A CRISIS in horticulture threatens Kent's reputation as the Garden of England, growers have warned.

They blame high wages, low prices and overseas competition for a situation that could force them to slash jobs and even cease business altogether.

A campaign to alert the public to the threat facing horticulture and the dire consequences for the beloved Kentish landscape was launched at NFU local headquarters in Bradbourne House, East Malling, last week.

Growers called on consumers to buy local produce, urging them to look for the tractor symbol of the British Farm Standard.

Kent grows 60 - 70 per cent of top fruit produced in the United Kingdom, and around 90 per cent of cherries.

But these numbers are under threat from tough supermarket pricing, and a recent 10 per cent wage hike by the Agricultural Wages Board, partly to take account of new European rules for temporary workers.

Marion Regan, whose grandfather founded Hugh Lowe Farms in Mereworth in the 1800s, said her strawberry growing business faced huge difficulties.

The farm employs 22 full-time people, and takes on around 400 during the summer picking season. It supplies high-quality produce mainly to supermarkets.

But she said the "swingeing increase" by the wages board "on top of the increases over the past five years" was unsustainable.

She called for the board to be scrapped "in order to have viable horticulture in this country".

Maggie Berry, NFU Kent chairman, and a grower from Faversham, said: "The problem is that there's not adequate recompense for the farmers and growers for the jobs they are doing. Costs are going up, returns are going down and it doesn't equate."

She was working an 18-hour day. "It feels to me as though I'm doing that in order to subsidise food production," she said.

Peter Knight, of Southfleet salad producer J J Barker said his wage costs were close to a third of turnover. "If your wages become more than a third of your turnover, you will soon shut the door."

Robert Balicki, of North Court Farm, Chilham, said it would be very sad if there were continuing decline in the Garden of England. "The British public wouldn't be happy about that. They want to see Kent remaining as a pleasant landscape area."