If we had had a few more sunny weeks during this past summer, this year's conference would probably have been as buoyant as previous years. The conference normally starts with a review of how well the marketing companies have done in satisfying their customers, focusing on growth and market share. This year, the format was a little different with Laurence Olins extending his role as chairman of British Summer Fruits to the conference platform. A good move on his part, allowing several marketing companies to conduct a review and preview of the major soft fruit crops. Under this format, Lochy Porter illustrated how production growth in raspberries had exceeded the sales achieved. While I am sure that BSF will look to see how to promote and market the 2005 crop more constructively, this probably still leaves a surplus of production during the peak weeks. The whole industry has to carefully consider responding to calls for growth without reference to the volume of crop produced. Technology will provide more solutions to maintaining a successful industry than all the BOGOF promotions we could ever squeeze into a year. So how apt that the opening talk was given by Colin Gutteridge, the chief executive of East Malling Research. We have been the envy of the world for our agricultural research; as Defra withdraws its funding we should look to see how we develop our technical capabilities. EMR wants to build its future on being an exemplary contractor delivering excellent science. In the past, the number of peer-approved scientific papers published may well have measured this. For the future, will it be helping determine what we can achieve from fruit crops, how we develop these opportunities and a method of funding? The cost of EMR is small when set against the value of our industry's opportunities and the further down the supply chain we collect the funding the more focused it can be on delivering excellent science. Over the past few years the conference organisers have tried to ensure the program contains good, grower-friendly papers; I believe this year they were successful. In particular Andrew Cranston's 'Biennial cropping of raspberries' round robin session was well researched and delivered. As an advocate of high beds, I thoroughly appreciated Russell Duggan's description of his experiences in creating these in the UK; getting a good match of machinery was always going to be the solution. Every time I see a new delivery of tunnel plastic or an artic load of packaging I think, 'land-fill'. Plastics have changed our industry as much as varieties and fertigation and Brian Sanders' paper on plastic recycling certainly adds hope that we can improve our environmental credentials. With the recent publication by Reading University and EMR of their work on gene mapping it is comforting to know there is research funding at that level. While at the same time the EMR report on 'Enhancing fruit quality using reflective mulches' is a good example of both applied agronomy development and product development. As we have seen this year, nothing promotes our product quite like a good health or lifestyle label. All in all a good conference and our thanks to ADAS and EMR for organising the event. |
