Where have all our growers gone?

While wandering around our new market on the Moor (what a big mistake), my wife decided to purchase a few bread cakes for our easy tea, haslet, piccalilli and dandelion leaf sandwiches - I really have to watch my fingers when I'm gobbling that.
By The Newsroom
Published 11th Apr 2016, 05:54 BST
Updated 11th Apr 2016, 05:57 BST
Fruit and vegFruit and veg
Fruit and veg

Anyway, I took note of the fruit and veg stalls and I couldn’t believe just where all this produce comes from: Thailand’s coconuts, Spanish strawberries, cherries from Chile, water melons from Costa Rica, apples from France and South Africa...

The most shocking thing I saw was Chinese apples. Yes! Chinese - sixty pence each, SIXTY PENCE!

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Coconuts, the citrus fruits and melons - these fruits were always imported, but just what’s happened to our own fruit growers?

Just where have all our apple growers gone?

It’s a fruitless search, (just a little quip there), trying to find Cox’s orange pippins, golden russets or an early Windsor - I could go on. Why import cherries from Chile?

Surely we grow our own, in fact Amey are cutting down cherry trees, which last year were laden with fruit and yet people go and buy them when they were free to pick just outside their door.

What happened to Kent being the garden of England, where have all the orchards gone?

Ripped up because of cheap imports.

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I do not buy foreign apples just because they are foreign but the importation of fruits is not the only problem - we get potatoes from Egypt, tomatoes from God knows where.

Why do tomatoes all taste the same, why are they all the same size?

When I was a young Green Giant, these apples were sweet and juicy, the skin was soft. Today, I’ve got to the point that I tell Mrs Green Giant not to buy any tomatoes for me at all.

Mushrooms are imported in great numbers from Ireland and elsewhere, just why aren’t they grown here, (even though the stink is terrible)?

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It is a very lucrative product, I had family in Ireland working in these mushroom farms around twelve years ago and at that time they were taking home over 400 Euros a week just for pulling and packing them, these farms were all round Co Monaghan.

I can’t help being like I am, but I have tasted the nectar that was around when I was growing up.

So all I can say is: Oi! Stop importing foreign fruit and give us back our own harvest of fruit.

The Green Giant

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Related topics:KentSouth AfricaFrance