Retailers must move away from the tyranny of rigid size and shape standards for produce, East Anglia's new farm boss has urged.
Zoe Leach stepped into her new role as the National Farmers' Union (NFU) East regional director on Monday (August 8) as the industry reels from the effects of a host of challenges from soaring costs to climate volatility - including the effects of intense heat on their crops and livestock.
The extreme weather has put added pressure on all farmers - including the region's vegetable growers, who are struggling to meet the exacting shape and size standards of their retailer customers. For some, the sheer cost of complying as prices soar and irrigation demands grow has left them with having to plough crops back in. She cited a frustrated cauliflower grower whose crop did not conform because the heads were too small as a result of the heatwave.
"There's the frustrations where the retailers are sticking resolutely to their specifications," she said.
At the same time, the Ukraine war was having an unprecedented effect across the board. As a result, farmers are feeling the accumulation of impacts from many different factors, she said.
"We have got fertiliser prices. These are still high even though they have come back from what they were," she said.
"Farmers are not in it as a charity. They have to make money too and this is the issue," she added. But there was a fundamental issue in how profits were distributed and what farmers got for their crops versus what price consumers pay in supermarkets, she suggested.
"There are people in the supply chain taking more of a margin and making it impossible for people to make a profit out of what they are growing," she said. "Retailers should be paying what it costs to produce."
And while she felt the average shopper was less concerned with produce looking perfect, retailers remained very demanding. "The public needs to know about all the food that's being wasted," she said. "The modern consumer has been trained to buy things looking perfect but I think that's wrong."
There was a lot that could be done in the supply chain to provide food at a reasonable cost to the consumer, she said. "There would be a lot less food wasted if people were happy to have access to them at a certain price."
With increasingly arid growing conditions amid a series of heatwaves, farm reservoirs running dry and many livestock farmers under huge pressure too, the stakes could hardly be higher as the former chief executive of pig sector trade body the National Pig Association (NPA) takes up the post.
Zoe lives in Bourne, south Lincolnshire, with husband, Adam, who works in international development and their son, Alex, eight. She is already very familiar with East Anglia, having lived in Waterbeach in Cambridgeshire and worked on a BQP pig finishing unit in south Suffolk, as well as holidaying regularly in north Norfolk. She is widely admired in the industry, and has viewed policymaking from both sides of the fence.
She has a PhD in pig welfare, and worked at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) as senior scientific officer where she led its livestock science unit. She spent 14 years at the NPA, where she was known as Dr Zoe Davies (she now uses her married name).
The last two years have been "incredibly difficult" for the pig industry, she admitted, who face very high feed prices and a huge contraction in the industry.
"There will be big issues in terms of how they feed these animals over the winter," she said.
Meanwhile, on the arable side, sugar beet crops are wilting under the intense heat and maize crops have also suffered.
Uncertainty across a range of areas from labour shortages and the loss of farm subsidies, to costs and the volatility of prices - on top of extreme weather and water shortages are just some of the areas she will be tackling. There was some "really good work" being done across the industry though, she said.
"There are a lot of challenges - and anyone who knows me knows I like a challenge," she said.
"People are worried. They are worried about Basic Payment Schemes (BPS) going, they are worried about infrastructure projects - things that are beyond their control. So there are a lot of concerns out there but at the end of it people want to farm."
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