I grew up on the Essex coast and studied Agriculture at Wye College in Kent; I started my career working for Bird’s Eye and managing a group of vining pea growers in Suffolk before moving into the fresh produce sector as an agronomist.
For the last 10 years I have worked for Suncrop Produce based in Cambridgeshire, we grow greenhouse tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers on our farms in the UK and in the South of Spain. We also work closely with a range of contracted growers to ensure year round supply of both Organic and conventionally grown fresh produce which we pack at our site in Chatteris.
In my current role as Head of Technical I am responsible for our own farms, for managing our growers and for the integrity of the food we supply. For my sins I am also the technical point of contact for our supermarket customers.
My motivation for taking the course
I applied for the John Forrest Award communication course to help me represent our company and our growers in front of our supermarket customers, to help me develop closer relationships with our suppliers and to promote UK horticulture via Social Media channels.
What have a I learnt?
The Green Shoots Productions team were inspirational and the course exceeded all my expectations, I met some really interesting people and although we worked hard we also had a lot of fun.
I now feel much more confident when meeting with our customers and growers; in a warped way I am now actually enjoying situations that previously I would have found excruciatingly painful. It helps to remember that people pay good money to be scared witless and to just enjoy the adrenaline rush.
I particularly enjoyed the sections of the course that covered making videos and taking better photos; these are subjects that I have never really taken seriously before and I look forward to putting what I have learnt into practise on the @WaitroseFarmers Instagram channel.