Growing Pains

For many years, on driving out of the city, I would pass a large grouping of horticultural greenhouses.

These glistened in the sun of summer and in the depths of winter had the appearance of an exotic steamed up hot-house in direct contrast to the otherwise damp and chilling weather of that season. I imagined the workers skipping around in holiday clothes in a sub tropical environment chasing butterflies.

At all times of the year something lush and green was growing and thriving in the artificially heated and irrigated atmosphere.

The products of this world of hydroponics were courgettes. A large signboard at the entrance to the growers proudly bore the endorsement of ,arguably the worlds largest supermarket chain, and that the succulent plants were being exclusively cultivated to appear on their faux grass dressed shelves throughout the UK.

On the basis of this lucrative client and contract I always presumed that things were ripe and rosey in the glass house garden. I was wrong.

I came across the owners of the business recently. On the basis that they were not under a gagging order from their former global and corporate clients they were far from complimentary of the attitude and practices in the industry. As a consequence of the recession and escalating energy costs it was inevitable that sustaining a business of this type would be difficult and after many years the decision to sell up had regrettably come to the fore.

Hydroponics is a high energy use process. The owners saw their annual gas consumption costs triple over the course of a 12 month period and yet their clients forcibly demanded a one third reduction in their buying price for a foodstuff of demonstrable and sustainable high quality.

The business ethics of globalisation operate very much on a 'take it or leave it' basis. The prestige of being a supplier for a major player is offered but is worthless if there is no decent living to be made. The owners had little option but to research an alternative and financially viable product.

I joked that, surely, with such a large acreage of greenhouse they may be of attraction to the illegal cultivation of cannabis or marijuana. The joke was on me because it appears that the growing under licence of the former is a big business. Hemp straw has specific characteristics that make it an ideal material for bedding for racehorses. It is absorbant and above all does not produce spores which could harm the sensitive respiratory system of an expensive bloodstock asset.

This line of product may have saved the business owners from being swamped by their costs which were eroding any chance of profitability or even breaking even.

However, the level of security required to be able to obtain a licence to produce the plants would equally impact on the viabilty of a business model in this sector. I was sympathetic to the experience of the  former owners. It was yet another example of how the mega-UK food retailers exploit and run ragged their suppliers with no understanding of the fundamental requirement for them, many being family run operations, to earn a living from their endeavours. Yet the marketing of home grown produce is the unique selling point for many retailers and a widely defended  justification for premium pricing and made even more tasty with a forty percent profit margin.

 In a gesture of solidarity, albeit belated for these specific persons, I hereby pledge to boycott the courgette shelf in my subsequent patronage of the local food superstore.