Suffolk pea harvest shaping up to be 'mixed bag' as yields fluctuate field by field

Suffolk's pea harvest got under way this week - and is already showing up some very mixed results.

Andy Beach - general manager at farmer-owned co-operative Anglian Pea Growers (APG) - said the extreme weather over winter and spring meant the crop was being affected much more severely is some places than in others.

His team got to work bringing in the highly sensitive crop - which has to be harvested and frozen within hours - starting in the Foxhall, Trimley and Nacton areas around Ipswich this week.

Andy Beach with Anglian Pea Growers' four harvesters (Image: Charlotte Bond) They will work their way across Suffolk and Norfolk, harvesting around 10,000t of the crop for the frozen market for the 95 growers they serve.

With some work under their belt from last weekend, the team started up again on Wednesday in what will be a race against time to get to the crop at its optimum moment and while still fresh.

APG has four pea harvesters which operate flat-out during the pea harvest season - which usually begins around the third week of June and continues into mid-August.

The peas have to be harvested at precisely the right moment and frozen within four hours.

Pea harvester at work (Image: Charlotte Bond) Historically, the crop was grown for Bird's Eye but in 2009 the company ceased sourcing its peas from East Anglia.

For the past 60 years,  the peas have gone to a factory at Oulton Broad, near Lowestoft, which needed major investment.

But Belgian multinational Ardo - a global supplier of fresh frozen products which took on the pea crop - pulled the plug on its Oulton Broad operation at the end of last year.

For a while it looked as though East Anglia's pea harvest would be lost and this year's crop might not happen, but then APG secured a new customer - Greenyard Frozen UK - a pan-European company with a multi-fruit and vegetable freezing factory in King's Lynn.

Pea harvesters at work near Ipswich (Image: Charlotte Bond) "It's very much a mixed bag," said Andy of the crop so far. "We have got some good ones (fields) and some really rubbish ones because of the weather. It's all over the place at the moment."

Because of the weather conditions, there is a lot of variability over "borne fruits" - or the number of flowers and therefore peas produced on individual plants, he said.

"The yields are very variable because of the winter conditions we had and the early spring. It's only in the last few days it's become summer-like. It has been wet and below average temperatures for much of spring."

Although the peas are self-pollinating the cold and wet can affect conditions in the fields, he explained. Other issues that can arise are problems with disease - and pigeons, he said.

Pea harvest is under way (Image: Charlotte Bond)