Our Featured Fruit Growers

A C H FARMING

We are mixed farmers based in East Kent in the Garden of England. We farm 4,000 acres in a triangle between Canterbury, Folkestone and Sandwich growing a diverse range of crops and produce.

We produce a diverse number of end products, including: fruit (apples, pears, cherries, apricots and plums); cereals; potatoes; asparagus; and livestock (single suckler beef cattle).

ACH Farming is an approved supplier to all major UK supermarkets and a member of the ASSURED Produce ‘Red Tractor’ Scheme as well as Assured Combinable Crops and FABBL. The whole farm is entered into Countryside Stewardship Agreements with Natural England and sustainable farming is at the core of all our decision making.

Sustainable practices:

Our family farms for tomorrow not today. We make long-term investments, often choosing a higher cost solution which factors in the economic, environmental and social payback for all our stakeholders.

We are focussed on enhancing our farmed environment for the benefit of our whole business:

Carbon footprint – annual audit to reduce emissions and capture carbon. We still need to understand sequestration better and continue to monitor developments in this space but for now we are focussing no attacking our larger emissions areas such as fuel, fertilizer and energy usage

Water footprint – our computerised-monitoring systems (soil moisture probes, sap flow monitors, dendrometers etc.) will help us to use the minimum amount of water required. We also harvest rainwater into reservoirs for irrigating our crops and use biobeds to reduce the impact of ‘dirty’ water entering local water courses

Soil footprint - our mixed farming heritage gives us many natural advantages when it comes to managing our farmed environment, be that through mob grazing our livestock, regular applications of organic matter in all our farming enterprises or the use of cover crops to reduce soil erosion, build soil fertility and biodiversity and to feed our livestock through the winter

Energy footprint - we have installed 1MW of roof mounted solar arrays to date generating electricity and reducing import consumption in cold storage, packing and farming operations

Stewardship footprint – we are active participants in Natural England Environmental Stewardship Schemes which covers our whole farm and we also manage a number of SSSI’s

We have a farming ‘can do’ attitude when it comes to sustainability:

Resource efficiency - critical to all our decision making. Smarter growing systems, healthier soils and biodiversity driving yields on farm which in turn maximizes resource efficiency

Staff management – investment at all levels of our staff to build a sustainable employment structure. The family remain active farmers and we have a top driven continuous improvement culture

Crop rotation – as mixed farmers we have multiple crop rotation options which ensures there is huge diversity in our farmed environment

Precision farming – greater control of production and uniformity of crops

J Myatt & Co

We are a family-run fruit farm, who specialise in growing the finest quality soft and stone fruit. We supply beautifully selected produce that is hand-picked at the optimum time, to release the best flavours. We grow a variety of crops including Rhubarb, Raspberries, Blackberries, Plums, Cherries, Greengages and Apricots. We are constantly trialling new varieties of soft and stone fruit, selecting for quality, flavour and season extension.

J Myatt & Co was established in 1993 by John and Kim Myatt. We started at Decoy Farm growing strawberries and took on parts of Mockbeggar Farm in 2004. Since then, the farm has expanded its soft and stone fruit enterprises, now suppling a wide range of high-end customers and supermarkets. Our daughters have joined the family business, Alex in 2017, and Hannah in 2020, giving us the opportunity to diversify. Although our main farming business supplies supermarkets with some of the highest quality fresh fruit in the UK, winning multiple awards, not all is suitable for our customers due to being out of customer specification, therefore we have just launched a sparkling wine, Myatt’s Rhubarb Fizz.

Our farms are located on the edge of the North Kent Marshes. This is a beautiful part of Kent, with rich soils and excellent growing conditions for our fruit to thrive, although most of our raspberries are now grown in substrate. We have automated irrigation systems which enables us to be as accurate as possible, supplying the correct quantities of food and water for optimal plant growth and health. The water is supplied by winter filled reservoirs and left as natural as possible to encourage a wide variety of wildlife habitats. Other areas managed for wildlife biodiversity are hedges, windbreaks, field margins as well as special flower mixes being planted to encourage bee and insect activity which is turn helps with natural pollination.