Empty tomato and pepper stalls at an ASDA supermarket in Rayleigh (Essex, west London), accompanied by messages explaining supply difficulties and the limitation to three vegetables per person. Photo taken on February 22, 2023 (AFP/Robert BODMAN)
Blame it on Brexit, bad weather in Spain, supermarket price war, energy surge or government? The British are wondering about the recurrent shortages of fresh produce in the country, and passing the buck of responsibility.
Salads, cucumbers, broccoli, raspberries, peppers… The country faces occasional shortages, often localized but recurring, of certain food products. The stalls are poorly stocked or even empty, and rationing in stores is increasing with posters everywhere: “no more than three per customer”.
Added to this are chronic lack of eggs for months, because of avian flu.
Shortages of fresh produce are expected to last for weeks more, authorities and supermarket chains say.
The government and some distribution chains attribute the problem to bad weather in Spain or Morocco which weighed on harvests, claiming that Brexit has nothing to do with it and will on the contrary allow it to regain control of British agricultural policy.
Spanish Agriculture Minister Luis Planas, in an interview with the Financial Times, also said that Brexit is not the cause of the current shortages in the UK, although he admits that the costs and The friction generated has led some small producers to give up or reduce their exports across the Channel.
Meanwhile, British Food Minister Mark Spencer has called on supermarket executives to explain “what they are doing to replenish shelves”.
– Beets and turnips –
The Minister of the Environment, Thérèse Coffey, for her part, invited the British to favor local and seasonal foods, believing that too many imported foodstuffs were sold in the United Kingdom.
Environment Minister Therese Coffey arrives at 10 Downing Street in London for a Council of Ministers meeting on February 7, 2023. (AFP/JUSTIN TALLIS)
She triggered a bronca facing the prospect of long months of beets, turnips, squash and apples without the shadow of a strawberry.
For experts, the problem is deeper than just bad weather. Chef Thomasina Miers, for example, denounces a “broken” food system based on intensive agriculture “terribly greedy in hydrocarbons” and polluting the soil.
She called this weekend on the BBC for a vast effort to modernize agriculture in the United Kingdom based on the latest technological advances.
The boss of the NFU agricultural federation, Minette Batters, praises the British system which produces one of the cheapest foods in the world compared to the income of the inhabitants, she assures, but this industry “is cracking everywhere now”.
Especially since food inflation, which is around 17%, threatens.
In recent days, she has urged the government to put in place a strategy to encourage farmers to produce more, and pleads for better cost sharing, “from farm to plate”, via distributors, food industries. packaging, transportation, etc.
The influential food critic of the Guardian, Jay Rayner, has split from a platform castigating the government’s apathy in the face of what he describes as a rout announced for years, and affirms that the British must accept to pay more for their food.
– Economically unviable –
Mr Rayner assures that between the energy surge, Brexit which increases paperwork and makes it difficult to recruit seasonal workers, and the selling price compressed by the distribution giants in the midst of a price war, the production of many commodity has become “economically unviable”.
Some farmers are trying to adapt by delaying their plantings until energy prices ease. Others simply go bankrupt.
“Our self-sufficiency has suffered,” insists Jay Rayner, making the country more dependent on imports, and more “vulnerable to external shocks” – and those of recent years have been massive and successive: Brexit, pandemic, energy surge and war in Ukraine …
Beyond these problems, British farmers had warned in December that the country was heading straight for a food supply crisis due to soaring costs, such as those of fertilizers or employees.
Some like the NFU or Mr. Rayner also say that the chronic shortages of certain basic foodstuffs could be only the tip of the iceberg, pointing to the problems of supplies of spare parts or semiconductors which are weighing down in particular the automotive industry for months.
© 2023 AFP
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