Frozen food firm chills out with pea offer

The company, which sources much of the peas it sells from farmers in East Yorkshire and has a large factory in Hull, will mark six million packs of products with a special code, allowing customers to apply for free packs of pea, sweet corn and carrot seeds.

The firms is also extending the Grow Your Own campaign into schools, sending over half a million packs of pea seeds to schools across the UK as part of a new education programme developed with the National Schools Partnership.

A Birds Eye spokesman said he wanted “to encourage families to try growing their own vegetables at home”.

Mark Flint, who farms at Killick between Beverley and Driffield, is the third generation of his family to farm peas for Birds Eye.

He told the Yorkshire Post that the relationship he has had with the company was “the best example of farmers co-operating with each other and their customers”.

“My grandfather began growing peas for Birds Eye during the 1950s. It is something I have always known.

“When I was at university I used to spend my summers working on the pea crop and have been working with a local pea group for a few years now.”