A warning has been issued by the National Farmer's Union (NFU) that the shortage of fruit and vegetables in British supermarkets is just "the tip of the iceberg".
NFU deputy president Tom Bradshaw said the country's reliance on imports has left the UK vulnerable to "shock weather events". He also warned that the UK has "hit a tipping point" and needs to "take command of the food we produce" in the face of "volatility around the world".
It comes after supermarkets across the country have reported shortages of tomatoes and other fruit and vegetables. The main cause of the shortages seems to come from bad weather and transport problems in Africa and Europe.
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Mr Bradshaw told Times Radio on Saturday: “We’ve been warning about this moment for the past year. 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.
“It’s really interesting that before Brexit we didn’t used to source anything, or very little, from Morocco but we’ve been forced to go further afield and now these climatic shocks becoming more prevalent have had a real impact on the food available on our shelves today.”
Major supermarkets such as Tesco, Aldi, Asda, and Morrisons have all introduced customer limits on the amount of fresh produce they can purchase. Tesco and Aldi are limiting customers to three units of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers as a precautionary measure, while Asda is also limiting customers on lettuce, salad bags, broccoli, cauliflower and raspberries, and Morrisons has set a limit of two items per customer across tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and peppers.
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