Huge areas of one of Britain’s biggest salad growing hubs will be replaced with housing estates, as growers give up in despair, and cash in their land.
The Lea Valley, also known as the cucumber capital and Britain’s salad bowl, is one of the diamonds of the UK’s embattled horticultural sector. The Lea Valley Growers Association (LVGA), seeded through an area running across Greater London, Essex and Hertfordshire, comprises more than 180 hectares (450 acres) of glasshouses, run by 80 growers. The valley should be a jewel in the crown for a country concerned with homegrown industry and food security.
But hit by Brexit, a flawed Home Office plan for workers, and now rising energy prices, more than a third of the growers have applied for planning permission to knock down 60 hectares of greenhouses to replace them with housing estates, warehouses and small factories. Their applications have been granted.
“Without government assistance for British food producers, the largest hub in the UK’s glasshouse sector could face extinction within the next two years,” said Lee Stiles, the LVGA secretary, “to be concreted over by houses and industry.
“The association has 80 growers and 450 acres of glasshouses,” he said. “Twenty growers have permission for housing, representing 100 acres, and another 10 have permission to develop their 50 acres for light industrial uses.”
The Lea Valley needs 2,200 workers a year, and the companies were hit hard by Brexit. The seasonal workers scheme set up by the Home Office and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), which was meant to ease the problems, requires workers to return home after six months.
“This means that, in a season which runs for 10 or 11 months, growers have to recruit twice the amount, and train workers twice, to do the same job,” Stiles said. “Our growers experienced a 40% shortfall in workers this year. The government’s six-month rule results in many growers finishing with a completely different workforce than they started with, with some unable to complete the season due to a lack of workers.”
“Forty of them, representing 200 acres, haven’t planted this year,” said Stiles. “And another 10, who had 60 acres, have ceased trading.”
Among them were four growers who previously cultivated one in every 20 lettuces eaten by British households. They have stopped growing them completely in the past two years, while others who grew 100m sweet peppers have this season been forced to cut their crop in half. Seventy-four-year-old Elvio Cipullo and his wife Luigia, aged 68, started their business growing salads leaves, cucumbers and herbs 52 years ago, and are now getting up at at 5.30am to try to make up for the shortfall in workers.
“They will go down on their hands and knees to cut the parsley,” says their son, 48-year-old Tony, who now runs the 11 acres of seven glasshouses. “It’s dirty work. But they know they have to do it.”
“All of the lettuce growers are in the process of selling their nurseries,” Stiles said. “It is pointless planting a crop if you are not confident of securing the labour to pick it as you will simply have it throw it all away.”
They have also been harder hit than most industries by the huge rise in gas prices, because they have to heat greenhouses. “The largest input costs for growers used to be labour followed by energy,” Stiles said. “Now it is energy followed by labour. Half of growers did not plant when vital supplies of gas for greenhouses soared from 30p a therm in January and has now hit £4 a therm.
“In the 14 years I have been in this job, this is the worst I have ever seen. Ninety per cent of our members are family businesses, traditionally employing 2,500 people. We have only one large corporate.”
The result of the government scheme, he said, was fewer British growers, lost jobs, more imported food, more food miles, an increased carbon footprint and greater climate damage. “Horticultural growers in the EU receive state aid. We, of course, don’t receive any EU money at all,” he said. “The UK has been losing large slices of its salads and vegetables market to producers in Spain and Morocco who don’t have to use gas to heat greenhouses, and who are just four days by road from here.”
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Growers received notification from George Eustice, the secretary of state at Defra, in late July that they must pay immigrant workers a minimum of £10.10 an hour. “George Eustice had denied that the minimum wage would rise to £10.10 at the National Farmers’ Union conference in February,” Stiles said, “and then U-turned just weeks later.
“That is higher than the national minimum wage, which the government is now enforcing under its seasonal workers scheme. But our growers also have to provide accommodation for them.”
There could, however, be an even greater impact nationwide, said grower Tony Cipullo, who has four hectares of glasshouses in the Lea Valley.
A card-carrying Tory party member, who voted in the leadership election, he warned the next occupant of No 10: “It’s not going to be about people having to pay more this winter for their fresh food. If many more growers are forced to stop producing it, they are going to starve.”
A spokesperson for Defra told the Guardian: “We are aware of the challenges facing farmers from increased input costs, particularly energy, as well as their concerns regarding seasonal workers’ pay. That’s why we have brought forward 50% of the BPS payment to help farmers right now, on top of fuel duty and VAT cuts, and freezing the business rates multiplier to reduce bills.
“We have already boosted the number of visas available through the seasonal workers route to 40,000 and amended the pay requirements earlier this year, removing the minimum annual salary requirement to give more certainty over costs and ensure farmers can access the workforce they need. We continue to keep these measures under review.”