'Pick your own, but pay your way' - fruit farmers

Farmers who run “pick your own” farms in Kent and Sussex have said they are at risk of losing money if people pick their fruit without paying.

It comes after a farm in Wales issued a social media plea for visitors to stop eating fruit in the field.

Vale Pick Your Own, in Bonvilston, Vale of Glamorgan, said it was equivalent to "taking products without paying in a shop" or "eating without paying in a cafe".

Two farmers in the South East said most customers were great, but a minority who visited did not want to pay.

Steve Kember, who owns Lower Ladysden Farm, Goudhurst, said: “There is an element of trust here. We provide these crops and we allow you to come down and pick them.

"Of course we don’t mind if you sample one or two. That’s absolutely fine.

"But people are really starting to exploit that.”

Mr Kember said a minority of people are "ruining it for everybody else", with large groups a particular problem.

He said: "The majority of our customers are absolutely brilliant. We love having people here, we love having children on the farm.

“These big groups that are becoming a problem because not only do they want to pick fruit and have a good feed, they want to go back to the shop with very little in their punnet. So effectively they don’t really want to pay for anything.

“All it does is drive the price up, because the only way we can recoup those costs is to charge more per kilo, and that’s absolutely not fair.”

At Maynards pick your own farm in Ticehurst, Sussex, owner Tom Maynard said 99% of people were "great".

He said: "Of course they try some and I want them to, especially for their kids, because they're bringing them often to the countryside for the first time.

"They don't know where an apple comes from, apart from a supermarket shelf.

"But there's the odd person who says to their children, to themselves, 'Let's eat as much as we can before we pay for it'.

"But it's a rarity, it's an exception, and I think it's probably always been the same."

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