Clem Tompsett
‘Carrot King’ of East Anglia who promoted his favourite veg with purple varieties and carrot whistles
CLEM TOMPSETT, who has died aged 84, was affectionately known as the “Carrot King” of East Anglia and headed a root vegetable empire producing 65,000 tons of carrots, 16,000 tons of parsnips, 1,000 tons of red onions and 1,000 tons of shallots a year, supplying retailers such as Waitrose, Sainsbury’s, Morrison’s, Asda and Lidl.
“Mention Tompsett’s name in vegetable circles,” wrote Carolyn Hart in The Daily Telegraph in 2011, “and the response is always the same: ‘Quite a character,’ they say, with varying degrees of awe.” His company, now known as Tompsett Burgess Growers, based at Whitehall Farm, Isleham, near Ely in the Cambridgeshire Fens, is famous in farming circles, but was always somewhat overshadowed by its founder, a sort of carrot evangelist who also had a parallel existence in the equine world.
As well as being the longest serving district commissioner in the Pony Club, he founded the annual Isleham Horse Trials, one of the chief horse trials on the eventing calendar, which attracts international competitors. In 2010 thousands turned out to watch as Zara Phillips took to the saddle for the first time at the event, coming first and third in the intermediate section on two separate horses.
Tompsett claimed to eat carrots almost every day, and as chairman for many years of the British Carrot Association, launched several ingenious initiatives to try and persuade others to follow his example.
In 2004 he was the inaugural winner of the National Farmer’s Union Best Innovation in the Food Chain Award, sponsored by Marks and Spencer, after being the first to grow purple carrots commercially as a way of tempting children to eat his favourite veg. Carrots, he explained, were originally purple until Dutch growers patriotically developed an orange variety – which soon took over.
In 2012, inspired by the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra, whose players perform on homemade edible instruments, Tompsett got together with the Great British Carrots group to launch a Great British Carrot Whistle
Olympics, with the aim of finding Britain’s best player of a carrot transformed into a whistle by being drilled with a series of holes.
Clements Harry Tompsett was born on June 28 1934 at the family 140-acre dairy farm near Soham where his grandparents ran the milk round. During the Second World War his father served in the RAF and his mother worked for the Ministry of Agriculture; she was one of the first people to enter Hamburg in 1945, sent there to advise on farming. After the war, however, they did not get back together again, so Clem was largely brought up by his grandparents.
He bought his first field, nine and a half acres, in 1948, and when his grandfather became ill the following year, he left Norwich High School for Boys aged 15 and was given 80 acres of the family farm to manage himself. When his grandfather died two years later, he took over the whole enterprise.
As well as the dairy operation, the farm had a small amount of arable land and Tompsett soon decided to get rid of the cows and switch the whole farm to arable and vegetable production, on the grounds that cows meant a seven-day working week, made no money and did not fit in with his passion for playing cricket.
The availability of good irrigation gave him the idea of growing carrots and the first crop was sown after lifting early potatoes, then covered up over the winter with soil to protect from frosts, and sold in
March.
Tompsett always said that the first crop made a fortune and he refused to be put off when the crop failed the second year.
Over the years he expanded his operation, buying land and taking on extra acreage on contract agreements from other farmers in East Anglia and as far afield as Perthshire. He built packing facilities and established strong links with the major supermarkets, supplying Waitrose with all of its British parsnips from 1985.
At the end of the 1980s, after having major heart surgery, he sold the company to Unigate, only to buy it back two years later. Around 2000 he merged with Russell Burgess, another family-run vegetable company. The companies later split with the Burgess family business (now Produce World) buying the packing part of the Tompsett concern, while Tompsett’s company bought the growing side of the Burgess business, though they continued to work closely together.
Tompsett was dedicated to preserving and restoring the Cambridgeshire countryside, replanting hedges which had been removed earlier, establishing a tree planting programme and creating areas of natural beauty, including woodland and reservoirs which have become a haven for wildlife.
In 1959 he married Mary Leverington, whom he had met while playing for his cricket team against the local team at Worlington, near Mildenhall, Suffolk, where she was working as a barmaid at the local pub.
The couple had two daughters, who got the riding bug and joined the Pony Club. When the branch at Soham needed better facilities, Tompsett offered the family fields and was persuaded to become district commissioner – a post he held for
more than 40 years. In 1991 he organised a committee to hold the first Isleham Horse Trials, an event held the first weekend in March to coincide with the first weekend of the British eventing season. Over the years it has raised nearly £200,000 for charities including the East Anglian Air Ambulance, Macmillan Cancer Relief, Papworth Hospital and Riding for the Disabled
In 2006 Tompsett was appointed MBE for his services to agriculture and charities.
His wife and daughters survive him.