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With several weeks of a long, hot summer still to go, BBC Radio 4’s Farming Today have been examining what 2025 has meant for the British salad industry.

To kick off a week-long focus on the sector, they spoke with Ï㽶ÊÓƵ  Professor of Crop Science Jim Monaghan, a fresh produce expert, about how the year has affected both salad growers – and consumers.

Talking about what the current crops look like for those looking to put salad on their plates, he said: “The range now is amazing. The lettuce business might be growing 10 different sorts of lettuce, tomatoes, there could be 20-something sorts of tomatoes in a tomato nursery.

“At this time of year, if you go and look on a supermarket shelf, it would be unusual to see overseas grown leafy salads.

“The tomato growers have been doing a great job this year. I don't know if you've seen the sort of the big kilo boxes of tomatoes that they've been selling of mixed tomatoes - British tomato growers have been really going for it.”

The current boom in British salad is hugely important for the salad industry in the UK – which is affected by the seasons more than some continental producers.

Professor Monaghan added: “It's important for the growers now - this is their main season, and they'll sell pretty much everything they can grow - for tomatoes, that's not enough to fill the shelves for the whole of the summer, but for lettuces and salads it is.”

However, to truly enable a competitive market for some products, Professor Monaghan believes that both long-term investment by banks and strategic decisions about energy infrastructure for growers would be vital.

He added: “If we looked at protected crops like salad tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and the like, then actually they could do more.

“The challenge for those growers is investment - long-term investment from agricultural funds - so banks and the like.

“A key thing would be actually coming to an understanding about how they can pay for energy costs, because it's the energy costs - which are pooled somewhere like the Netherlands - which allows them to really produce large volumes of export crop.

“So you might find what they call a combined heat and power unit and would be built and then they would cluster multiple businesses around it.

“There'd be a central energy source, if you want, and then businesses would be able to come around that. And then that's much more efficient than having to build an individual energy source if you want, for your own glasshouse.”

Yet despite this need for heat, the current hot summer has itself, presented salad farmers with challenges.

Professor Monaghan added: “Take a step back and remember this time last year - we just finished a very wet period.

“The farmers, the growers had had a really difficult time - then come forward to this year, and they've had a really prolonged period of no rain.

“So resilience, I think, is the key thing – how salad growers are having to be resilient. This year, that means accessing water.

“The big challenge at the moment is making sure you've got water, because if you look at a lettuce, it's 95% water. So if you haven't got water to apply to crops when they need it - then you're going to have reduced yields.”