{"id":13541,"date":"2011-12-22T10:21:44","date_gmt":"2011-12-22T09:21:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=13541"},"modified":"2011-12-22T10:21:44","modified_gmt":"2011-12-22T09:21:44","slug":"david-payne-ugly-fruit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2011\/12\/22\/david-payne-ugly-fruit\/","title":{"rendered":"David Payne: ugly fruit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.bmj.com\/site\/blog\/icons\/davidpayne.jpg\" alt=\"David Payne\" width=\"160\" height=\"110\" align=\"left\" \/> An apple farmer in Conservative MP Laura Sandy&#8217;s Kent constituency gets just \u00a380 a tonne for bruised and mis-shapen fruit rejected by the supermarkets. When she visits local schools and asks how many children are planning a career in food science and production, teaching staff say they don&#8217;t want them picking beans out in the fields.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The UK food sector employs 400 000 people, but the workforce has shrunk by 22% in nine years and 96% of food companies emply less than 250 people. It is the UK&#8217;s biggest manufacturing sector by jobs and revenues. Sandy has a solution for the fruit farmer &#8211; setting up a company called &#8220;ugly fruit&#8221; to take on the supermarkets. But what to do about the food industry&#8217;s image problem among young people?<\/p>\n<p>Addressing a City University food policy symposium in London earlier this month, she said: &#8220;Food is a very sexy and exciting opportunity for young people. In the US there used to\u00a0be a Future Farmers Foum for everybody in urban areas. We need to connnect back to where our food comes from.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Not everybody working in the food industry wanders around in a lab coat, of course. Much of it is still picking crops, milking cows, often in freezing conditions with a working day starting at the crack of dawn. Migrant workers have flocked to &#8220;factory farms&#8221; in the eastern counties of England. Last year a <a title=\"BBC\" href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/magazine\/8533172.stm\" target=\"_blank\">BBC documentary <\/a>asked if jobless Britons are scared by hard work, visiting Wisbech, a Cambridgeshire market town.<\/p>\n<p>In the past six years 9,000 immigrant workers have passed through. But unemployment is 40% above the national average. Fellow symposium speaker Charlie Clutterbuck, a research fellow at City University, probably had towns like Wisbech in mind when he said: &#8220;Nobody is asking what will happen when half a million eastern European workers don&#8217;t want to come to this land and work in crap conditions for shit wages.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Farming is facing a demographic timebomb. Half of all UK farmers are aged over 65, according to Cluttberburck. Recruitment and retention suffered a fresh blow in October, when <a title=\"AWB\" href=\"http:\/\/www.fwi.co.uk\/Articles\/26\/10\/2011\/129738\/MPs-axe-Agricultural-Wages-Board.htm\" target=\"_blank\">MPs finally voted <\/a>to scrap the Agricultural Wages Board, set up 63 years ago to set the wages of 150 000 farm workers, part of the coalition government&#8217;s &#8220;bonfire of the quangos.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;How do you determine whether food production is ethical or exploitative?&#8221; asked Cluttberbuck. In October last year seven <a title=\"Romanian children\" href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/society\/2010\/oct\/24\/children-working-in-freezing-field\" target=\"_blank\">Romanian children <\/a>were taken into care after a Gangmaster Licencing Authority raid found them picking onions with around 50 adults in a freezing field.<\/p>\n<p>Supermarket chains, fearful of brand damage, can provide important leverage in such cases, he told the symposium. Their intervention can halt exploitative practices. It&#8217;s a shame they can&#8217;t be persuaded to sell ugly fruit.<\/p>\n<p><strong>David Payne<\/strong> is editor, bmj.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An apple farmer in Conservative MP Laura Sandy&#8217;s Kent constituency gets just \u00a380 a tonne for bruised and mis-shapen fruit rejected by the supermarkets. When she visits local schools and [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2011\/12\/22\/david-payne-ugly-fruit\/\">More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1752,116],"tags":[2756,1765,2667],"class_list":["post-13541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-david-payne","category-editors-at-large","tag-farming","tag-food","tag-food-security"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>David Payne: ugly fruit - The BMJ<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2011\/12\/22\/david-payne-ugly-fruit\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"David Payne: ugly fruit - The BMJ\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"An apple farmer in Conservative MP Laura Sandy&#8217;s Kent constituency gets just \u00a380 a tonne for bruised and mis-shapen fruit rejected by the supermarkets. 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