The British carrot season is transitioning from old season crop to new this week in the north of England. "This week is a changeover week for us," said Rodger Hobson, grower and Chairman of the British Carrot Growers Association. "We have some of the old crop being washed and packed this week and we just brought in the first load of new carrots in from the field."
This continuity of the old and new crops means that very few carrots have had to be imported this year.
"I have one customer who was short two years ago and they organised an import program for one and a half weeks, just in case, but he did say that the quality of the British carrots was better."
Planting took place from February to May it all went well.
"Looking at our own crop it is fairly good and this seems to be the case among other growers too," said Rodger. "The early crop has done well and is looking promising, but the main crop which was drilled in April has been severely affected by the drought. It is looking very uneven, some seeds germinated right away while others didn't germinate until we got rain, six weeks later. It is very hard to quantify the yields at the moment; we may end up with a lot of different sizes.
"This, of course is not ideal as customers want uniform sizes which fit in the bags. 20 years ago, most carrots were sold loose, these days with online shopping loose carrots don't work. For a good efficient carrot industry, we need eve sizes, but it is what it is. It is a bit early to tell long term."
For more information:
Rodger Hobson
British Carrot Growers' Association
[email protected]
