Lee Abbey NFU

Lee Abbey

When the NFU launched its new Plants & Flowers Pledge at Lovania Nurseries, near Preston, the blue skies and bright sunshine seemed to provide a positive omen about the future of the UK plants and flowers sector.

Much like the NFU’s successful Fruit & Veg Pledge continues to do in the fresh produce sector, this new pledge challenges the industry to do better.

Our growers are keen to provide more for the public and we have a plentiful source of local, seasonal plants at our fingertips. But while the British plants and flowers industry continues to grow, so too does the value of imports; and in cut flowers, just 10 per cent of the flowers sold in retail are home grown.

We are delighted to see Aldi continue their strong track record of supporting British farmers and growers by becoming the first retailer to sign up to the NFU Plants & Flowers Pledge, and it’s our hope that more will follow to commit to better trading practices.

But what are they signing up to? The pledge commits retailers to deliver transparency and fairness to growers, to offer programmes in advance of the crop being planted, to offer greater price certainty, to be flexible with specifications and promotions and, importantly, to increase the proportion of British plants and flowers sold through retail.

All of these commitments are incredibly valuable for growers but one thing that sees this pledge go further for the ornamentals sector is the requirement for retailers to honour the principles of the GSCoP code.

Ornamentals are not covered by the code and if retailers sign up they provide growers with the confidence that they will be treated the same as their fresh produce colleagues.

It’s an incredibly important part of what this pledge offers to growers and I believe it will enable businesses to compete and grow, if they know they have the same level of fairness, transparency and confidence as their fresh produce colleagues.

The managing director at Lovania, Charmay Prout, put this into her own words by welcoming the commitments the pledge offers and her belief that it could help deliver better outcomes for growers.

She encouraged all major retailers to embrace the principles of the pledge and make these public commitments.

I think Charmay’s words are something that all plants and flowers growers would echo, and I hope retailers are listening.

The NFU will be working hard over the next few weeks and months to secure pledges from across grocery and garden retail and to create a debate about how the sector does business.

With over half of the fresh produce sold through major retailers already covered by commitments to the NFU Fruit & Veg Pledge, we will not rest until the same is achieved for plants and flowers.