Leading agronomy and crop production business, ProCam, has strengthened its vegetable and salad crop team with the appointment of Ashley Cooley.

Mr Cooley, a farmer’s son from South Lincolnshire and now based in Rutland, has been working in the vegetable and salad sector since 1980 when he joined the family farming business from agricultural college. In a career spanning 40-years, he has spent time working in France, Egypt, Italy and Morocco and has been farm manager for two Lincolnshire-based salad producers, John Van Geest Farms and JJ Barker Ltd., where he was responsible for overseeing the production and packing of crops for all the major multiple retailers.

Ashley has a BASIS diploma in agronomy and has been working as a commercial agronomist specialising in salads and vegetables, previously with another distributor, since 2009.

Ashley joins ProCam’s County Crops team at Burscough in Lancashire and will provide specialist agronomy advice fora range of vegetable and salad crops, including carrots, parsnips, swedes, lettuce, leeks and onions, to growers in Lancashire, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.

“Joining ProCam’s agronomy team is a wonderful opportunity and I look forward to working with growers throughout the north of England to provide forward thinking and innovative agronomic support,” Ashley comments.

“The UK boasts some of the world’s best and most pioneering vegetable and salad growers who are on the cusp of a new era in British food production. I’m excited to work with them to find new ways to improve crop production efficiencies and to give the next generation of growers and agronomists a head-start in their careers by sharing the knowledge and expertise I’ve built up over my career to date.”