Wednesday 22 February 2023

Tomato wars

Twitter has been full of images of empty supermarket shelves for a week or so now with many of the accounts I follow asking if anyone else in Britain is suffering the same thing. And of course, if you ask a question like that someone else responds with a picture of another supermarket elsewhere in the country with empty shelves in the fruit and veg section. Now the BBC have reports of retailers officially rationing fruit and veg, particularly tomatoes and cucumbers. So, it is an accepted fact.

This tweet is typical of dozens:

The question being asked is why so? 

Personally, I can’t remember widespread rationing of any food since I was a small boy in the late 40s and early 50s, so what’s happening at the moment is certainly highly unusual. 

Let me be clear. I have no idea but remainers are (naturally) putting it all down to Brexit while the retailers and leavers (again naturally) claim it’s down to poor weather in Spain, where most of our tomatoes come from at this time of the year.  

Britain does appear to have been affected more than other countries. There are numerous tweets from people in Spain and France posting images of their local supermarkets with displays creaking under the weight of fruit and vegetables. The sheer choice and amounts are stunning. There are, however, odd reports of prices rising, something you find when items are in short supply.

This thread by Alex Taylor in France makes that point well:

The thread has plenty of pics from French retailers and in the responses, you can see supermarkets in Holland too.  There seems to be no shortage on mainland Europe.

Brexiteers like Julian Jessop say it’s not connected with Brexit at all (although he is engaged almost daily in defending Brexit from any and all charges):

Jessop links to a report in The Irish Times showing similar shortages in Ireland so it isn't strictly an EU problem. A wholesaler in Ireland says Spain has suffered 16 consecutive nights of below-zero temperatures in the last three weeks which has affected the production of broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, aubergines and courgettes.

So, it does seem to be mainly weather related.

However, Liz Webster from Save British farming puts it squarely down to Brexit and the deal the government negotiated, with labour shortages caused by ending freedom of movement among the specific reasons.

Jessop says we will have shortages if we don’t grow enough food ourselves, but growers of out-of-season stuff like tomatoes suffer from labour shortages and high energy costs. They can’t afford to turn on the heating and compete with lower-cost imports. That doesn't help. 

One Twitter user suggested it’s partly down to the lack of a ferry.  Chris Lowndes says a new route between Tangier in Morocco and Poole in Dorset that was announced in February 2020 to a big fanfare would have allowed trucks to move easily between Morocco (a quarter of UK tomatoes come from Morocco apparently) and Britain. In fact, there is no ferry because the Gibraltar-based company that was supposed to run it has gone bust.

Someone told me on Monday that the problem was persuading HGV drivers from Europe to come here because of the huge fines they face if an ‘illegal’ migrant decides to cling to an axle and isn’t detected in France. I’m sceptical about that because these fines have been in place for a long time, but you never know.

So, I have no particular insight, but I do remember seeing various warnings both before the 2016 referendum and before the TCA was agreed that if we were to experience shortages of fruit and vegetables it would be around this time of year when we need imports most.  So, it's a bit of a stretch for Brexiteers to deny their pet project is entirely innocent.

Countries which specialise in growing tomatoes, cucumbers and the like in winter tend to export their surplus, and if there isn’t a surplus, or a smaller one than expected there will be shortages. The price mechanism then kicks in to match supply with demand. On that point, I saw someone claim UK supermarkets don’t want to pay the higher prices, hence the shortages.

Our supply chains have certainly been disturbed, that's undeniable and are stretched at the moment because of all the reasons outlined, most of which are down to Brexit. Under the circumstances, shortages are probably a natural result. 

Food can’t be produced overnight. If there aren’t enough tomatoes to go around now, that’s likely to persist until the next crop is ready, which will be weeks away. 

If domestic growers aren’t geared up, don’t have the labour or can’t afford the heating costs, we don’t have a choice and must import. If wherever we import from suffers a shortage, it’s obvious that products will be harder to source and be more expensive.

If you create barriers to trade and make trade more difficult and costly that is bound to have an impact.

Yesterday, the NFU's president Minette Batters said, ‘volatility, uncertainty and instability are greatest risks to farm businesses' and that Britain’s farmers are being battered by Brexit fallout and rising costs. 

Brexit has made life more difficult for our own farmers and added to the problems of importing food from the obvious source in Europe. One is bound to say that shortages, fewer choices and higher prices are the inevitable results. We have been importing fresh fruit and veg from EU countries for years and I can’t believe southern Europe has never experienced bad weather before or won't again in future. 

A Defra spokesperson has claimed that “The UK has a highly resilient food supply chain and is well equipped to deal with a range of market fluctuations." I'm not convinced myself.


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