Farmer swaps supermarket selling for the farm shop

A farmer has decided to stop growing his produce for supermarkets and sell it locally instead, in an effort to secure the future of his farm.

Jonathan Hoskyns, 60, has run his family's farm in North Perrott in Somerset for almost 30 years.

He made the decision because of the uncertain pricing policies offered by major retailers.

Despite the extra labour involved in pressing and distributing his juice, Mr Hoskyn said he now has control over his costs and can guarantee income.

"For the last 30 odd years, we've been picking all the best apples, and sending them off for sale to the supermarkets, and the substandard apples have gone into the apple juice," Mr Hoskyns explained.

He also said due to the poor weather the size of his dessert apples are much smaller than usual, which he said would have been a "disaster" if he was still selling to supermarkets.

"From now on, probably 90% of our fruit will be pressed and bottled and sold as apple juice, and the remaining amount we'll sell through our farm shop."

Mr Hoskyns said despite the additional work in picking, pressing, bottling and marketing, he is now "in control" of the price he can charge and can calculate his margins and cash flow better.

"This is completely different to supermarkets, when we don't know what we're getting for our fruit until the end of the season, when it's negative, it's not so good."

Hattie Severinsen is an environment and land use advisor for the NFU who said farmers had a very challenging 18 months.

She said: "We're seeing rises in inflation across the country, we're also seeing the fall in income due to the changes in environmental schemes."

She added that the weather has also had an impact on farmers.

"In the last 12 months, as many people will know, there've been huge levels of rainfall and this has had a huge impact on businesses."

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