Field to Fork with Peloton Produce

Brakes Produce Specialist, Lee Tate, visited Peloton Produce in Lincolnshire to understand exactly what is ‘Field to Fork’ and to learn more about their brassica production.

"Food supply chains are vital in ensuring food safety and traceability of products, and these days it’s more important than ever to know where your food is coming from.

Just as transparency and traceability are very important in the food supply chain, so is sustainability. Many businesses have acknowledged the demand from consumers to buy food products that have been sustainably sourced and produced, with as little impact on the environment and people as possible.

As a Produce Specialist I want to fully understand ‘Field to Fork’ from the starting point of a seed, the growing process, harvest, processing, and packing before it arrives in our network, to the end product on a customer's plate.

So, with that in mind, yesterday I spent the day with Peloton Produce, who are growers, packers, and importers of produce, specialising in brassicas.

Our hosts Nigel and Julian gave our team of Produce Specialists a tour of their lush fields in Lincolnshire, currently growing cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower, so we could understand and appreciate everything to do with growing brassicas in the UK.

Walking around the fields and listening to Nigel and Julian gave me a real appreciation of the time, technology, strategies, and expertise needed to meet the ever-increasing consumer demand for home-grown fresh produce.

Their passion, knowledge, and expertise were first class, really opening my eyes to the many challenges that arise from being a grower in the UK: Increasingly volatile weather and more extreme events, like floods and droughts, changes to traditional growing seasons, soil quality, experimenting with new varieties, limited availability of water, increased costs, waste, weeds, and pests.

I witnessed many quality checks for colour, maturity, firmness, defect, shape, weight, and diameter, ensuring that the end product is as close to perfect as possible when it reaches a customer.

Peloton Produce is LEAF and Red Tractor Certified, inspiring and enabling sustainable growing practises that are prosperous, enrich the environment, and engage local communities while ensuring all produce has been responsibly sourced, safely produced, comes from crops, and has been well cared for.

We only work with suppliers and growers who are accredited by the UK’s leading independent assurance schemes for environmental management, community engagement, product quality, and provenance. You can therefore be confident you’re buying fully traceable, safe, consistent, and technically compliant products from our growers - who I have personally met in their fields.

I am looking forward to eating the broccoli and cabbage I picked from their fields for my Sunday lunch. Thank you, Peloton Produce. I am truly grateful for this experience and look forward to my next visit.”