than organising for a lot of buyers to meet up with a lot of producers individually. This way, we can go through the process with the growers step by step. We get involved in a vast number of exhibitions and shows, and invite and subsidise growers to join us on the stalls. We try to encourage all our members to take part in shows as it is not just about selling your products, it is about the contacts companies make for the future. Discussing new products with customers can be an invaluable experience.

There is definitely a movement towards local produce and people are continually asking where the food on their plate is coming from. We promote local product where we can and push for local awareness with consumers, as well as the trade. Also, quite a lot of produce is recession-proof in the way that it is very hard for consumers to step down the quality of the food they buy. Fresh produce sales at farm shops and farmers’ markets in Sussex are up about 10-15 per cent and it helps that they are selling high-end quality produce. This is also a fairly well-off part of the country and food just does not seem to be an area that is suffering in the recession.

We are in the process of looking for more funding to secure the future of our group. The funding A Taste of Sussex receives from the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA) will end in March 2010, so I am in the process of talking to the county councils. I am quietly confident, however. I can’t imagine that the work we have done over the years will not be recognised as valuable and I am sure that there will be some project funding that will be able to sustain us. For the future, I expect we will work more with the hospitality and catering industry; South Downs is the newest National Park and we will be working with the tourist board to integrate local food into the menus.

Sussex has seen producers work together more recently, especially in terms of delivery and distribution. There has been a big increase in box schemes and in the past just one nursery would run a scheme, but now several nurseries are working together to serve the same box scheme. We are very much governed by the seasons in this area and there is a better understanding of the weather and its effect on the produce.

TURNING OVER A NEW LEAF

Lewes-based grower Fletching Glass Houses has taken advantage of the dwindling flower industry in Sussex by buying four glasshouses - covering one hectare - for the production of vegetable and salad products for wholesale, farm shops, caterers and a box scheme.

The company, run by Isobel Rae, is in the process of re-establishing the four glasshouses, which fell into disrepair, and now has two in full working order. “We have to find a way for these glasshouses to be sustainable for us and succeed where the flower growers failed,” says Isobel’s business partner and husband, Alan Rae. “They were really run down and the heating costs had become too much for the flower growers. The rise in oil costs made the business uneconomical for them, so this made us evaluate what we should grow to be economical.”

Fletching Glass Houses emerged out of internet gift delivery business Plants4Presents, which now involves both growing pot plants in the Sussex nursery, as well as importing product. The firm achieved Soil Association certification in July 2008 and believes that organic farming is the way forward. “I have always personally felt that the organic way is obvious,” says Isobel. “In the long term, we need to respect the soil, with no hydroponics and no chemicals. When we came here, it was the only way to make it work; we have to have the niche offer, as we cannot compete with the big producers. We started growing for farm shops and box schemes and keep an interesting mix all year round, including aubergines, courgettes, tomatoes, leeks, mixed lettuce leaves and kohl rabi -a root vegetable similar to a turnip.”

The company started growing in the glasshouses in January 2007 and has many ideas that will help it sustain the growing demand for local produce. “We want to heat our seed-propagating area using wood, which Sussex is full of,” explains Isobel. “This year we applied for a grant but the price of boilers just doesn’t make sense for us. Eventually I am hoping to find a large log boiler or furnace.

“But we will be harvesting water from the glasshouses’ roofs and holding it in a reservoir that we will build this year. We spend £7,000 a year on water and this investment will pay for itself in three years.”

A TASTE OF JAPAN IN THE UK

One of the many examples of growers diversifying in Sussex is new business Nama Yasai, based in Islfield, Lewes. Owner Robin Williams is relatively new to the world of horticulture and started up the business, which produces Japanese vegetables and salad products, in 2005, growing commercially from his own backyard. The enterprise quickly expanded to a 108sqm field in East Sussex and is in the process of taking on extra land in the area, fuelled by rising demand.

