The power of peer-to-peer learning

Freshgro is a cooperative formed by ten farmers in 1998. Mainly growing carrots and parsnips, they supply over 90% of the UK Chantenay carrot market. Based predominantly in the Midlands, around Nottinghamshire, they produce UK-grown product 48 weeks of the year.

Managing Director Martin Evans considers the importance of grower-to-grower learning and discussion and how climate change is impacting farming.  

About Freshgro

• Crops: Carrots, Chantenay carrots, parsnips and other speciality crops
• Location: Base of 20,000 acres, from the Welsh border to Norfolk
• 80,000 tonnes of raw product yearly

Sharing ideas through Strategic Centres

AHDB has five Strategic Centres for Field Vegetables that aim to facilitate peer-to-peer learning and to address concerns directly raised by growers. One of these centres, specialising in carrot production, was hosted by Freshgro in Nottinghamshire in 2020. Throughout the growing season, they held a series of grower-led trials, including looking at the effects of sowing density, comparisons of different seed treatments and a second year of breakage tests on up-and-coming new varieties included among the 74 demonstrated on site. Growers have already met to put forward ideas for trials in 2021. A ‘Carrot Demonstration Day’ event is held annually to review trials and encourage networking. This year, it was held virtually and you can catch up with videos and results presentations on the British Growers Association website. 

Martin comments, “One of AHDB’s key roles is to bring together everybody’s thoughts. When we get a group of growers around the table, it’s the only time we get some brainstorming and blue-sky thinking. Without that structure, I don’t know what will happen.

“Part of AHDB’s role is to listen. Growers will come up with their own ideas and realise common areas and common solutions. Sharing experiences in an informal way is really important as it helps us to find a way forward.

“We probably don’t talk enough as a sector, because we work in a divisive industry. We need more events where growers can get together with peer-to-peer learning. People are going to have to share things to progress and survive,” he adds.

Future of crop protection

With the shift from conventional pesticides to bioprotectants, we have been creating a series of resources to help growers look at control strategies for aphids, helping growers to get the best from bioprotectants and running webinars on integrated pest management strategies for field vegetable crops.

“While I would prefer we used the term integrated crop management (ICM) in horticulture, not integrated pest management (IPM), we are way ahead in horticulture and already thinking of all our inputs and timing of applications,” says Martin.  

“The difference between a good grower and a bad grower is timing! Growers will be looking at the Pest Bulletin to time their inputs. Just as they’ll be using the weather forecast, it’s all part of the micromanagement of the crop.

“We’ve got a lot of experience in IPM in horticulture, whether we can get that on a field scale with bioprotectants is the next challenge. The industry is looking to innovate to do that, but it always has been,” adds Martin.

Securing new products

With the loss of linuron in 2018, field vegetable growers were left with little resilience in their weed-control options. SCEPTREplus has been trialling novel and alternative products in carrots and parsnips for the last few years.

Martin explains, “SCEPTREplus has been an effective way of demonstrating value and covered a lot of ground efficiently. It is doing live, active research with growers. My only criticism is perhaps we’re not being radical enough and trying different things.

“The introduction of Emerger (aclonifen) through SCEPTREplus has been really important to us, as that is the basis of our total weed-control programme.

“We’ve now got a restricted amount of different actives that we’re having to use in different ways. We are having to use varying different mixes and products at reduced rates to achieve good control, which makes it more technically challenging,” adds Martin.

Coping with climate change

Environment is one of the key focuses for the new AHDB five-year strategy. And one of the key areas of work will be helping farming and growing businesses reduce their environmental footprint to meet future policy and consumer needs.

“Climate has the biggest impact on what we do. If I just take this season; we’ve had one of the warmest Februarys on record this year and one of the coldest Julys. The impact in our sector has been massive,” says Martin

“Normally, 21 February is the coldest day of the year for soil temperatures. We had really high soil temperatures this year, so in terms of storing carrots, that was quite devastating.

“Longer term, we will need new production systems. We are looking at traditional structures having to alter.

“If you look at the bigger picture, we have achieved so much as an industry over the last 40 years. We’ve made significant quality improvements and added a lot of value. We’ve done a lot of work on pesticides and we’re working in a zero-tolerance marketplace. And we continue to evolve,” concludes Martin.