Yes, we have no tomatoes



An article on yesterday's Fruitnet (yes, I cast my net wide!) blames UK supermarket shortages on...supermarkets.

According to Ged Futter, an expert on the Groceries Supply Code of Practice (GSCOP), legislation which came into force in 2010 to protect food and drink suppliers to major supermarkets in the UK from being treated unfairly, current supply shortages in UK supermarkets "are down in large part to retailers' all-consuming focus on price at the expense of product availability". Futter suggests that by driving hard bargains with their suppliers, ostensibly to protect consumers, the major supermarkets have led many suppliers simply to give up as their profit margins slump and their costs rise stratospherically. 

Ever since the Second World War the UK has been in thrall to the myth of cheap food. This was understandable at a time when the population was half-starved after the food rationing imposed by five years of war. That mentality has driven food policy ever since but it is ultimately self-defeating. 'Cheap' food is always paid for by someone, somewhere along the food chain. Consumers may benefit from lower prices at the till but what are the implications for their health, and who picks up the tab for poor nutrition and obesity in the community? Where producers have to make cutbacks food quality can be compromised and the environment suffers. More fertilisers, poor waste management, soil impaction, lower animal welfare standards, increased pollution and biodiversity losses all have a negative impact on our lives, for which we all pay, either directly or through our longer-term health outcomes.

It seems to me the supermarkets are more interested in their profits, shareholder dividends and market-share than they are about their customers. And successive government policies haven't helped much either. After the War, supplies of meat and butter from the Old Commonwealth were able to resume at volume. Then, when the UK joined the European Economic Community (EEC) or 'Common Market' in 1973, suppliers in Australia and New Zealand were unceremoniously dumped in favour of its new trading partners. This left food production to the vagaries of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), resulting in the obscenity of 'butter mountains' and 'wine lakes', all to sustain uneconomic (though arguably more environmentally sustainable) European farming practices.

The much more efficient and cost-effective practices of UK farmers and food producers gave rise to what became known as 'agribusiness', where 'prairie farming' and 'factory farming' achieved higher outputs but at a huge cost in terms of environmental degradation, lower animal welfare and compromised food safety. (No-one who lived through the BSE 'mad cow disease' outbreak in 1990 can ever forget the chilling image of Conservative Agriculture Minister, John Selwyn Gummer, feeding his young daughter a beefburger to show that British beef was actually safe to eat.) 

Eventually, the implementation of new European Union (EU) directives on environmental protection, with landowners receiving subsidies to restore, protect and enhance biodiversity through 'set-aside' schemes - returning cultivated areas and marginal land to nature and replanting grubbed-up hedges and trees - led to greener farming practices. Now, with the UK out of the EU, farmers and growers have been assured by government that EU subsidies will be matched after Brexit. 

However, the sector seems oddly sceptical, especially in a period of soaring costs and high inflation. The new trade deals with Australia and New Zealand signed off by Liz Truss (remember her?) which could see further imports of cheap beef and lamb flood into the UK have, for some unfathomable reason, failed to reassure them either. Their growing anger could have huge political implications. The politely attentive reception accorded to opposition leader, Sir Keir Starmer, by the recent National Farmers' Union (NFU) annual conference, contrasting with the dusty reception they gave to Thérèse Coffey, seems to testify to the possibility of a marked shift in voting intentions from Conservative to Labour in rural communities at the next General Election. 

Ms Coffey, the hapless (or should that be hopeless?) Secretary of State at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), had been getting a bad press before her lacklustre conference appearance further alienated farmers. Her latest complacent comments on substituting seasonal British-grown turnips for imported out-of-season tomatoes and other salad stuffs have been received with a mixture of incredulity and hilarity. Nor was her channelling of Baldrick helped by news that England's so-called 'turnip king', Suffolk farmer Richard Parry, who grew some 70 million of the root vegetable, had now given up on them in favour of potatoes and carrots. His reason? Largely the problems in getting hold of European labour to tend and harvest them post-Brexit. 

While eating seasonally-available homegrown food in place of expensively-imported foreign alternatives is obviously to be encouraged, as a net importer of food the UK needs to work much, much harder to safeguard such home production as it has and increase it where possible. This can only be done by paying food producers a fair return for their efforts. If this means higher prices then government will have to come up with solutions to protect consumers (especially poorer ones) from exploitation by greedy retailers. 

Importing salad stuffs from Holland, Spain and Morocco while acres of greenhouses in England lie empty or have been demolished because growers can no longer afford to heat them is plain crazy. The Lea Valley in North London was until recently described as the Cucumber Capital of Britain, producing around 75% of the nation's cucumbers right on the capital's doorstep. No longer. This situation needs to be looked at seriously and holistically and Ms Coffey's risible "let them eat turnips" solution is just a Marie-Antoinette-in-reverse fantasy - an insult to British producers and consumers alike.

Pile it high and sell it cheap has clearly passed its sell-by date.





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