Charles Abel • Tomato production
Passion for innovation One in seven home-grown tomatoes comes from British Sugar’s impressive Cornerways Nursery in Norfolk. Charles Abel reports
(Above) Bees play a pivotal role pollinating plants, explains Paul Simmonds
FEW doubt the desire of British farmers to harness innovation as they strive to deliver better quality food at less cost and with less impact on the environment. Tomato grower Paul Simmonds is a prime example of that passion for progress. He looks after British Sugar’s award-winning horticulture business, producing 140 million ‘ecofriendly’ tomatoes each year alongside the world’s largest sugar beet processing factory at Wissington in Norfolk. But Cornerways Nursery is more than just a triumph of high-tech horticulture. It is a flagship for farming’s drive to embrace new approaches to meet society’s demands – tasty, nutritious food, with minimal carbon footprint, food miles and environmental impacts. Approaching the site it is hard to appreciate its scale – a key factor in its success. This is Wissington, in the flatlands of the Fens. The skyline is dominated by British Sugar’s vast concrete sugar silos. But nestled in their shadow is Britain’s largest single glasshouse, spanning an incredible 18ha – that’s 25 football pitches – with 25,000 panes of glass, all built at a cost of over £10m.
Balmy temperatures This vast controlled environment allows conditions to be fine-tuned to the precise needs of a quarter of a million plants. The starting point is heat, provided by hot water from the sugar factory’s on-site Combined Heat and Power (CHP) station. More than two hundred and forty miles of piping act as a giant radiator to maintain the balmy temperatures tomato plants so like – 18oC in winter to 26oC in summer.
12 • The Farmers Club Autumn Journal 2012
The scheme ensures surplus heat is used productively. “Our glasshouse is effectively a huge cooling tower for the CHP plant,” says Mr Simmonds. Waste carbon dioxide from the sugar factory is blown down a network of inflated pipes, boosting tomato plant productivity, rather than being vented as waste emissions into the atmosphere. The result is a glasshouse atmosphere containing 800-1000 parts per million of carbon dioxide, nearly three times higher than outdoors. That alone delivers almost 50% more yield of sweeter tasting tomatoes, thanks to more efficient photosynthesis, Mr Simmonds explains. The site harvests rainwater from the giant glasshouse roof too, collecting over 115 million litres annually, to irrigate the plants. This combination of intensive production with minimal environmental impacts continues in the crop’s husbandry. Over 8,500 native UK bumblebees, living in 300 bee hives, look after the pollination, part of the nursery’s integrated approach to crop management using natural agents and predators rather than agro-chemicals.
Efficient system Optimum conditions for the tomatoes mean it is possible to harvest fruit from February to November – a huge season compared with garden grown tomatoes. Indeed, the glasshouses spend just one week without tomato plants, before a quarter of a million new plants are placed for the following season. Each plant comprises a traditional, tasty variety grafted onto a vigorous rootstock for top performance. It makes for a highly efficient system. Intriguingly the plants are grown on suspended