Fruit Focus

Last week I was photographing the Fruit Focus trade show for Haymarket exhibitions. The show was a real insight into what’s going on inside the fruit industry, learning the opinions and concerns about UK growers and distributors.

The conference the day before the show was in it’s inaugural year, and the topic was automation. With speakers from all over the World, there were some interesting techniques on show, including an automated fruit selection machine closely based on the human hand, currently being developed using US military technology, raised cropping systems for apple harvesting, film of a heavily automated lettuce factory in Spain, and Verticrop: the vertical hydroponic growing system at Paington Zoo, which I visited this week (photos will be posted this week). The question now is will automation catch on, and how will it benefit the consumer and the industry. It seems this question will be coming up a lot during working in the ‘Behind the Seeds’ project.

Here are a few photos from the show: