6 ms·

Why UK supermarkets are rationing fruit and vegetables

32 points by LinuxBender 4y ago

kneebonian 4y ago
Is there any chance this is exacerbated by the Netherlands shutting down a ton of their farming?
- fh973 4y ago
  Wasn't this "just" livestock, due to nitrogen pollution of water?
  - orangepurple 4y ago
    How many Dutch farmers sold their properties and moved to Germany after this fiasco?
    - jeroenhd 4y ago
      I can't find any statistics about farmers selling their properties. I see an article about 25 farmers volunteering to be bought out and move on in one province, dated 2022-12-22. An article from 2022-11-10 lists a total of 31 farms nation wide. In practice, very little has happened after the last few years. Farmers don't want to leave to Germany. That'd solve the Dutch problem quite effectively, but you'll need someone to buy the land, and who would buy a farm ready to house 30.000 chickens if you can't keep get the license because of economic impact? This is why the government is offering to buy out farmers on the condition they don't use the money to start a farm elsewhere in the country, but very few farmers are budging. Give it a few years and I expect meat imports in other countries will become more expensive. The problems you're seeing right now are more likely to be the result of greenhouses shutting down because of entirely unrelated reasons.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  Not a lot of traditional farming has been shut down (that's still supposed to happen) and I expect those measures to mostly impact cheap meat production. You won't see the Netherlands farming bell peppers in the fields any time soon, despite the current state of global warming. Not year round, anyway. The greenhouses are closing down because of unrelated reasons; they're not profitable with the current prices of natural gas. It's cheaper to import from the (disappointing) harvest in the south than it is to grow these foods despite the price increase, so there's no reason to waste money on greenhouses at the moment. The fruits and vegetables listed do typically come from greenhouses, so there's a good chance it has something to do with that.
kerrsclyde 4y ago
In our local supermarkets this week there have been no tomatoes/peppers/salad to ration.
- drcongo 4y ago
  Same here. Hardly any veg on the shelves at all.
- nemo44x 4y ago
  Well at least it's lent so some people will have an easy sacrifice to make this year if they observe that.
- orangepurple 4y ago
  Where is local?
  - kerrsclyde 4y ago
    Cornwall - last stop on the line...
- implements 4y ago
  Sainsbury’s were completely out, but M&S are getting a reduced daily delivery. What I’ve found odd is that the market trader greengrocer stall hasn’t been on the high street for about two weeks - don’t know if that’s a widespread thing.
padjo 4y ago
Hopefully this will remind people how much of a delicate and magical thing it is to have fresh tomatoes in February in Britain
- orangepurple 4y ago
  Americans are used to getting fresh fruit and veggies year round from California and Texas by truck no matter the distance. The trucks take 3-5 days to arrive even if you live in Maine.
  - FlyingSnake 4y ago
    The ability of (some) Americans to make everything about them never fails to astonish me.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    A lot of it comes from Mexico and Central/South America.
- luch 4y ago
  Yep a lot of debate even here focus only on tariffs and benefits splits where the principal issue is that fruits and vegetables have a seasonality and as a civilisation we should be more cognizant of that.
petercooper 4y ago
British politicians have been very keen to say this isn't the fault of Brexit because a) energy costs, and b) weather issues affecting production. But those things still don't necessarily lead to shortages if retailers can rapidly move produce around or make temporary orders with different suppliers to plug the gaps, like they can on the continent. That's what Brexit has made a lot harder. So it can be "Brexit's fault" or not "Brexit's fault" depending on what side of the fence you sit on.
- imdsm 4y ago
  Brexit won't have helped, but I'm sure supermarkets price gouging through inflation is a worse contributor to this. When they're stonewalling farmers with low ball pricing, there's no incentive to produce.
  - petercooper 4y ago
    That as well! It boggled my mind when I learnt about how a lot of agricultural output is priced. You'd expect the folks producing milk or selling eggs to, well, determine the prices, but no, no no..
    - Veen 4y ago
      It's what happens when there is a de facto monopsony. Farmers can sell goods for whatever the supermarkets demand, or their produce can rot.
      - klondike_klive 4y ago
        Unfortunately it's often both - farmers have to grow way more than they need to make sure there's enough to meet supermarket demand after adverse weather, pests etc.
      - lotsofpulp 4y ago
        Is there a monopsony in the UK? It seems like there are at least 6 or 7 supermarket companies in the UK, presumably they are not all buying from farmers as 1 entity? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supermarket_chains_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supermarket_chains_in_...
imdsm 4y ago
Let's not ignore the voices of UK farmers too, who are switching off greenhouses because supermarkets are paying below cost prices, don't negotiate, and don't pass on profits. If supermarkets increase prices by more than 50%, they can't continue to pay producers the same prices (or only marginally more). Easy to put blame onto farmers but we've all known for a long time how much supermarkets gouge from the whole market. Time for UK & EU fair trade.
