Bad planning to blame for empty shelves
Cucumbers and iceberg lettuce are the latest items in our online shop to have fallen into the ‘not available’ category - last week tomatoes and peppers. Prior to that it’s been eggs, crisps, oil and bread alongside stocks of children’s paracetamol and, of course, toilet roll and Lemsip that haven’t made it into our basket if we go back to those complicated days of the pandemic.
Apples and pears are rumoured to be next as growers become more vocal in their claim that supplying supermarkets as they do now is fast becoming unsustainable.
Pictures on social media showing shelves in European supermarkets fit to burst with fresh produce would have you questioning whether the weather is really to blame - even Ukrainian supermarkets looked healthier this week than the shelves of Sainsbury’s. The dreaded B word might have you arguing it’s our exit from the EU which means available crops don’t make their way across the Channel. These fresh produce shortages are showing us just how exposed we now are. For years our supermarket shelves have been full, regardless of what has been happening in the world, and that is no longer true. The environment secretary might be extolling the virtues of turnips but she’s merely skirting around the uncomfortable truth that the government has failed its own growers and left us reliant on others to put food on our tables. Apples and pears are thought likely to be the next foods online shopping orders reject, as growers mothball orchards because farming and haulage costs outweigh the poor returns producers say they’re in line for. Brexit should have meant that once you’re less equipped to rely on friends abroad, you need to invest in adequately protecting interests closer to home.
And while Brexit can’t be blamed for all our problems, the issue of food security and how we were going to be left confidently feeding the nation should have been dealt with.
‘For years our supermarket shelves have been full, regardless of what has been happening in the world and that is no longer true’