Grower plans 16 more hectares of polytunnels

A large Herefordshire grower of soft fruit has applied to increase substantially the area of fruit they grow under polytunnels.

S&A Produce of Marden has applied to install up to 13.5 hectares (33 acres) of polytunnels, along with six water storage tanks and a storage building, and also to create a new 0.6-hectare reservoir, at the company’s Drakeley Farm.

The tunnels would be covered with heavier-gauge polythene, “which is more resilient and robust, and left in place year-round now for operational convenience”, the application said.

Inside, the fruit, likely to be strawberries, would be grown in a growing medium on metre-high “table-tops”, which is now the industry standard, rather than in the ground.

The proposed polytunnels “will function as an extension to the applicant’s core operations based at the adjacent Brook Farm”, sharing with it offices, a packhouse, plant and equipment and the seasonal agricultural workers already housed there, who would access the new tunnels on foot, it said.

It proposes “extensive landscape mitigation both throughout the site and along its boundaries” to soften their visual impact.

A landscape and visual appraisal submitted along with the application said that while the proposal “would yield change and have an adverse effect on the landscape character, those effects (would) be very localised in nature”.

S&A Produce had sales of nearly £80 million in 2020.