Nama Yasai grows a range of Japanese herbs and leaves, including shiso, nira and shungiku, as well as several edible flowers to make up a mixed salad leaf bag for a local box scheme. In addition, it grows increasingly popular edamame beans and radish daikon.

The company has been serving a collection of restaurants in London, including the fashionable Nobu, as well as Borough Market.

“Japanese products like edamame have soared in popularity lately and London restaurants have been very interested in that and quite a few other products,” explains Williams. “Our only problem is that we are new to this game and we do not have the yields to fully supply demand at the moment. The new field will help with this, but we are just finding our feet. We are discovering that popular items like fennel are actually really good for the land and also act as wind breaks, which protects the salad leaves.”

Nama Yasai does not use any pesticides or artificial fertilisers and uses fleece protection outside, as well as polytunnels. “We are on the green sand belt here,” says Williams. “The soil is really good, although we do need to increase our fertility. The crops are doing very well, but we need to look at irrigation and solar power to help with heating costs for the future. No one else is concentrating on Japanese produce like this in the area, but costs of production are going to rise.”

POWERFUL HERBS

West Sussex-based Humber VHB has built itself up to be the UK’s largest producer of fresh living herbs and the once niche line has since become its most popular offer.

The business has been producing fresh produce since Sussex-based tomato grower Van Haeyningen Brothers formed it in the 1960s. The company was bought by the Yorkshire-based Humber Growers in 2001 and now produces 14 million fresh pot herbs - under the brand, The Fresh Herb Company - and 16m salad cress punnets a year, as well as niche offerings such as micro cress and pea shoots. The company also packs around 23m packs of fresh-cut and bunched herbs from its own production and other growers, both at home and overseas.

Humber VHB now serves the retail, foodservice and wholesale sectors with more than 10 different types of pot herbs, including Greek basil, which it has grown for two years. The company has eight acres of pot herb production within its nursery in Pagham. Operations director Chris Moncrieff says that the lines have seen a lot of changes and improvement since the firm took the herbs on some 20 years ago. “Various herbs get added and taken away,” he says. “For example, chives come and go and sage is very reliant on the Christmas trade. Retailers have a restriction regarding space, so it is something we have to watch.

“Our core sales are made up of basil, which represents around 35 per cent of total sales. It used to be curly parsley, which was the typical British herb, but that has now dropped back to third, behind coriander. Thyme popularity came from nowhere about seven to eight years ago, when Delia [Smith] brought out a cookery book that featured the herb heavily.”

Now grown in pots with machinery that allows non-contact seedling sowing and production, the herbs are continuously harvested.

“The way we have done things over the last 20 years has changed dramatically,” says product manager James Seymour. “Everything was done by seed and now, depending on the variety, we take cuttings -like with mint - and grow several in one pot to make it a full bush. We concentrate more than ever on flavour and this means that the plants are more mature and have more oils in their leaves, which is where the flavour comes from. This has been especially important with rosemary, as to grow this herb from seed it would take years.”

The growing process from planting to finished product takes from 19 to 55 days depending on the variety and the time of year. Humber VHB uses a number of different techniques, including strengthening the plants by replicating the effect of the wind with a machine. Throughout the process, only natural pest controls are used, such as nematodes and predatory wasps.

However, the grower does come up against many challenges. “When you are dealing with raw material to do a job, every action is important,” says Moncrieff. “It is impossible to source all that we need from Sussex, like the seed, the packaging and the pots, so we have to import from Europe and sometimes Israel too, so we are vulnerable to the uncertain sterling. We have lost 30 per cent on packaging seeds and peat.

“Strong links are needed with your suppliers - it needs to be a partnership - and waste needs to be at a minimum. We are currently looking at a system where we can recycle the pots that we don’t use by using them to then grow cut herbs and the peat goes into the compost, which is then sterilised and used in the system again.”

Demand for herbs has really took off and Humber VHB marketing manager Leon Mundey thinks that niche herbs such as Thai basil and hot mint from Australia are coming into vogue, as well as traditional herbs like chervil and sorrel.

