Suffolk veg growers gear up for busy Christmas period

While most of the country enjoys a midwinter respite from work, farmers growing a host of vegetables for the Christmas and New Year market will still be hard at work.

They will be working up to Christmas and in the period up to New Year to ensure that supermarket shelves remain full and other food retailers are well stocked.

Their biggest headache has been drenched fields after a succession of rainstorms following Storm Babet. This has made it tough going for machinery - which can get stuck - and delayed a lot of activity.

The wet conditions can also cause a host of disease problems - including mildew and other fungal diseases. 

Jason Smith is production manager at Home Farm Nacton, near Ipswich.

The business grows conventional and organic crops in fields along the A14 up to Felixstowe.

It will be supplying supermarkets and wholesalers - as well as supplying its own fresh vegetable boxes for local markets.

The crops in general "look pretty good", he said, but added they have had a difficult growing season.

"Planting was delayed on most crops - that has a knock-on effect," he said.

"The problem has been the wet. It has been reasonably mild so things have been growing. Everything has got wet feet and it's not nice with everything sitting wet - it brings disease into crops as well.

"Most of our winter crop is organic so we can't go in and spray it so we are at the mercy of bugs and spores and fungi sprouting."

Among the crops being grown on the farm are cauliflower and cabbage. The team has been busy covering the cauliflower crop in a mesh to protect it from frost - which can turn the heads yellow if mild or damage them if more severe. 

The farm also grows purple sprouting broccoli - which will probably be a "bit late" this year - and some sprouts, he said.

"I think quality will be reasonably good from what I've seen," he said.

However there was "still a lot to play for" depending on how cold it gets. This can have a severe effect on crops. "That's why we are going around covering things up," he said.

Prices were "OK" - but the biggest long-term problem has been labour, he said. The farm has an all-year-round crew of eight very experienced pickers but at peak times these are supplemented by agency workers taking the team to up to 20.

Earlier this year, it had to write off around 10 acres of broccoli - because it matured too early in September when it should have been ready in October/November. In the end, it was fed to sheep.

Nick Scantlebury, farm boss at the Elveden Estate, will be hard at work on his huge 500-acre carrot fields over Christmas.

The farm lifts around 800 to 1,000t of carrots a week for supermarkets - supplying about 17,000t into the market place.

In addition, the estate has already lifted and harvested its potato and onion crops - which is now in store. These are heading to supermarkets on a supply and demand basis. Orders for onions are particularly high at the moment, said Nick.

The back-end of his potato harvest was "very challenging" with tractors and trailers battling to get over the fields - even though many at Elveden are fairly free-draining. In the end the potato harvest wasn't in until November 10 - three weeks after Storm Babet in mid-October.

However, both crop quality and yield are looking average to good - despite a difficult and unpredictable growing season, he said. The carrots were planted in hot and dry conditions in June so when the rains arrived in July they were welcome.

However, as with Jason, a cold snap now could put a spanner in the works.

"We started lifting carrots mid-October and we won't finish until mid-March," he said. There will be "no respite" over Christmas, with carrot lifting continuing straight after the break from December 27 to 29.

British farmers would be working "extremely hard" to ensure that householders could enjoy UK veg at Christmas, he said.

"For consumers to have it on the shelf, someone has to be working in the background," he said. "There's no rest for the wicked."

James Foskett, of James Foskett Farms at Bromeswell near Woodbridge, said the wet weather had not worked in his favour. On a dry year, he can irrigate on his light land - but rain and overcast weather over the summer meant a lack of sunshine on crops.

"The soil conditions are so wet. It still hasn't stopped raining so things are pretty wet on the back of 200mm of rain in October which we are not used to," he said.

However, despite that, his potato crop did well with "pretty reasonable yields". Luckily the last of his crop was lifted by mid-October - or just before the floods.

However, winter drilling after that proved problematic. "It's taken until the end of last week to drill the field because it's so wet," he said. "We put some wheat in only last week."

Around 75 acres of his sugar beet was out of the ground and all drilled up. "The rest we could have out at any time but we'll have them out before Christmas because we don't want it to get frosted.

The onion crop was "slightly better than we imagined". As well as brown onions, he harvested about 3,000t of red onions in September. He is part of G's Growers and much of this crop may stay in store until March, April or May.

"Red onions are extraordinarily short which people really need to be aware there's not going to any anywhere in the world to satisfy the UK demand," he said.

Overall he is reasonably satisfied. "We'll have an OK year on the spuds and hopefully on the onions. Some of the organic vegetable sales have been down which is a shame but that's how it goes."

These sales are down about 15% compared to three years ago, he said, and as a result, the farm cut its production of this side.