Teaching orchards founder warns sector of the need to attract fresh native talent

摘要

In Dr Theresa Huxley, fresh produce growers have the closest thing to one of their own on the supermarket team. Indeed, Sainsbury's top-fruit product technologist comes from a family of growers. "My parents encouraged me to find a career, but said I could always go back to growing," she says. This she has done, after a fashion, with her latest project to plant a teaching and research orchard at Pershore College (see p26). This follows on from a similar undertaking at Hadlow College two years ago — though this came about by chance, when Huxley happened to win 1,000 worth of fruit trees from JR Breach in a National Fruit Show competition and was subsequently casting around for somewhere to plant them. "These are my projects, rather than Sainsbury's," she insists. "Though the company does support them, there are no Sainsbury's signs on them."