Two years ago the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs raised issues with our farming techniques, especially with some of our growing techniques for specialized lettuce and other leafy greens.
We were using full hydroponic systems using special lights to promote growth, but we were the first to employ this technology in the UK and we were basically stealing the high-end business with our leafy green products, we were biological with no additive or pesticides in any of the growing media.
Last week, we got the final ruling on our process, which, by the way, is used in more than 30 countries. Nutrionally most leafy greens are neutral, they provide fiber and few calories, but that was not the issue. The issue was that we were declaring our production bio but we didn't conform with the then applicable rules and regulations. In fact, there are no regulations for what we are doing. Our leafy greens are grown entirely in a closed environment.
This weekend, I added up all the costs of the 3 years of "litigations" with the government, the total was ₤78,341.14 which excludes my time and that of my wife (an ex-labor lawyer). This has consumed nearly a full year of profits from these greens (we deliver something in the order of 5 tons of greens a year).
Put another way, it was the wages for two full-time, low-skill employees (we have very few of these).
Over the past four years, all those involved in the high-end leafy green business in the UK have had the time to join us in the production of these goods. The Department of Agriculture was nice enough to share with all our competitors our techniques and suppliers -- of course, what they could not supply was the massive distribution network that works with us. We were the first to provide year-round high-quality green leaf vegetables to the high-end market in high volumes and AAA-graded quality. These are harder to replicate.
Brexit has also been very helpful in dramatically reducing products from the continent. The Tories, in their rather spectacular incompetence, have exceeded even our most outlandish growth projections for the production of high-quality vegetables in the UK, giving us a near monopoly!
When we purchased the farm we had from the very start framed our production objective to provide high-quality quality flavorful vegetables that chefs would love and be willing to buy at a premium. Our first employes were an ecologist and a botanist. Because we were aiming for the high end, we wanted to reintroduce vegetables that were no longer being produced in quantity because of their difficulty in bringing to the masses. As an example, we started growing (in 2021) a new (actually rather older) type of cherry tomato, they ripen quickly and are fragile, therefore absolutely unacceptable for the general public, but restaurants could not get enough. We actually had a waiting list as we eventually grew the production of these tomatoes by a factor of 20.
Our botanist is always finding new (old) strains of vegetables, usually by spending her weekends in remote markets where avid growers have retained unusual strains. That's why the passion remains, on one side the government costs us a lot of money by it's rigidity and incompetence. Who knew that for exactly the same reason we would quintuple our profits. Boris Johnson was an ass, as Prime Minister, but for us, he was a Godsend -- his government's bumbling ways proved to be exactly what the UK agricultural community needed to generate profits for a long-ignored and abandoned sector of the economy.
I still will never again vote for the Tories, the new bunch is more xenophobic and stupid, but I doubt that they will commit the same errors with the rest of Europe, so our extraordinary profits will decline!
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