West Sussex is one of the foremost locations in Britain for growing horticultural crops and the area has about 170ha of glasshouses, producing crops with a retail value of 500m. However, the industry faces a challenge in trying to work with a planningsystem that has refused three major glasshouse projects around the UK this year and in a lack of affordable development land locally. West Sussex Growers Association (WSGA) chairman Colin Frampton said at the group's recent annual dinner that the domestic market wants the products his region grows and he used the example of Sainsbury's, which has announced it wants to double the food supplied by British growers by 2020. "Nobody wants us to build large-scale glasshouses unless we are prepared to pay exorbitant agricultural land values," said Frampton.
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