I don’t believe in all that superstitious mumbo jumbo, but a curious thing happened to me the other night – at two in the morning I clearly heard my father calling out my name and promptly woke myself up by calling out ‘Yes?’ to him. 

Of course, he wasn’t there, but I automatically checked the calving camera on my phone and saw a cow that was struggling with a good sized calf and needing my help. Father slept through the whole thing and I am now dealing with the cold, hard reality that he has learnt to give orders telepathically as well as through the usual channels. It’s terrifying.

The day steadily became more surreal as, after an hour on the train, I found myself in a smart office in Edinburgh with other industries having a bizarre argument with the Migration Advisory Committee about them calling fruit picking ‘low skilled’. 

That was perhaps ill-advised, but these office wallahs had little idea of the considerable skill needed for manual work and it wound me up a bit (I was still a bit freaked out by the calving incident as well to be honest). 

We managed to clear that up, however, and moved on to a discussion about the need for a seasonal worker scheme for non-EU workers next year. 

It has already been discussed at length, so I won’t dwell on the reasons why we need a scheme, but it turns out that the clue is most definitely not in the name with the MAC – Franz Kafka would be delighted to hear that the Migration Advisory Committee will not actually be doing any advising, they are only going to report on the current situation.

Even more worryingly, the MAC official said that in some ways it is a competition between the various industries as to who gets the most migrant labour, as the government is determined to reduce immigration. 

So, whoever provides the best evidence will get a bigger quota. 

Stop for a second and think about how extraordinary that is. Surely the British economy is not going to be reduced to a Dickensian orphanage, with the ill-fed orphans fighting over the scraps, and poor agricultural Oliver Twist saying: “Please sir, can I have some more?” 

Still, ‘deil tak the hindmost” and we do have a strong argument in our industry, particularly as the vast majority of our workers are seasonal and have no nett impact on immigration figures. 

Michael Gove has also assured NFUS that he agreed that a seasonal worker scheme is needed ‘sooner rather than later’, so we await the outcome of his discussions with his colleagues with bated breath.

After all that excitement, I needed some metaphorical valium, so I had a trawl through the Scottish Government’s online statistics – only to be confronted with some worrying numbers. According to the report on Revised Dietary Goals (March, 2016), two-thirds of adults and one-third of children in Scotland are overweight. 

In response, the government has set targets to double fruit and vegetable consumption per capita to 400g per day. 

There are 5.4m of us in Scotland, so we will need just over 2000 tonnes daily, or just under 800,000 tonnes per year to make us fit and healthy. 

According to the Economic Report on Scottish Agriculture 2017, there was a 9% increase in veg area, which you might think is quite impressive, but it’s nowhere near enough – that gives us a total of about 350,000 tonnes of veg, an incredible 200,000 tonnes of which is carrots, 49,000 tonnes of turnips, 23,000 tonnes of peas, and 17,000 tonnes of broccoli, being the main contributors.

Then, there are 30,000 tonnes of fruit produced in Scotland, most of it strawberries and raspberries, but with blueberries being an exciting new addition, and in season now incidentally. 

Scotland’s trade deficit of fruit and veg in 2010 was around £100m, which means we had probably no more than 70,000 tonnes nett maximum coming in. I’m not the quickest off the mark, but if my arithmetic is correct, then we are 350,000 tonnes short and if the Scottish Government is to achieve it’s laudable aim, then we need to be almost doubling production of fruit and veg just to meet local demand right here in Scotland. 

The problem is, how do you get us to eat so much more of the good stuff? By continuing to support fruit and veg through producer organisations (POs) of course. 

According to British Growers’ report on POs after Brexit, a PO is an organisation formed on the initiative of farmers who are growers of one or more approved products. It encourages the use of environmentally sound production techniques and waste management practices, in particular to protect the quality of water, soil and landscape and preserve or encourage biodiversity.

POs develop 3-5 year plans, which must have a balance of the following objectives:

Planning of production;
Improvement of product quality;
Boosting the commercial value of products;
Promotion of the products, fresh or processed;
Environmental measures and methods of production respecting the environment;
Crisis prevention and management.

A PO operates as a single enterprise and is run democratically by its grower members. Match funding enables POs to invest in collaborative facilities, employ specialist staff and professionalise production planning, growing and marketing operations. 

Managing risk is also an issue with margins being so tight and match funding allows growers to reduce the risk associated with investment and increase the rate of payback.

That looks to me like a possible model for all other sectors of agriculture too, with a bit of adaptation. It could be used to deliver whatever support is still there after Brexit in a productive way and via a method that helps us, help ourselves. 

What do you think?