Farm leaders are urging sugar beet growers to sign up to British Sugar’s haulage scheme – and help make the sector more efficient ahead of the abolition of quotas in 2017.

Rather than arranging their own shipments of the crop from farm to factory in return for a transport allowance – which may or may not cover costs – more growers should let British Sugar collect beet direct from the farm, said NFU Sugar chairman William Martin.

“This has considerable benefits in the long term to help improve the efficiency of the industry overall,” he said. “It’s a frustration to the NFU Sugar board that the industry is not moving more rapidly to embrace some of the savings and changes this could generate.”

Acknowledging that haulage was “something farmers feel very strongly about and sugar beet growers are no exception,” Mr Martin told an NFU council meeting at Stoneleigh on Tuesday (24 June) that both British Sugar and the NFU were at fault for the reluctance of many growers to adopt the transport scheme.

“I think British Sugar has been reluctant to look beyond a simple cost-saving measure and look more widely at how we can improve efficiencies – but I think there are some growers who have been reluctant to contemplate doing anything any differently to how their fathers did it.”

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The NFU was actively working to encourage more farmers to adopt the new scheme, Mr Martin said. Doing so would help the industry improve efficiency in preparation for the abolition of sugar quotas in 2017, he added.

“The marketplace in which we are operating is already starting to have one eye on that date. In particular, we are already seeing extremely large [sugar] stocks across Europe and the UK is no exception. That is clearly starting to have an influence on the market place.”

Although much of the current UK sugar beet crop looks promising, the longer-term outlook for beet prices is widely seen as bearish – and a key influence on price negotiations between NFU Sugar and British Sugar for the 2015 crop.

Mr Martin said: “We are determined to deliver a realistic price for growers for 2015, but it would be remiss of me – not to be defeatist about it – not to say that the climate is not the same as it was 12 months ago.”