BBC Harvest Series 1 1of3 The East 2015

In this episode, the team reports from the east of the UK, where pioneering sweetcorn farmer Peter Barfoot has spent decades turning exotic veg into regular British fridge fillers, growing vegetables that many thought couldn’t be grown here in Britain. This region’s sunny climate and fertile soils has earned it a reputation as the bread-basket of Britain. Also in this episode, Gregg helps out with the winter sugar beet harvest and reveals just how much sugar is produced from our home soil. Philippa finds chillies so hot they need a health warning and visits the Tiptree strawberry fields to try a sweet treat - the Little Scarlet strawberry, used for making a very special jam, a favourite with James Bond. And newcomer to the harvest family, dairy and fruit farmer James Manning, visits a futuristic lettuce farm controlled by robots to see a cutting edge drilling machine that plants seedlings faster than the eye can see.