A major project which celebrates South Lincolnshire’s produce is close to being a world leader but will be approaching Government for help in order to boost investment in the area’s agri-food sector.
The people behind the UK Food Valley say that the fresh produce sector in South Lincolnshire is close to achieving its goal of being a Top 10 Global Cluster and will be putting forward ideas to the new Government about what they would like to work on.
UK Food Valley was launched two years ago to enhance the county’s agri-food industry by attracting additional funding which will not only help to increase the number of high skills jobs in the area.
Lincolnshire produces an eighth of England’s food with more than 75,000 food sector jobs – with 42% of those in South Holland which concentrates on fresh produce and logistics.
The scheme is being promoted by the Greater Lincolnshire Local Enterprise Partnership and work closely with Holbeach Food Enterprise Zone.
Sarah Louise Fairburn, who is leading on this project, will soon be heading down to London to meet with politicians and people from the food industry.
In her summer update Sarah Louise said: “Our aim is to be a Top 10 Global Cluster in agri-food and in some parts of our sector, such as the fish processing sector and fresh produce in south Lincolnshire, we are close to achieving this, which is why we are building on these clusters and using them to attract more investment to the area.
“Despite the significant increase in investment we have seen, we believe this is just the tip of the iceberg, and that by working together locally and with government, we can attract even more investment, innovation, job growth and food security. To this end, we have identified five areas on which we want to work with the new government.
“In the UK Food Valley, we are always keen to work with others, whether in other parts of the UK, in government or in other sectors, and if you have further ideas about where we could work together to drive positive change in the industry, please do reach out to us.
“We will continue to promote the UK Food Valley with vigour, but the more partners we have the more impact we can achieve, and we want to work with as many businesses as possible to drive this step change in the future.”
One of the areas the group will be approaching Government on is a National Food Sector Growth Plan, which will aim to attract investment form local and international firms. But this will need to be adopted nationally and the group will be making the case to the Government.
They will also be highlighting the need for productivity led investment in order to increase the use of automation, digitilisation.
The team has have a focus on technology to help tackle climate change and reduce the carbon footprint per unit of food consumed.
Growing naturally healthy food is also a key focus for the project, along with delivering social progress..
Sarah Louise said in her report: “We are the national leader in the horticulture and fish sectors, with a rapidly growing plant protein industry. We aim to continue to lead on these areas, which have the potential to align industry investment with healthy food choices and to attract oversea investment in sectors which are heavily dependent on imports.
“Our food industry will need a growing workforce and must address the challenges it has had in recent decades in attracting UK workers, allowing it to reduce the need for migrant workers.
“We recognise that the key to doing this is to make food chain careers more attractive through flexible working and better wages and conditions. In a globally competitive sector this can only be achieved through productivity growth, and so we will double down on our commitment to upskill the workforce and to the use of technology to support more productive roles, which in turn can deliver higher paid jobs.
“We also think there are some exciting opportunities for cross-sectoral working, including linking to other priority sectors for the Greater Lincolnshire economy, such as energy, engineering and defence.
“The agriculture and food sector is both dependent on the supply of energy and has to be at the forefront of the energy transition so that we can deliver the low-carbon food chains the industry is committed to.
“In engineering and defence, we are seeing a similar focus on automation, sensing and control technologies being developed and it is important we look for the synergies this provides in enabling technologies which can be applied to multiple sectors.”
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