A vision for the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) was outlined today (28 April) by the Food and Farming Minister George Eustice and the new AHDB chairman Peter Kendall when they addressed AHDB employees at their Stoneleigh Park offices.

Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for farming, food and marine environment, George Eustice said: “It is vitally important that we all concentrate on addressing the future needs of levy payers. I have been encouraged by the way AHDB is becoming a more focused and efficient organisation

“There is an important question about whether AHDB should be more of a single entity rather than operating as six separate sectors and I’m pleased that the Board has already started to look at this.

“AHDB is an organisation with a recognised wealth of expertise in so many areas – exports, knowledge transfer, R&D. Let us get the message out there that this expertise is working hard for the levy payer and making a real difference.

AHDB Chair, Peter Kendall told employees: “One of the biggest global challenges we face is food security. Knowing this, UK farmers need to be growing more. Instead, we are growing less and importing more. I want AHDB to help to reverse this.

“My vision for AHDB is for us to be right at the heart of ‘growing British agriculture’ by:
developing world beating technology
increasing the uptake of technology and innovation on farms
providing the best and most up to date market intelligence
growing our exports
attracting and up-skilling producers and their staff.

“We’ve got a great story to tell, great examples of our levy-payers’ levy in action – and as long as we aim high, there’s a lot more to come.

“For example, in the dairy sector, analysis by our internal Market Intelligence team shows if we could get the middle third producers performance up to the level of the top third and the bottom third up to the middle third, it would add £450 million to output!

“Innovation in the soft fruit sector has meant that home-grown strawberries hit our shelves in the first week of March this year. Adopting new technologies has seen an 150% increase in the area used for soft fruit under glass and plastic in less than 15 years.”

Peter went on to tell AHDB employees that he wants to help raise the profile of the great work they do and make sure farmers see the importance of AHDB.