The political fallout from Vladimir Putin’s decision to back separatists in Ukraine has led to a Europe-wide plunge in the price of fruit.

English apple growers are now being offered so little for their crops many are leaving them on the trees to rot or sell- ing them at knock-down prices.

Last August the Russian president hit back at EU sanctions imposed on his country’s finance, energy and defence industries by issuing a one-year ban on imports of foods supplied or grown in the EU including apples and pears.

Russia normally buys a million tons of apples each year from countries such as Poland, Holland and Belgium.

With nowhere left to sell their crops European growers have been flooding the British market.

“Across Europe there has been panic. Apple prices have slumped to less than 50 per cent of what growers got last year,” said Adrian Barlow, chief executive of trade body English Apples and Pears Ltd.

“On August 7 the Russians imposed their import ban. In this country we suddenly found we were being swamped with apples from abroad, being offered at crazy prices.

“That meant growers here who supply our wholesalers were plunged into financial difficulties. Growers will go under this year.”

David Toms has grown apples on his 50-acre farm at Matfield, near Tunbridge Wells, Kent, for four decades. Now aged 73, he is helped by his son Adrian, 44.

“The market for our apples has just disappeared,” he said.

“I’ve been told how lorries full of apples are turning up from Poland at the big wholesale markets and the drivers are under orders to get rid of them at any price.

“The prices we are getting have dropped by half, its so bad we’ve stopped offering them for sale.

“A lot of the big growers are selling their Bramley apples for a fraction of the £200 a ton they normally get. You can’t survive on those figures.”

He added: “Despite all this we’ve still got to treat the crops so we get a har- vest next year, but it feels like our feet have been chopped from beneath us.