Halloween veg pledge for revellers, retailers and growers

Will revellers make a veg pledge this Halloween to glow up a sculpted pumpkin then turn it into a tasty dish or compost booster that lifts the spirits without any waste?  Leading UK producer Barfoots certainly hopes so as it delivers 10,000 pumpkins a day during the spooky season to its long-standing customer and like-minded sustainability champion Waitrose, while both see the bewitching effect on sales.

For the retailer that’s a 7.6 per cent rise this year as Halloween’s haunting grip on the public’s imagination grows. For Barfoots the flashy orange heavyweights, a variety of squash, are part of its wider speciality veg growing and preparation operation. This stretches from farms in southern England to hubs in Europe, west Africa’s Senegal and the Americas.

Now a six-generation family farming business, it was founder and former chief executive Peter Barfoot, who in 1976 pioneered the market for semi-exotic veg with sweetcorn, spotted along with pumpkins when he was in the US.

At home these flourished in the light-drenched, balmy micro-climate of the Hampshire Basin. Today the producer group, which serves major supermarket chains and restaurant groups, has a turnover of some £250 million and employs 600 full time with many more seasonal workers. In Senegal it has created thousands of jobs, introduced medical care and built schools with support of the Waitrose Foundation.

On the veg front it supplied 135,000 tonnes of fresh produce to the UK last year with sweetcorn the most popular followed by squash, tenderstem broccoli, sweet potatoes, courgettes, and chillies. Most tricky is fragrant British asparagus, each stem a mini-miracle given growing involves a highly warm weather-dependent, hand-grown process taking two years.

Barfoots major eco-moves include becoming energy self-sufficient since 2010 thanks to a bio-digestion plant which converts all vegetable waste such as sweetcorn husks and supplies organic fertiliser. This is now supported by 5,464 solar panels on two sites.

On the veg front it supplied 135,000 tonnes of fresh produce to the UK last year with sweetcorn the most popular followed by squash, tenderstem broccoli, sweet potatoes, courgettes, and chillies. Most tricky is fragrant British asparagus, each stem a mini-miracle given growing involves a highly warm weather-dependent, hand-grown process taking two years.

 Barfoots major eco-moves include becoming energy self-sufficient since 2010 thanks to a bio-digestion plant which converts all vegetable waste such as sweetcorn husks and supplies organic fertiliser. This is now supported by 5,464 solar panels on two sites.

Barfoots’ pumpkins are grown in the spring and by August are large green spheres that then turn orange. Once cut away from their plant from early September, they are placed on fleece to keep rot free and lined up ready for packing and shipping to stores.

“Pumpkin logistics are very much focussed on one day – the product is extremely large and heavy requiring military precision planning and hard  work,” observes Marks whose management team includes three of Peter’s daughters Jo-Anne, Kim and Victoria.“Barfoots’ purpose is to grow a sustainable business for the health of future generations and look for new and exciting ways for people to enjoy vegetables,” he explains.

“For us that is from how crops are grown to the social and economic stability of the communities where Barfoots grows, the development of the team to how the vegetables are processed and delivered to customers.“We continue to think strategically about navigating future risk such as working with seed partners on developing more robust crops to growing locations that enable more efficient natural resource management and continuing to invest in soil health and biodiversity initiatives. Barfoots is proud to be part of Waitrose’s Farming for Nature initiative.”

“We’re proud of our relationship over 30 years with Barfoots,” confirms Waitrose sustainability and ethics specialist Anna Draper. “They are committed to providing the best quality products while also farming in a nature friendly way,”

Awarded for his services to sustainability Peter Barfoot’s watchword “Look after the land like you are going to farm forever” becomes more prescient with every passing decade. www.barfoots.com, www.waitrose.com