Members’ responses to the importance of current items of service provision
Added priorities for research suggested by respondents.
R&D levy survey of attitudes to areas needing funding
- Seek to determine the best recyclable tray to enable best practise and standardisation of sales unit offered by the industry to customers
- horticultural Carbon accounting information, business development schemes
- Efficient water use.
- more work/knowledge transfer from Europe on specialized crops that are relevant to members/growers when no relevant UK experimental knowledge available or viable due to low number of growers.
- Environmental factors, including alternatives to plastics & peat reduced / free-growing media
- I am not sure I would,. If we need to know anything, we research it ourselves.
- Identifying more sustainable options within production and marketing processes and increasing the perceived and actual value of horticultural output.
- Far more important than any of the above points is that the industry needs a holistic approach to environmental and ethical standards. This should focus on the industry’s true impact involving all stakeholders from sourcing materials to the final consumer. Marketing, including POS, has a lot to answer for. Myths such as the notion that coir is somehow better from a total environmental POV than peat needs to be squashed. Once there is a clear picture of all the issues, only then can a plan be arrived at to start solving some of the problems. Dozens of individual little initiatives are not the way forward if we are to be in any sense sustainable as an industry. We are drowning in “greenwash”. An example in ornamentals: the good-intentioned switch to taupe pots has had precisely zero benefits to the environment. Burning thousands of tons of wood in nursery boilers is nothing short of a scandal. In 100 seconds or so the carbon captured by the tree over the previous 100 years is put back into the sky again, all so that we can have a poinsettia that doesn’t even last 100 days! Arguably the indoor salads side of the industry is better than ornamentals (after all, we do need food), but outdoor horticulture has serious issues to address including soil degradation: carbon release where organic soils are being used, and erosion of mineral soils and the resulting damage to river ecosystems, pesticide use, biodiversity etc. There are only 50 years worth of topsoil left in the world. I don’t pretend to know all the ins and outs, but I do know horticulture has a lot of problems. Not sure if the AHDB is the body to take the lead on this, but I can’t think of a better one.
- Basic training for entry-level, increase in webinars etc on the website
- Buy British campaign
- International trial & research
- None
- More Transparency on expenditure versus income within each sector
- Use of innovative technology such as LED lighting.
- carbon accounting information
- Just to stay current with the issues at the time
- Research on PGR
- Trials for more UK grown items
- Growth regulation
- none but local provision is important for CFC supporters
- grower exchange meetings/ technical committee
