History with green credentials

Oct 9 2008 by Karen Dent, The Journal

We’re constantly being told to eat our five a day but have you ever stopped to wonder how fruit and vegetables arrive on your plate? Karen Dent looks at how the North East’s fruit and vegetable markets have evolved to keep pace with our changing demands.

AT 40 years old, the North East Wholesale Fruit and Veg Market is a mere whippersnapper but it is the latest incarnation of a long and proud business that has been supplying the region’s greens for centuries.

In 1968, the various fruit and vegetable markets in Newcastle came together and migrated to a new site in Gateshead’s Team Valley. Market traders past and present celebrated their heritage earlier this month with a three-day exhibition at the Gateshead market, showcasing photographs, adverts and memorabilia dating back to the 1880s.

Photographs show the original street trading outside St Andrew’s Church in Newcastle, the Green Market and life at the Team Valley.

“By the 1950s, businesses in Newcastle had so much produce coming on to their stands and there was so much congestion, it wasn’t viable to be here any more,” said Brian Moon, who was chairman of the Gateshead market for 16 years.

“They were offered various places in Newcastle like Fenham Barracks, but the traffic congestion would still be there.” Mr Moon’s career started at the Green Market in the mid-1960s and he moved to the “new” one when it opened, where he remained until he retired in 2001. The shift to Gateshead was driven by the traders themselves, he says.

“The Newcastle markets were municipally-owned but the Team Valley site is owned by the members because it was privately bought,” he added.

Alongside historian Tommy Young, Mr Moon was one of the main organisers of the exhibition to celebrate the city’s markets and he said an old photo printed in The Journal helped to attract more than 200 visitors to the display.

“We’ve met up with old colleagues, customers and friends and many people who had no connection with the fruit trade, like local historians. There is not a lot of documentation on the fruit trade in Newcastle,” he said.

“We had two granddaughters of one of the founders of the market, William Hardy. They are in their late 70s and late 80s. They saw the picture in the paper. We got more pictures from them and lots of information.

The inflow of people also included the 93-year-old former accountant at one of the businesses, and many of the visitors brought new pictures and information. Mr Moon has a fascination for markets and will visit them wherever he goes in the world.

But he admits the Team Valley Market – which is purely a wholesale concern – may prove confusing to the casual onlooker.

“There are no price lists, it’s all done on supply and demand,” said Mr Moon. He was the general manager of EWCF – formerly West Cumberland Farmers.

“The trader, he’s got an idea of a price, he knows from the first few sales or the lack of sales, then he comes down in price in stages.

“It’s done on a bidding system – if you come in and say ‘I’ll take 20 boxes of tomatoes at £4.50’, I’ll determine whether I’ll take that. It’s a trade where you have to work six days a week at it. Prices and availability change all the time.

“But it’s changed dramatically. When we moved from Newcastle to Team Valley in 1968 there were 31 traders. On Saturday, there were just three major traders.”

He says the shrinking number of traders is down to the might of the supermarkets which buy around 75% of fruit and veg sold in the UK directly from producers, coupled with the way time-poor people now choose to shop.

“The current generation want one-stop shopping. They want to go to the supermarket and price is immaterial,” he said.

He also stresses that market fruit and vegetables are no longer the over-ripe, damaged or bruised specimens of days gone by and says it’s time people’s attitudes changed.

“The current housewife wants to buy fruit to put in a fruit bowl for show and a lot won’t go to markets because historically they have been the poorer end of the trade,” he said. “Certainly since the turn of this century, every barrow boy sells quality produce.”

Everything is shipped into the Team Valley market by lorry – the foreign produce directly from Heathrow and the UK goods which form around half of what is sold by traders, arrives mainly from Lincolnshire at this time of year.

The majority of the sales are to the catering trade or to secondary wholesalers supplying caterers.

Due to refrigerated transport keeping produce at a constant temperature, Mr Moon reckons the market fruit and veg is probably around two days fresher than that on display in supermarkets.

“There is till a need for markets, all be it in a slightly different guise,” he said. The exhibition, which ran from October 1-4, was accompanied by a specially-produced a DVD showing how the various Newcastle fruit and vegetable markets came together at the new site.

It raised more than £750 which will be divided between St Oswald’s and Willowburn Hospices.