Lincolnshire horticultural businesses operate in a highly competitive and demanding market environment.Whether it be the provision of nutritious and healthy vegetables or fruit, or the plants and flowers that decorate our homes and gardens, the county is at the forefront of production.
We should be proud of those who have forged the businesses that employ some 13,000 workers, who cultivate nearly 40,000 hectares (2 per cent of Britain's production) and contribute so massively to the local economy.
For they have to be at the cutting edge of technology, close to their customers and efficient in all aspects of their business.
It is rightly a Government priority to increase the amount of vegetables and fruit in our diet and the recommendation that we should eat five portions a day aims to cut the incidence of coronary heart disease, cancer and other chronic illnesses and surely provides opportunity for further expansion.
Growers are famed for their ability to adapt to changing circumstances but they are being tested now.
Media reports of high retail prices would suggest Utopia for growers but as recent food surveys suggest, a different picture is emerging.
In many areas there has been no price increase at all to growers while in others shortages have boosted prices.
Thus growing crops is becoming an increasingly risky business.
We are all aware of the increasing price of fuel and fertiliser costs have tripled (we exported our own fertiliser industry) and the control of inputs is fast becoming an economic weapon.
No wonder the Government is concerned - and so it should be.
For it is they and their predecessors who have been content to take the short-term view that all that mattered was cheap food wherever it came from.
It is they (and their European cousins) who have poured cost and unnecessary regulation on the industry.
Only last week the European agriculture ministers have voted to abandon the tried and tested means by which they license plant protection products, with potentially devastating results in terms of reduced yields and quality (and no science to back it up).
The irony is that foods that we import will be grown using the same plant protection products that we will be banned from using, but what is surely irresponsible is to have done so without conducting any form of impact assessment.
Growers will continue to do everything they can to remain competitive by keeping prices down but they can do little about internationally traded input costs.
They will continue to care for the environment and to do their best to mitigate climate change but they do need the support of the Government and the EU.
That means less regulation, freedom to compete equally on world markets and the courage to embrace the latest technology.
It also requires recognition of the importance of protecting priceless agricultural land from flooding and the sea.
If we fail to work together to find solutions, we merely export production abroad - as is already happening in the intensive livestock sector.
Horticulture in Lincolnshire is a huge success story - we must preserve it.
Source: Lincolnshire Echo
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