The Lea Valley, also known as Britain’s cucumber capital and salad bowl, is one of the jewels of the UK’s struggling horticulture sector. The Lea Valley Growers Association (LVGA), spread over an area spanning Greater London, Essex and Hertfordshire, comprises more than 180 hectares (450 acres) of greenhouses, run by 80 growers. The valley should be a jewel in the crown for a country concerned with domestic 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 growers have sought planning permission to demolish 60 hectares of greenhouses to replace them with homes, warehouses and small factories. Their applications were accepted. “Without government help for UK food producers, the UK’s biggest hub in the greenhouse sector could face extinction within the next two years,” said Lee Stiles, the LVGA secretary, “to be concreted by the homes and industry. “The club has 80 growers and 450 acres of greenhouses,” 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 companies have been hit hard by Brexit. The seasonal worker 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 to their homes after six months. “That means, in a 10- or 11-month season, growers have to hire twice as much and train twice as many workers to do the same job,” Stiles said. “Our growers have experienced a 40% labor shortage this year. The government’s six-month rule has resulted in many growers ending up 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,” Stiles said. “And another 10, who had 60 acres, stopped trading.” Among them were four growers who previously grew one in 20 lettuces consumed by British households. They stopped growing them completely in the last two years, while others who grew 100 meters of sweet peppers were forced this season to cut their harvest in half. Seventy-four-year-old Elvio Cipullo and his wife Luigia, aged 68, started their business growing salad leaves, cucumbers and herbs 52 years ago and now wake up at 5.30am. to try to cover the shortage of workers. “They’ll go on their hands and knees to cut parsley,” says their son, Tony, 48, who now manages the 11 acres of seven greenhouses. “It’s dirty work. But they know they have to do it.” “All the lettuce growers are in the process of selling their nurseries,” Stiles said. “There’s no point in planting a crop if you’re not sure you’ll get the labor to harvest it, because you’ll just throw it all away.” They have also been hit harder than most industries by the huge increase in natural gas prices because they have to heat greenhouses. “The biggest input cost for growers was labor, then energy,” Stiles said. “Now it’s energy followed by work. Half of growers did not plant when vital greenhouse gas supplies soared from £30 a greenhouse in January to £4 a greenhouse now. “In the 14 years I’ve been in this job, this is the worst I’ve ever seen. Ninety percent of our members are family businesses, traditionally employing 2,500 people. We only have one big company.” The result of the government programme, he said, was fewer British farmers, lost jobs, more imported food, more food miles, an increased carbon footprint and more climate damage. “Horticulture growers in the EU receive state aid. We, of course, do not receive any money from the EU,” he said. “The UK is losing big chunks of its salad and vegetable market from producers in Spain and Morocco who don’t need to use natural gas to heat greenhouses and are just a four-day drive away.” Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you to the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Growers were notified by George Eustice, Defra’s secretary of state, at the end of July that they must pay migrant workers at least £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 reversed course just a few weeks later. “This is higher than the national minimum wage, which the government now imposes under the seasonal worker scheme. But our growers must also provide them accommodation.’ There could, however, be an even bigger impact nationally, said grower Tony Cipullo, who has four hectares of greenhouses in the Lea Valley. A card-carrying Tory party member who voted in the leadership election warned the next holder of No 10: “It’s not going to be that people have to pay more this winter for their fresh food. If many more growers are forced to stop producing it, they will starve.” A Defra spokesman told the Guardian: “We are aware of the challenges farmers face from the increased cost of inputs, particularly energy, as well as their concerns about the pay of seasonal workers. That’s why we’ve brought forward 50% of the BPS payment to help farmers right now, in addition to cuts in fuel and VAT, and a freeze on the business rate multiplier to reduce bills. “We have already increased the number of visas available through the seasonal worker route to 40,000 and amended the pay requirements earlier this year by removing the minimum annual wage requirement to give more certainty about costs and ensure farmers have access to the labor potential they need. We continue to monitor these measures.”