“Consumers tend to be cautious of new herbs and are scared that they will either ruin the meal they are cooking or waste the plant completely,” he says. “They have to be introduced through recipes, but thankfully there is hardly a recipe out there now that does not have fresh herbs in it.”

Pea shoots are now Humber VHB’s niche offer, with the company first supplying the shoots to British Airways 15 years ago. It also has a line of micro cresses that have proven popular with the foodservice sector.

UP THE APPLES AND PEARS

Third-generation apple and pear grower John Dench’s company Ringden Farm diversified into juicing top fruit in 1992 after a bad hail storm demolished its crops - and has never looked back.

“Overnight, the price we could get for the apples went from 30p for a lb to 3p a lb for juicing, although the growing costs had stayed the same,” says Dench, who now bottles 220,000 litres of apple and pear juice a season. “The first year, we had 1,000l pressed somewhere else and in our second season we started to press on our orchard.”

The company’s site produces 1,440 tonnes an acre and grows more than 17 varieties of apples and three pear varieties. Customers include farm shops, caterers and independent retailers in Sussex, Essex, Kent and Surrey, and there is room for expansion due to demand.

“We sell slightly more juice every year and could expand,” says Dench. “Even through the recession, we have not suffered. We are a supplier for the National Trust as well, which makes a difference.

“Next year, we will be taking a lot of our Cox Pippin out and replacing it with Fuji and a bit of Braeburn.”

BARFOOTS MAKES ITS MARK

Major sweetcorn specialist Barfoots of Botley is busy making sure it is a real community player, despite its national presence.

The Bognor Regis-based grower, which has production sites in South Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, as well as West Sussex, welcomes the community surrounding its headquarters at Sefter Farm, near Pagham, to its biannual summer fête, Corn Fest, which sees up to 5,000 people join in on a family day out.

“We do this because we like to be part of the local community,” says the company’s managing director Graham Young. “We work with all the schools and community on it and there is music, local stallholders, face painting, a Pimm’s tent and, of course, lots of sweetcorn. We sell vegetables at market stall prices and it is all part of investing in the local community.”

Grower of asparagus, courgettes, broad beans, squash, pumpkins and chilli peppers, Barfoots packs all of its own produce and therefore also produces a good deal of waste that has to be transported out of the site and through the surrounding villages every day. But the company has come up with an ideal answer to this problem, which actually brings many advantages.

“Some 28,000 tonnes of waste product go out of this site; it is the trimming from all of the crops, but this can be used on site with a new bio-digester that we are investing in,” explains Young. “The methane that comes from the waste will be used to generate electricity and the water produced from that process will be used to irrigate the crop. The substrate will be turned into fertiliser pellets.”

This £4 million investment will save the company 50 per cent of its annual fertiliser costs and produce six gallons of water. One-third of the electricity produced will cover the entire site’s energy requirement and the remainder will be sold back to the National Grid. The initiative is halfway through and will be up and running by next spring.

“The project will generate 8,500 megawatts of electricity, which is the equivalent needed for 2,000 houses,” says the company’s Julian Marks. “Essentially, we could have an electricity trap which could power the local village, Pagham, if need be. It will give us energy security.

“The project started three years ago when we identified the growing challenge of waste and by-product. Also, considering that there could be severe energy disruptions by 2014, there are wider benefits for the community and our company.”

Young also hints that extra heat generated from the project could be used to produce forced aubergines and asparagus to start the seasons early. However, he maintains that the local or British produce offer is the right way to go, as long as quality is good.

“Demand for sweetcorn and asparagus is going through the roof,” he says. “We have increased sales by 25 per cent this year and we can cope with this demand and more because our packhouses are fully robotised.

“This is a great area to grow as we experience the Isle of Wight effect, where a buffer has been created because cool winds have been blocked. We also have the best light levels in the country, so we are earlier than our competitors. There is also the benefit of being able to grow crops that would not usually have been grown in the UK, like sweetcorn and butternut squash. But you have to know where to draw the line. We have produced sweet potatoes here, but they can be grown better elsewhere.