- vsareto 4y ago
  Farming as a whole is probably just going to have to become a sunk cost center for economies. Sure, no one will make a profit and we take money from high margin industries and move it into farming, but you also won't have food shortages.
- mrtksn 4y ago
  Do you say that there's some kind of market inefficiency where supermarkets are pocketing large profits or do you advocate for price increases?
- Nifty3929 4y ago
  Well, you can produce more, or have higher prices at the grocery store, or you can have empty shelves, or you can ration, or some combination of those. But that's about it. Of those, producing more sounds nice, but it takes more effort to do so, and you also need the correct pricing signals to make their way to the producers for that to happen. E.g. "Wow, we're getting twice the normal price for our tomatoes - let's grow more of them!" But then this requires a period of socially-uncomfortable profits for businesses along the way. The other three non-production options don't sound very nice, and our social aversion to profit discourages price increases, so we're left with empty shelves and/or rationing fairly often. In this case the grocery store chose to ration rather than raise prices or allow a few customers to buy up all the stock. But then there's no reason to pay upstream providers more, and therefore no incentive for those upstream providers to produce more.
- Veen 4y ago
  I've read arguments that food prices are unsustainably low, largely because of the pressure supermarkets put on their suppliers (the farmers). It seems that higher food prices are just something we're going to have to accept, which isn't so bad if it results in less waste and a fairer environment for food producers.
oellegaard 4y ago
I struggle to understand how the UK time after time has shortages on food while the EU countries are fully stocked - yet it has nothing to do with Brexit?
- mkmk3 4y ago
  Out of season produce in Netherlands has greatly increased in price
- 1970-01-01 4y ago
  Saying it has nothing to do with Brexit is like saying the wind has nothing to do with the weather. They're 100% linked.
irthomasthomas 4y ago
I don't understand why it's only UK supermarkets having problems? Germany and France each import more than twice as much Spanish vegetables as Britain, and they aren't complaining about shortages. https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/ESP/Year/LTST/TradeFlow/Export/Partner/by-country/Product/06-15_Vegetable https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/ESP/Yea... I highly suspect this press release is not capturing all of the drivers involved. For example, is it really better for a company to have a failed crop than it is to keep the lights on and raise the price of the produce? In Britain already we've seen food inflation blamed on rising energy prices. So I don't get why they are letting crops fail. Seems like a false economy? Spains greenhouses are so massive they can be seen from space. https://maps.app.goo.gl/VYWDhmvzeLF8Ldns9 https://maps.app.goo.gl/VYWDhmvzeLF8Ldns9
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  Foreign vegetables and fruit are actually more expensive in other countries as well because of a disappointing harvest. Prices also go up as greenhouses, usually a safe fallback for countries which can't grow vegetables all year in their climate, are turned off because of natural gas prices (they can't go electric because they use the CO2 burning it off produces). This leads to more competition on the international market. Here in the Netherlands, some vegetables and fruits are also rationed. I haven't seen any empty shelves, but you can't buy too many bell peppers at once because there just aren't that many available for the listed price. Importing food hasn't exactly been made easy after Brexit either. I imagine that plays a role in jacking up the prices and restricting availability compared to the rest of western Europe as well.
jonatron 4y ago
All the supermarkets near me don't have peppers. However all the small shops selling fruit and veg have plenty. I think it's partly due to the supermarkets demanding a specific size/shape/grade.
ploppyploppy 4y ago
My village shops don't have this problem in the south of the UK here.
rspoerri 4y ago
The UK is going "back to the roots" after the Brexit. Such as sauerkraut, potatoes and carrots ;-)
rvieira 4y ago
Interestingly, Spanish farmers say they have enough to go around and Brexit is to blame: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/feb/23/uk--fresh-food-shortages-rationing-spanish-farmers-blame-brexit-import-rules https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/feb/23/uk--fresh-f...
oliwarner 4y ago
Production is lower but EU/EEA single market countries aren't seeing these shortages. Many Brits seem quick to blame the EU for this, saying it's an artificial shortage but they'd do well to remember that bringing in fruit and veg now carries a duty tariff. Spanish tomatoes are available all over the EU but not in Tesco because it costs somebody 8.8%-14.4% extra to bring them into the UK. Thanks Brexit. It is fair to say domestic production of non-seasonal items is in the toilet because they rely on heated greenhouses and it'd be fair to blame Russia for ridiculous fuel prices. The market won't afford lettuce at three times normal price. But we wouldn't normally be eating domestic-grown salads over winter anyway.

