Catch up TV

Series 1: 1. Fruit and Veg

In the first episode of this three-part series, presenters Ed Balls, Ade Adepitan and Cherry Healey delve into the hectic world of Britain's imports and exports. As our trading relationships face their biggest change in decades, they explore how much we really know about the science and systems that enable Britain to import and export goods around the world on an unprecedented scale.\n \nEd is at London Gateway - a huge port on the Thames - to see how the fruit and veg that we love travels across the globe but arrives on our shelves in tip-top condition. From trying his hand at being a truck driver, sitting in a 16-storey-high crane, to investigating how apples are starved of oxygen to keep them fresh, he reveals all the tricks of the fruit and veg import export trade. \n \nAde travels the world looking at how Britain's changing tastes for fruit and veg are impacting farmers everywhere. First, he visits Peru to see how Britain’s obsession with healthy eating has created a booming economy for avocado farmers. Next, he visits a business in the Netherlands which is home to 11,000 acres of greenhouses. Here, they can intensively produce almost 400,000 tonnes of tomatoes every year - much of it bound for the UK. He then heads to one of the largest grape growing regions in Spain to see how producers grow sweet and crunchy grapes to satisfy British tastes.\n \nMeanwhile, Cherry meets British producers to see what and how we export to some surprising places. She starts in Evesham, learning how importers play the global fruit and veg market to keep Britain fed. Later, she meets a British farmer who is keeping the Middle East supplied with apples deemed too big to eat on the go by UK consumers. She also speaks to a Cambridgeshire potato farmer who is selling spuds to the Irish and a sparkling wine producer whose product is being snapped up all over the world.

Source: BBC 2