Fruit and Veg
Ed Balls, Ade Adepitan and Cherry Healey delve into the hectic world of Britain's imports and exports. Ed is at London Gateway to see how fruit and veg arrives on our shelves in tip-top condition.
In the first episode of this three-part series, presenters Ed Balls, Ade Adepitan and Cherry Healey delve into the hectic world of Britain's imports and exports. As our trading relationships face their biggest change in decades, they explore how much we really know about the science and systems that enable Britain to import and export goods around the world on an unprecedented scale.
Ed is at London Gateway - a huge port on the Thames - to see how the fruit and veg that we love travels across the globe but arrives on our shelves in tip-top condition. From trying his hand at being a truck driver, sitting in a 16-storey-high crane, to investigating how apples are starved of oxygen to keep them fresh, he reveals all the tricks of the fruit and veg import export trade.
Ade travels the world looking at how Britain's changing tastes for fruit and veg are impacting farmers everywhere. First, he visits Peru to see how Britain鈥檚 obsession with healthy eating has created a booming economy for avocado farmers. Next, he visits a business in the Netherlands which is home to 11,000 acres of greenhouses. Here, they can intensively produce almost 400,000 tonnes of tomatoes every year - much of it bound for the UK. He then heads to one of the largest grape growing regions in Spain to see how producers grow sweet and crunchy grapes to satisfy British tastes.
Meanwhile, Cherry meets British producers to see what and how we export to some surprising places. She starts in Evesham, learning how importers play the global fruit and veg market to keep Britain fed. Later, she meets a British farmer who is keeping the Middle East supplied with apples deemed too big to eat on the go by UK consumers. She also speaks to a Cambridgeshire potato farmer who is selling spuds to the Irish and a sparkling wine producer whose product is being snapped up all over the world.
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Music Played
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The xx
A Violent Noise
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Bastille
Of The Night
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Anne-Marie
Then
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Bastille
Laura Palmer
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Bastille
Of The Night
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Ezra Vine
Celeste
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Bastille
Send Them Off!
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Thea Gilmore
Beautiful Day
Credits
Role | Contributor |
---|---|
Presenter | Ed Balls |
Executive Producer | Diene Petterle |
Presenter | Ade Adepitan |
Executive Producer | Donna Clarke |
Presenter | Cherry Healey |
Series Editor | Chris Parkin |
Production Company | Darlow Smithson Productions |
Broadcasts
- Mon 30 Sep 2019 21:00
- Sat 5 Oct 2019 17:40
- Wed 31 May 2023 15:15
Find out more about how UK suppliers adapt to ever-changing consumer tastes
Explore more about the UK鈥檚 imports and exports with The Open University.