A month before vegetables started flying off the shelves of supermarkets in the UK, a "gobsmacked" farmer warned the country we were facing an unprecedented crisis. Steve Cornwell, whose business supplies salad to chains like Aldi, Asda and the Cooperative was hit with the sudden realisation after he walked into a greenhouse in Morocco.
He had been visiting a site where tomatoes are normally ripe and ready for picking in January and was left shocked to discover that all the vegetables were green. Steve and his wife Morna, who usually source supplies of everything from cucumbers to peppers during the winter, said: "In 50 years in the business it was the worst I’d ever known it".
However, across Southern Europe this year an unseasonal hot spell hit then even more unusual cold temperatures, which has thrown crop production into chaos. The owner of MBJSC Produce in Waltham Abbey, Essex. said: “I was gobsmacked. Any other year you’d see it full of coloured fruit.
"You can’t harvest green tomatoes. You pick them when they’re breaking colour and I could see they were weeks away from that. I knew we had a big problem.”
He continued: “Normally, you can trust the temperatures in Spain, Greece, Crete and Morocco. Between 12C and 15C at night and in the 20Cs in the day. But when I was there they were as low as 4C overnight. Most crops were not colouring up. Unusually warm weather from October to December meant crops matured quicker and had to be harvested earlier.
"So a lot of the winter crop had already gone by the time the temperature dropped, then we went from one extreme to the other. In Spain it had even snowed and they had lost crop. The temperature is so low in Morocco the bees supposed to pollinate the tomato plants aren’t coming out of their boxes. In 50 years in the business it was the worst I’d ever known it.”
Steve claims he tried to warn supermarkets in advance that they would need to pay more for produce or face shortages but says they refused to listen to him. He added: “I think they thought it was never going to happen.”
He revealed stores are now desperately calling him and asking for his help to fill empty shelves. He recalled: “One supermarket rang this morning asking for round tomatoes and offering the price that last month they said they couldn’t pay. If they had listened then, there wouldn’t be empty shelves. That delay meant the product went to European supermarkets instead.”
Yesterday, Lidl became the latest supermarket to limit sales of certain fruit and veg products such as tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. It follows Aldi, Tesco, Asda and Morrison who have also introduced a limit per customer and are all retailers that are part of the Lea Valley Growers' Association who Steve's firm supplies to.
Aldi and Tesco are limiting items to three per customer, while Morrisons is letting shoppers buy two each. Environment Secretary Therese Coffey was slammed last week after suggesting people should 'cherish' turnips which are not even currently in season.
Steve and Morna know more than anyone about what is causing the shortages as they import from Europe to fulfil their contracts as well as growing some of their own produce. Their packing house usually works around 12 hours a day in normal years, sending out 36,000 packs of cherry tomatoes alone.
However, this week their 40 staff are only working four-hour shifts a day due to the severe lack of produce arriving. Morna said: “Last year there was a brief shortage of round tomatoes but this year it’s all the tomatoes, iceberg lettuce, cucumbers, peppers, all the salad lines.”
However the issue is not just down to the bad weather, as she explains: “It’s compounded by all sorts of issues. In Europe, supermarkets set prices weekly, so if the market is short they’ll pay the higher prices. But British supermarkets still insist on setting a price for the whole season and then are reluctant to increase them, so they end up missing out on the produce.”
Morna says Brexit has also fuelled the crisis. “Transport companies don’t want to come to the UK because of all the paperwork and logistics, the visas they need for all their drivers," she said. "On top of that, our growers in Morocco have to pay a 3.5 per cent duty on imports to the UK, which in July will rise to 5.7 per cent. Yet to send their produce to the EU in the winter they don’t pay any duty.”
However, the biggest threat to growers such as Steven and Morna is the huge increase in energy prices. The cost of gas boilers heating their four cucumber nurseries has risen threefold since last year. It means that they were forced to plant a month later this year to save costs which means there is still no sign of cucumbers on their plants.
Steve said: “We used to plant the second week in January, it was a gamble we could take as the energy costs were kinder. But this year we couldn’t risk it. Everything has gone up, transport costs, diesel, packaging".
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