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NORTH Essex farmers have welcomed recommendations to bring fairness into the industry.

After a two-year inquiry into the practices of the four main supermarkets - Tesco, Morrisons, Asda and Sainsbury's - the Competition Commission has recommended a grocers' supply code of practice is established, and an independent ombudsman to enforce the code.

The inquiry was conducted to improve the relationship between suppliers and supermarkets, as well as improve competition in local markets.

The National Farmers Union (NFU) welcomed the measures and said "it should help improve the way the food retail market works".

NFU president Peter Kendall said: "It is in everyone's interests that the food supply chain is transparent and profitable, so that farmers and growers are able to supply the quality and choice that consumers expect and deserve."

William Hudson, director of the East Anglian Food Link (EAFL) and former Ardleigh strawberry farmer, said the independent ombudsman should help "considerably".

Mr Hudson used to grow strawberries at the family-run Mayfields Farm for 20 years and supplied all the major multiples with the fruit. In 1990-91, he said the farm was "very profitable".

But as his costs went up, the prices paid to him from the supermarkets he supplied did not meet the increase.

He told Business Essex that negotiations to supply supermarkets and the prices paid to him had to go through marketing agents, who would also source supplies from abroad to sell onto the supermarkets as it was more profitable, leaving English-grown produce as a token "icing on the cake".

But as the price of food fell, but farming costs kept rising, Mr Hudson decided he could no longer continue with the family business, and in 2004, sold the farm.

"You could roughly say that we were getting the same prices for our produce in 2004 as we were getting in 1990 per kilo. But when you have geared up your business to provide the volumes needed for supermarkets, you can't then sell just to farmers' markets and local shops because you have too much. There aren't enough outlets to do it," he explained.

Leaving the farm he had lived on since he was six-years-old and always worked on, was difficult.

"I was very angry and continue to be angry, which is why I am director at the EAFL. There was a frustration that we were hitting our heads against a brick wall and there was nothing we could do about it."

improve With the EAFL, Mr Hudson is working to establish a local food supply chain, so growers sell direct to consumers living near the farm.

But he hoped the future for UK farmers would improve with the Competition Commission's recommendations.

"Farming needs this ombudsman and I hope it is the start of the industry having a louder voice," he added.

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