An elite group of six growers have dug into their own pockets to raise the profile of British carrots by launching a national celebration day.
British Carrot Day 2025 will take place on Friday, 3 October. Six farm businesses have joined forces to fund the special day – including Will Hunter, of Huntapac, which grows more than 1100ha of carrots annually across the country. The farmers dipped their toe into organising a day dedicated to carrots last year. They say they are determined that this autumn’s efforts will become an annual event to encourage people to buy, eat and cook more carrots.
Field to fork
“It’s not just recipes and nutritional information, explains Mr Hunter, who is a member of the British Carrot Growers Association. “We want to share their field to fork journey – the story of the farmers who grow them. As a grower, there are so many things that can go wrong. This is mostly because – unlike potatoes – carrots are stored in the ground rather than sitting around at a controlled climate in a shed for months on end.”
Freshly harvested carrots are washed and packed before reaching supermarket shelves within a couple of days. Seldom grown more frequently than a seven-year rotation, many farmers won’t attempt another crop on the same land for a decade. “Every year it’s a real challenge to find good, fertile soil that hasn’t been used for growing carrots for at least seven years,” says Mr Hunter. “That’s why my family grow carrots in land from Suffolk to Scotland.”
Always in season
The wide range of carrot-growing locations means the crop is in season throughout the year. “Because of all the planning that goes into these crop rotations, we manage to harvest pretty much all year round.” But Mr Hunter says carrot growers face a number of challenges – ranging from ongoing uncertainty over government policy to increasingly unpredictable extreme weather – as well as the price they receive for the crop.
“Right from being a young boy I can remember farmers complaining about the weather,” But the severity of the weather extremes over the last 15 or 20 years is something we can’t afford, as food producers, to turn a blind eye to. I also worry that current farming policy is taking a lot of land out of production and old-fashioned practices – like dredging ditches to mitigate against flood risks – are getting forgotten.”
Mr Hunter said he was also finding it harder to rent land. Farms were finding they could get more money from switching their land over to grass or woodland than they could earn in rent from carrot growers, he said. “This needs looking at if this country is serious about a sustainable supply of British-grown food and reducing imports and the environmental damage they do.”