Suez Canal chaos reminder of reliance

THE event may have been taking place a couple of thousand miles away but the temporary blocking of the Suez Canal has reminded us yet again how precarious a situation we are in as result of our reliance on global trading.

The immediate result in the interruption of the steady flow of oil tankers was a rise in the price of oil, which will inevitably be reflected in a consequent rise in food prices somewhere along the line.

But there will also be a direct impact on us in the form of a disruption of food supplies – and a totally unnecessary one because in so many instances we continue to import massive volumes of food we could very well produce ourselves. Take garlic, for instance, an ingredient which hardly featured at all in British cooking until people began taking foreign holidays and got a taste for it. We have now long since passed the point where garlic consumption in southern England exceeds that of northern France.

Garlic is a staple ingredient in many thousands of kitchens and, looking to replenish my own supply, I went hunting for some in Morrisons the other day. The only garlic I could find was Chinese, which garlic lovers will tell you is generally inferior to anything grown in Europe – despite the fact that we import around 90,000 tonnes of it each year.

I found that a bit annoying but did some checking up and the picture was the same in every other retailer, even M&S and Waitrose, which tend to position themselves slightly higher up the scale. In every single vegetable section there were the same two choices: buy Chinese or go without.

I have contacted Morrisons to find out why Asian garlic was the only variety available but – no surprise – have yet to receive an answer.

This is madness. Garlic can be grown successfully in the UK and is being grown, from the Isle of Wight – where the country’s first garlic farm was started and where several new varieties have been developed – to Scotland.

There is irrefutable evidence that British garlic consumption is on the increase so why has there been no action? Why have supermarkets not got together to encourage growers to start planting and growing what is at the end of the day a remarkably simple crop to produce – and a far superior one to a Chinese product grown using goodness knows what by way of fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides?

Why has the AHDB, which claims to be the nerve centre of UK agriculture, not spotted the opportunity and helped stoke our output of homegrown garlic rather than continually obsessing about exports?

And how much longer before the Government and the entire farming industry get together and make selfreliance in food production the priority issue it deserves to be, rather than complacently relying on what the rest of the world cares to send us – as long as the Suez Canal remains open?

I went hunting for some in Morrisons the other day. The only garlic I could find was Chinese