32 points by LinuxBender 4y ago

kneebonian 4y ago

Is there any chance this is exacerbated by the Netherlands shutting down a ton of their farming?

fh973 4y ago
Wasn't this "just" livestock, due to nitrogen pollution of water?
- orangepurple 4y ago
  How many Dutch farmers sold their properties and moved to Germany after this fiasco?
  - jeroenhd 4y ago
    I can't find any statistics about farmers selling their properties. I see an article about 25 farmers volunteering to be bought out and move on in one province, dated 2022-12-22. An article from 2022-11-10 lists a total of 31 farms nation wide. In practice, very little has happened after the last few years. Farmers don't want to leave to Germany. That'd solve the Dutch problem quite effectively, but you'll need someone to buy the land, and who would buy a farm ready to house 30.000 chickens if you can't keep get the license because of economic impact? This is why the government is offering to buy out farmers on the condition they don't use the money to start a farm elsewhere in the country, but very few farmers are budging. Give it a few years and I expect meat imports in other countries will become more expensive. The problems you're seeing right now are more likely to be the result of greenhouses shutting down because of entirely unrelated reasons.
jeroenhd 4y ago
Not a lot of traditional farming has been shut down (that's still supposed to happen) and I expect those measures to mostly impact cheap meat production. You won't see the Netherlands farming bell peppers in the fields any time soon, despite the current state of global warming. Not year round, anyway. The greenhouses are closing down because of unrelated reasons; they're not profitable with the current prices of natural gas. It's cheaper to import from the (disappointing) harvest in the south than it is to grow these foods despite the price increase, so there's no reason to waste money on greenhouses at the moment. The fruits and vegetables listed do typically come from greenhouses, so there's a good chance it has something to do with that.

kerrsclyde 4y ago

In our local supermarkets this week there have been no tomatoes/peppers/salad to ration.

drcongo 4y ago
Same here. Hardly any veg on the shelves at all.
nemo44x 4y ago
Well at least it's lent so some people will have an easy sacrifice to make this year if they observe that.
orangepurple 4y ago
Where is local?
- kerrsclyde 4y ago
  Cornwall - last stop on the line...
implements 4y ago
Sainsbury’s were completely out, but M&S are getting a reduced daily delivery. What I’ve found odd is that the market trader greengrocer stall hasn’t been on the high street for about two weeks - don’t know if that’s a widespread thing.

padjo 4y ago

Hopefully this will remind people how much of a delicate and magical thing it is to have fresh tomatoes in February in Britain

orangepurple 4y ago
Americans are used to getting fresh fruit and veggies year round from California and Texas by truck no matter the distance. The trucks take 3-5 days to arrive even if you live in Maine.
- FlyingSnake 4y ago
  The ability of (some) Americans to make everything about them never fails to astonish me.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  A lot of it comes from Mexico and Central/South America.
luch 4y ago
Yep a lot of debate even here focus only on tariffs and benefits splits where the principal issue is that fruits and vegetables have a seasonality and as a civilisation we should be more cognizant of that.

petercooper 4y ago

British politicians have been very keen to say this isn't the fault of Brexit because a) energy costs, and b) weather issues affecting production. But those things still don't necessarily lead to shortages if retailers can rapidly move produce around or make temporary orders with different suppliers to plug the gaps, like they can on the continent. That's what Brexit has made a lot harder. So it can be "Brexit's fault" or not "Brexit's fault" depending on what side of the fence you sit on.

