Vegetable shortage hits northern Europe due to bad weather in south

LONDON — Europe is short of lettuce, broccoli and other vegetables due to bad weather, leading some supermarkets in Britain to start rationing produce.

A succession of droughts, floods and cold weather in southern European countries has hurt agricultural yields there, creating a drop in supply felt mainly by importing countries to the north.

Stores in Britain were rationing Friday the number of lettuces shoppers can buy, with some removing iceberg, sweet gem and romaine varieties from their online offerings. Similar shortages earlier affected courgettes (zucchini), broccoli and cabbage.

Shoppers in Britain shared images of bare shelves under the hashtags #lettucecrisis and #courgettecrisis.

Analyst Rob Gregory of PlanetRetail posted a photo on Twitter of empty boxes in a Tesco supermarket. It showed a sign reading: “Due to continued weather problems in Spain, there is a shortage on Iceberg and other varied lettuce products. To protect the availability for all customers, we are limiting bulk purchases to three per person.”