Drought, Cold Crush Produce Imports That Supermarket Chains Won't Pay Enough For UK Farmers To Grow
Asda and Morrisons are rationing fresh produce including tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers amid shortages caused by poor weather in Europe and north Africa as experts warn that the problems could last for weeks. UK producers said supplies from British farms would also be hit as many have cut back planting amid the rising cost of heating greenhouses to grow salad crops.
The National Farmers’ Union president, Minette Batters, said further rationing of salad items was on the cards because of the impact of higher energy costs on British growers. She told the NFU’s annual conference in Birmingham on Tuesday: “Domestic production of salad, including cucumbers and tomatoes, has fallen to its lowest level since records began in 1985.” Batters added that energy-intensive producers needed help with their bills: “We can do something about it, but it needs government to act to drive down inflation in primary production.”
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The rationing at Asda and Morrisons comes after importers said that supplies of salad and field crops had been affected by a mixture of unseasonable weather in Spain and southern Europe and storms in the Mediterranean combined with a reduction in the amount of crops planted in heated glasshouses in the Netherlands, another big producer country, as energy bills have soared. Industry insiders have said availability of produce is down by between 30% and 40% on some crops, with the pepper harvest down 70% in Spain, according to the catering supplier Reynolds. Wholesale prices have also shot up to three times normal levels in some cases, adding to inflation in stores as well as empty shelves.
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Lee Stiles, secretary of the Lea Valley Growers Association, which represents a large group of greenhouse growers in Hertfordshire, said UK production of crops under glass such as tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers was likely to be 30% down this year on last year. “You would normally see British salad produce on supermarket shelves this time of year. However, the growers could not achieve the economic price to plant and so have left the glasshouses empty,” he said. “If the supermarkets had supported growers with an additional cost price increase they would have planted.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/feb/21/asda-morrisons-ration-tomatoes-peppers-fruit-shortages