Acres of sweet, red strawberries are ripening in West Sussex this winter ready to be sold in UK supermarkets.
LED lighting in vast glasshouses is enabling berries to be grown all year on a commercial scale for the first time ever.
It means less reliance on fruit flown in from countries like Egypt.
Bartosz Pinkosz
“The LED lighting is the prime reason for successful growing,” said Bartosz Pinkosz, operations director of The Summer Berry.
“If it was not a sunny day, the LED lighting would create enough energy for leaves to absorb that energy, take it in and deliver the energy to the berries.
“We are able to have the right sweetness in the berries and the right shape, right size.”
There are 36,000 square metres of the greenhouses at the site in Chichester, partially powered by renewable energy and buzzing with bees as pollinators.
Acres of strawberries ripening in West Sussex
And the new strand to the business means year-round work for 50 people.
But while it might cut the food miles dramatically, there’s still an inevitable environmental impact when a colossal space is created warm enough for pickers to wear short sleeves in winter.
Dr Tara Garnett, director of food systems platform TABLE, said: “You’re going to need a lot of heat and you’re going to need a lot of light in order to reproduce those summer growing conditions so everything hinges on the energy source you’re going to be using.
“And when we look at the UK self sufficiency levels in fruit and vegetables they are appalling – 16% of the fruit we consume is UK-grown, so the vast majority is imported, and when it comes to vegetables we’re looking more at 50% or so, so there’s a lot more we can do to build up, and should be doing.”
Around 1.5 million punnets of strawberries are expected to be picked on the site over the full stretch of winter, allowing British strawberries to be eaten this Christmas.
But for some, it’s simple – strawberries should be saved for summer, even if it is a much shorter journey from plant to plate.
