British farmers will plant a million less apple trees this year as the industry is ravaged by inflation, labour shortages, climate change and cheap supermarket prices.
Landowners across the country are digging up their orchards as apple production becomes financially unviable.
According to British Apples and Pears Limited (BAPL), British apple growers normally plan to plant 1 million to 1.5 million trees every year.
But this year growers ordered just 500,000 saplings - and they have since cancelled a third of those.
Last year a report by the agricultural and sustainability consultancy Promar for the NFU found that inflation for growers was running at around 23 per cent.
But they only received on average a 0.8 per cent increase in their returns from selling apples to supermarkets.
The BAPL has now published data highlighting the continued struggles for the top UK fruit growers - the biggest data set ever released at one time by the industry.
It reported that confidence in British apple growing is understandably low - with 70 per cent of growers admitting they are less confident than they were a year ago and almost half (45 per cent) of respondents said they have scaled back their future investment plans.
Just three per cent said they have a ‘true partnership’ with supermarkets, while 45 per cent say retailers only care about price.
The immediate impacts of orchards not being replanted is the loss of British-grown varieties, as well as biodiversity loss.
But long-term implications means a decrease in British apples in supermarkets for shoppers - at a time when buying local is being encouraged.
There are many factors as to why this is happening - but simply put, growers are unable to afford to invest in new orchards because they are getting such low returns for their fruit - they are no longer profitable.
James Smith, a fifth-generation fruit grower who runs Loddington Farm in Kent, has ripped up three orchards because apple production is no longer financially viable.
He has been in the business for over 20 years, but says growers cannot afford to invest in new orchards because they have such low returns on their fruit.
When he joined the farm 98 per cent of their income was from apples and pears.
But Loddington Farm's commercial apple production has dropped from 80 per cent to 4 per cent since 2018.
His remaining orchards are currently being converted to organic production but there has been no new planting since 2018.
James says climate change, labour shortages, energy prices and retailer behaviour all play an equal role in the farm's decision to step away from apple production.
He said: "The first three all increase risk and cost, the latter ensures that none of those risks will be rewarded or the costs covered.
"In terms of volume of fruit grown, we peaked (around 8 years ago) at 2,000 tons of our own production and now plan to pick around 170 tons.
"So in terms of production, we are producing around 8.3% of what we did".
Landowners across the country are digging up their orchards as apple production becomes financially unviable.
According to British Apples and Pears Limited (BAPL), British apple growers normally plan to plant 1 million to 1.5 million trees every year.
But this year growers ordered just 500,000 saplings - and they have since cancelled a third of those.
Last year a report by the agricultural and sustainability consultancy Promar for the NFU found that inflation for growers was running at around 23 per cent.
But they only received on average a 0.8 per cent increase in their returns from selling apples to supermarkets.
The BAPL has now published data highlighting the continued struggles for the top UK fruit growers - the biggest data set ever released at one time by the industry.
It reported that confidence in British apple growing is understandably low - with 70 per cent of growers admitting they are less confident than they were a year ago and almost half (45 per cent) of respondents said they have scaled back their future investment plans.
Just three per cent said they have a ‘true partnership’ with supermarkets, while 45 per cent say retailers only care about price.
The immediate impacts of orchards not being replanted is the loss of British-grown varieties, as well as biodiversity loss.
But long-term implications means a decrease in British apples in supermarkets for shoppers - at a time when buying local is being encouraged.
There are many factors as to why this is happening - but simply put, growers are unable to afford to invest in new orchards because they are getting such low returns for their fruit - they are no longer profitable.
James Smith, a fifth-generation fruit grower who runs Loddington Farm in Kent, has ripped up three orchards because apple production is no longer financially viable.
He has been in the business for over 20 years, but says growers cannot afford to invest in new orchards because they have such low returns on their fruit.
When he joined the farm 98 per cent of their income was from apples and pears.
But Loddington Farm's commercial apple production has dropped from 80 per cent to 4 per cent since 2018.
His remaining orchards are currently being converted to organic production but there has been no new planting since 2018.
James says climate change, labour shortages, energy prices and retailer behaviour all play an equal role in the farm's decision to step away from apple production.
He said: "The first three all increase risk and cost, the latter ensures that none of those risks will be rewarded or the costs covered.
"In terms of volume of fruit grown, we peaked (around 8 years ago) at 2,000 tons of our own production and now plan to pick around 170 tons.
"So in terms of production, we are producing around 8.3% of what we did".
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FunTranscript
00:00 I'm James Smith from Loddington Farm just outside Maidstone in Kent.
00:09 Historically I've been a commercial apple grower but now farming a very diversified
00:13 farming business and with our own farm shop so concentrating on retail and growing all
00:19 sorts of things from eggs, pork, still growing some apples, cherries, pears, apricots amongst
00:25 other things.
00:26 We are in the process of taking out quite a lot of our apple orchards and we have downsized
00:32 the size of our commercial apple growing operation by about 90%.
00:37 So the orchards we are retaining we are converting to organics and many of the other conventional
00:44 intensive orchards we are in the process of pulling out.
00:47 Fundamentally the changes in our weather patterns making it increasingly difficult to be sure
00:52 producing a crop so the risks associated with the weather are increasing.
00:57 And then we have labour shortages, since Brexit we can no longer access the seasonal labour
01:03 that we used to during the harvest period.
01:07 So I don't know if the weather is going to let me grow a crop, if I do grow a crop I'm
01:11 not sure if I can access labour to manage it and then pick it.
01:15 Once we've done that we then can't afford the electricity prices to put the fruit into
01:19 our cold stores which we need to do in order to market the fruit in good time to our consumers.
01:25 If I manage to grow a crop, harvest it, store it, I know full well that at the end of that
01:32 the UK retailers won't pay a profitable price to us as a business.
01:35 So when you put all of those things together there's not many reasons to keep going.
01:43 I think it would be really useful to see some sensible governmental support in terms of
01:49 policies around fairness in the supply chain with UK retailers.
01:54 I don't think the retailers are ever going to change on their own but the UK retailer
01:59 business model for those of us as primary producers is just a deeply unpleasant way
02:04 of doing business.
02:05 So I think there needs to be support for business to be able to keep producing food whilst working
02:10 on nature recovery rather than just focusing on nature recovery and assuming that we can
02:15 import all of our food from somewhere else.
02:17 So I think meaningful support, making sure that there's fairness and then ensuring that
02:23 Britain can keep producing its own healthy food.
02:25 [End of Audio] Duration: 3 minutes and 30 seconds
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