Vegetable shortages in UK could be ‘tip of iceberg’, says farming union

theguardian.com:

Shortages of some fresh fruit and vegetables such as tomatoes and cucumbers could be the “tip of the iceberg”, the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) has said.

Certain products are hard to come by in UK supermarkets due to poor weather reducing the harvest in Europe and north Africa, Brexit rules and lower supplies from UK and Dutch producers hit by the jump in energy bills to heat glasshouses.

The NFU’s deputy president, Tom Bradshaw, said a reliance on imports had left the UK particularly exposed to “shock weather events”.

He said the UK had now “hit a tipping point” and needed to “take command of the food we produce” amid “volatility around the world” caused by the war in Europe and the climate crisis.

“We’ve been warning about this moment for the past year,” Bradshaw told Times Radio on Saturday. “The tragic events in Ukraine have driven inflation, particularly energy inflation, to levels that we haven’t seen before.

“There’s a lack of confidence from the growers that they’re going to get the returns that justify planting their glasshouses, and at the moment we’ve got a lot of glasshouses that would be growing the tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, aubergine that are sitting there empty because they simply couldn’t take the risk to plant them with the crops, not thinking they’d get the returns from the marketplace.

“And with them being completely reliant on imports – we’d always have some imports – but we’ve been completely reliant on imports [now]. And when there’s been some shock weather events in Morocco and Spain, it’s meant that we’ve had these shortages.”

Bradshaw also acknowledged that the current shortage was an indirect result of the UK’s decision to leave the EU.

He added: “It’s really interesting that before Brexit we