“We grow very good crops almost throughout the year, but our products do not store for very long and that is why we go over to Spain and Germany so we can guarantee constant quality. People want produce to taste right, so we don’t flog the UK season to death.”

ANOTHER WAY OF LIFE

Farm and shop The Market Garden is run by charity the St Anthony’s Trust and follows the rules of biodynamic farming.

The Lewes site includes two acres of potatoes and 1a of onions, as well as tomato plants, strawberries and pick-your-own raspberry bushes, as well as 40 different types of vegetables on 12a and 11 polytunnels for its farm shop and markets within the area.

“We want people to shop here for all of their needs, so we do get things like sweet potatoes from overseas,” says farm manager Tony Davis. “They have not always been grown by biodynamic rules, but they are always organic.”

Lewes has several schools that teach the philosophy of scientist Dr Rudolf Steiner, which states that agriculture should enhance life forces by following the cycle of the moon and recycling elements back into the ground, and most of the people who work on the farm live on site as a community.

“Demand is very steady and biodynamic agriculture has been around for 80 years now,” continues Davis. “It is quite established and a lot of health-conscious people come here.

“The climate in south England is perfect for this type of growing and we have had a really good season so far, with our first tomatoes just about ready and our peppers set to colour in August.”

CARVING OUT A NICHE

Nutbourne Nursery has gone through something of a transformation over the last couple of years. Based among a wealth of salad growers, the company has moved its focus of the last 30 years from loose round tomatoes to producing 17 different varieties of on-the-vine and loose tomatoes.

The company has recently offered a 12kg Exotic Box of 12 different tomatoes for caterers, as well as 12kg and 5kg boxes of various different types of speciality tomatoes.

“We are trying to do some different things here and our new lines have been accepted really well by the restaurant scene in London,” says the company’s owner Gary Griffiths. “The tomato industry has been in decline in the UK and we just cannot compete with the Netherlands when it comes to supplying standard tomatoes to the multiples. The only way to compete is with niche lines and added value.”

The company, which is run by Griffiths and his wife Jenny, converted one glasshouse block of 1,600sqm to speciality tomato production last year and is in the middle of turning its second block of 2,500sqm to the same product. The glasshouses are covered by a thermal energy screen to save on energy costs and have CO2 tubes underneath the tomato vines that enrich the atmosphere with the natural gas, to produce a heavier density of tomatoes.

The company has had considerable success with the baby tiger tomato, which has a purple flesh and a green, tough skin. “We are not growing masses of them yet,” says Griffiths, whose company is a member of the British Tomato Growers’ Association. “But the chefs love it. The skin looks shrivelled, which puts consumers off, but it reinflates when roasted.

“We trialled the tomato three years ago and we have really increased our yield over the last two years. It is mainly chefs who go for this kind of tomato. We need to get more information out there about different tomato varieties. I have started talks with the Covent Garden Market Authority about how to promote speciality tomatoes and how to communicate where they come from and what to do with them.

“There are so many advantages to local food; it is economical, environment-friendly and sustainable. I am keen to show anyone around here. The problem is it has taken 25 years for people to realise that the growers have now gone. Now, not many growers have the money to get back into the game properly.”

Another tomato that Nutbourne Nursery has seen flourish in its glasshouses is the orange and red San Marzano pepper plum. “It’s a winner,” says Griffiths, who still grows 12 tonnes of loose round tomatoes for markets and farm shops each week. “It is an Italian variety and has good dry matter. It has trialled very well and customers are very pleased with it.”

Griffiths believes that he has seen a revived interest in traditional greengrocers in Sussex and is encouraged by younger people coming into the industry. “The last 20 years have seen a decline, but there has been a slight revival and a new generation of greengrocers have appeared. The Sussex Produce Company in Steyning, which won the Sussex Food and Drink Award’s Sussex Food Shop of the Year accolade is one of them and the companies are all run by young people, who are relatively new to the industry and very enthusiastic.”