On Your Farm

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Getting to the heart of country life with a look at individual farming endeavours

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On Your Farm: In Search of a New Niche

In Search of a New Niche

BBC Radio 4 - On Your Farm, In Search of a New Niche

Charlotte Smith meets a veg farmer who is always in search of a new niche crop to grow.

Pete Thompson is a vegetable grower obsessed with experimenting. He's trying everything from olives to Californian lemons on his family farm in Essex.

"Niche doesn't stay niche forever, so we're always having to look and see what is the next path we can follow."

Pete Thompson is a vegetable farmer, obsessed with experimenting. With a family farm of just 250 acres - and another 250 acres of rented land - it's hard for him to compete with the big, international veg growing companies. Instead, he concentrates on growing niche crops for niche markets - but that means he's constantly in search of a new niche.

Charlotte Smith visits his farm in North Essex to see his latest experiments: a newly planted olive grove and Californian lemons. Along the way, she sees what happens when experiments don't work out, and hears how the current generation is reaping the rewards of successful trials from generations past.

Presented by Charlotte Smith
Produced for BBC Audio Bristol by Heather Simons

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