Due to rising energy costs and a shortage of migrant labor at harvest times (due to Brexit), many British fruit and vegetable growers are in financial trouble. Kent apple farmer James Smith is one of them. "I don't really want to get rid of all of my fruit, but I simply cannot see a way of overcoming all of the challenges of growing, picking, storing the crop, only to know that our retailers in the UK largely refuse to pay us a viable price for what we've done," he lamented.
Smith is clearing the apple orchards, uprooting and destroying about 80 per cent of all his trees. He said his business made a loss of almost $200,000 last year. His family have grown apples here for almost 150 years but that tradition is about to come to an end.
Last year's harvest has not been sold. Wooden crates are packed into a warehouse where they are kept at around 1 degree Celsius to keep them fresh. Meanwhile, energy costs have shot up following the conflict in Ukraine.
According to government data, UK fruit production has been in decline for almost a decade. The country now imports almost 85 percent of all the fruit consumed annually.
Source: newseu.cgtn.com