How the UK could become self sufficient in fruit and veg Gardening offers huge opportunity to be healthier and happier, bee and horticulture expert says

If UK households went on a growing spree they could produce enough fruit and veg in their gardens to feed the whole country, one of the world’s leading bee and horticulture experts has said.

Giving over half of the average garden to crops would produce 7.5 million tonnes of fruit and veg a year in the UK – ahead of the national consumption of 6.9 tonnes by weight, if not variety.

An avid gardener-cum-academic, Professor Dave Goulson’s two acre garden in the Sussex village of Black Boys contains such a wide variety of fruit and veg that there are 45 different apple varieties alone.

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Most produce is imported

At the moment, only 23 per cent of the fruit and veg consumed in the UK is grown on the country’s farms, with garden and allotment produce contributing very little on top.

“Why do we grow so little fruit and veg and import so much when we have the conditions to grow a wide variety of produce?” asks Prof Goulson, of Sussex University.

“We import 70 per cent of the apples we eat which is nuts because we have a perfect climate for growing apples,” he told i, on a recent visit to his garden.

By his own admission, Prof Goulson’s back-of-the-envelope calculations are very rough and ready – and they rely on a degree of engagement from households that is never going to happen, short of wartime-style ‘Dig for Victory’ conditions.

Vast opportunity

But they are still illuminating because they hint at a vast opportunity for homegrown food that has been largely missed.

That is starting to change, however, with Facebook announcing this week that 1.5 million people in the UK belong to its various gardening groups.

“I’ve seen a huge groundswell of interest around local food production generally – whether it’s gardens, allotments or market gardens. There are 90,000 people on the waiting list for an allotment,” Prof Goulson said.

“My vision is of a world with cities full of allotments and gardens growing fruit and veg, surrounded by a belt of market gardens, small farms and other allotments,” he said.

He argues that gardens and allotments could go a long way towards solving the crisis of Nature in the UK, with species dying at at alarming rates from development, intensive farming, climate change and pesticides.

Improved food security

They could also improve food security and help tackle austerity – producing fruit and veg that enhances the local environment, reduces the carbon footprint of imports and saves people money at the same time, he said. It’s also extremely good for the soul, giving people a real sense of satisfaction and getting them out into nature.

And, whatever you might think about Brexit generally, it could help transform the way the country produces fruit and veg, he says.

“Brexit offers a great opportunity here. If he wanted to, [Environment Secretary] Michael Gove could radically reshape farming by redirecting subsidies however he wanted to,” Prof Goulson said.

He’s not proposing anything as radical as giving households cash payments to grow food. But he thinks some of the subsidy money could be used to buy up suitable land when it comes up for sale and rent it out for allotments. As well as on campaigns to encourage people to grow crops, offering advice, training, free seeds and encouragement, he says.

Government support?

A government spokesman acknowledged that Brexit provided an opportunity to “design a bespoke agricultural policy tailored to our needs” and voiced support for homegrown produce. But wouldn’t be drawn on whether any new policy would be introduced to encourage home grown fruit and veg.

Prof Goulson says pollinators and other crucial species are declining in the countryside as farms increasingly concentrate on producing giant ‘monoculture’ crops of wheat, barley and oil seed rape.

By contrast, gardens can be havens of biodiversity, he says.

As such, they become self-regulated eco-systems, where pests can often be controlled naturally by predators and pollinators flourish – eliminating the need for fertilisers and pesticides, he says.

Banquet for pests

“Big scale monocultures are hard to maintain without chemicals because if you’re a pest of wheat or oil seed rape then a 70 hectare field is just a massive banquet laid out for them. And there tend to be no predators because there’s nowhere for them to survive,” he says.

“But if you’re growing food on a small scale, with lots of different crops and patches you don’t have anything like the pest problems, so you don’t need to be spraying pesticides.”

He argues that gardens and allotments can produce crops much more efficiently than monoculture farming. A competent gardener can produce more than 30 tonnes of fruit and veg per hectare, he says – compared to around 3.5 to 8.0 tonnes on a commercial farm, depending on the crop.

Some gardening stinks

Despite his pro-garden crop stance, Prof Goulson is adamant that it has to be done properly, however.

“A lot of people drive to the garden centre and buy plants that have been drenched in pesticides, which they then plant and spray with more pesticides and synthetic fertilisers.

That kind of gardening is pretty crap from an environmental perspective,” he says.

“But it doesn’t have to be like that. You can rear your own plants or you can buy organic plants from organic nurseries. You really don’t need pesticides or synthetic fertilisers and you can make your own compost,” he says.

Nor should you feel the need to cultivate the garden to within an inch of its life – if dandelions or daisies grow, or moles make the odd molehill, leave it be, he says.

“If something’s causing the slightest inconvenience our instinct is to kill it. If we are completely intolerant of everything around us then we are going to wipe everything out. We need to learn to live with Nature rather than trying to bash it into submission all the time and if something’s not really doing us any harm leave it alone,” he says.

The National Farmers Union response

An NFU spokesperson said: “British farmers and growers work hard to provide high quality, safe, traceable and affordable food for us to enjoy and supply shops, markets and supermarkets all year round.”

“As well as growing and producing the food that we all eat, British farmers and growers are custodians of our beautiful countryside, leaders in animal welfare and champions of renewable energy.

What’s more, the UK food and farming industry makes a fundamental contribution to our economy, providing the raw ingredients for a food and farming sector worth £122 billion and employing over 4 million people.”

The Garden Jungle or Gardening to Save the Planet, by Dave Goulson, is out on July 9th

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall makes the case for homegrown produce

The TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is another advocate of people growing their own fruit and veg.

Asked about Professor Goulson’s vision of gardens packed with produce, he said: “Of course it would be a brilliant idea for more people in the UK to grow fruit and veg at home.”

“It’s all about getting people to connect with where their food is coming from. The A route for that is to grow it yourself. And the next route is to know where it’s come from – if you can’t grow it yourself it’s really nice to meet the people who have grown it. That’s what farmers markets are all about, it’s what local shops are all about,” he said.

“Anything that takes you away from anonymous, industrialised food is good for your spirit,” Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

“Anything that takes you away from anonymous, industrialised food is good for your spirit and in many ways also good for your health. It’s in season, it hasn’t travelled far and it hasn’t been packed in inert gases to give it a long shelf life,” he told i.

People can also get healthier and closer to nature by foraging for mushrooms or blackberries two or three times a year, Mr Fearnley Whittingstall said.

Growing food also gives people a tremendous degree of satisfaction, according to Rachel Hammond, founder of the Incredible Edible Oxford food growing movement.

“The reaction is amazing. I’ve had people saying ‘now I know what I want to do with my life’. It’s a kind of ‘penny moment’. And the impact of that is huge, for mental and physical health,” she said.