Many of the UK's fruit and vegetable growers are in financial trouble with rising energy costs and a shortage of migrant labor at harvest times due to Brexit. 

CGTN met one farmer who has taken drastic action to cut his losses.

The southeastern county of Kent has been known for centuries as the Garden of England, famous for its fruit.

Many farms in the area grow apples, mainly for the domestic market rather than export. But making a profit has become increasingly difficult in recent years and now with rising costs some farmers have had enough.

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"I don't really want to get rid of all of my fruit, but I simply cannot see a way of overcoming all of the challenges of growing, picking, storing the crop, only to know that our retailers in the UK largely refuse to pay us a viable price for what we've done," laments farmer James Smith.

Smith is clearing the apple orchards, uprooting and destroying about 80 per cent of all his trees. He said his business made a loss of almost $200,000 last year. His family have grown apples here for almost 150 years but that tradition is about to come to an end.

High storage cost

Last year's harvest has not been sold. Wooden crates are packed into a warehouse where they are kept at around 1 degree Celsius to keep them fresh. Meanwhile, energy costs have shot up following the conflict in Ukraine.

"What we've seen in the last 18 months is this enormous rise in all sorts of costs, be it interest rates, electricity, labor," says Smith. 

"And at the same time, we've seen a decrease in the amount of money we're paid by the retailers for our fruit, and our supermarket shelves are full of imported produce while our fruit is still sat in cold stores, costing a huge amount of money because of the electricity we're using."

Earlier this year, supermarkets ran out of tomatoes and cucumbers, partly because of problems in Spain and Morocco. But many UK producers who grow salad produce under cover over winter, stopped planting because of high heating costs.

UK's fruit production has been in decline for almost a decade, according to government figures. The country now imports almost 85 percent of all the fruit consumed annually.

Smith is trying to diversify, he has bought a juicing business to use the small amount of apples he still grows. He is also trying to grow cherries and has a farm shop.

But as farmers come under increasing financial pressure there are concerns about food security and the country becoming over reliant on imports.

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Cover image: /Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via CFP