imdsm 4y ago
Brexit won't have helped, but I'm sure supermarkets price gouging through inflation is a worse contributor to this. When they're stonewalling farmers with low ball pricing, there's no incentive to produce.
- petercooper 4y ago
  That as well! It boggled my mind when I learnt about how a lot of agricultural output is priced. You'd expect the folks producing milk or selling eggs to, well, determine the prices, but no, no no..
  - Veen 4y ago
    It's what happens when there is a de facto monopsony. Farmers can sell goods for whatever the supermarkets demand, or their produce can rot.
    - klondike_klive 4y ago
      Unfortunately it's often both - farmers have to grow way more than they need to make sure there's enough to meet supermarket demand after adverse weather, pests etc.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      Is there a monopsony in the UK? It seems like there are at least 6 or 7 supermarket companies in the UK, presumably they are not all buying from farmers as 1 entity? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supermarket_chains_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supermarket_chains_in_...

imdsm 4y ago

Let's not ignore the voices of UK farmers too, who are switching off greenhouses because supermarkets are paying below cost prices, don't negotiate, and don't pass on profits. If supermarkets increase prices by more than 50%, they can't continue to pay producers the same prices (or only marginally more). Easy to put blame onto farmers but we've all known for a long time how much supermarkets gouge from the whole market. Time for UK & EU fair trade.

vsareto 4y ago
Farming as a whole is probably just going to have to become a sunk cost center for economies. Sure, no one will make a profit and we take money from high margin industries and move it into farming, but you also won't have food shortages.
mrtksn 4y ago
Do you say that there's some kind of market inefficiency where supermarkets are pocketing large profits or do you advocate for price increases?
Nifty3929 4y ago
Well, you can produce more, or have higher prices at the grocery store, or you can have empty shelves, or you can ration, or some combination of those. But that's about it. Of those, producing more sounds nice, but it takes more effort to do so, and you also need the correct pricing signals to make their way to the producers for that to happen. E.g. "Wow, we're getting twice the normal price for our tomatoes - let's grow more of them!" But then this requires a period of socially-uncomfortable profits for businesses along the way. The other three non-production options don't sound very nice, and our social aversion to profit discourages price increases, so we're left with empty shelves and/or rationing fairly often. In this case the grocery store chose to ration rather than raise prices or allow a few customers to buy up all the stock. But then there's no reason to pay upstream providers more, and therefore no incentive for those upstream providers to produce more.
Veen 4y ago
I've read arguments that food prices are unsustainably low, largely because of the pressure supermarkets put on their suppliers (the farmers). It seems that higher food prices are just something we're going to have to accept, which isn't so bad if it results in less waste and a fairer environment for food producers.

oellegaard 4y ago

I struggle to understand how the UK time after time has shortages on food while the EU countries are fully stocked - yet it has nothing to do with Brexit?

mkmk3 4y ago
Out of season produce in Netherlands has greatly increased in price
1970-01-01 4y ago
Saying it has nothing to do with Brexit is like saying the wind has nothing to do with the weather. They're 100% linked.

irthomasthomas 4y ago

I don't understand why it's only UK supermarkets having problems? Germany and France each import more than twice as much Spanish vegetables as Britain, and they aren't complaining about shortages. https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/ESP/Year/LTST/TradeFlow/Export/Partner/by-country/Product/06-15_Vegetable https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/ESP/Yea... I highly suspect this press release is not capturing all of the drivers involved. For example, is it really better for a company to have a failed crop than it is to keep the lights on and raise the price of the produce? In Britain already we've seen food inflation blamed on rising energy prices. So I don't get why they are letting crops fail. Seems like a false economy? Spains greenhouses are so massive they can be seen from space. https://maps.app.goo.gl/VYWDhmvzeLF8Ldns9 https://maps.app.goo.gl/VYWDhmvzeLF8Ldns9

jeroenhd 4y ago
Foreign vegetables and fruit are actually more expensive in other countries as well because of a disappointing harvest. Prices also go up as greenhouses, usually a safe fallback for countries which can't grow vegetables all year in their climate, are turned off because of natural gas prices (they can't go electric because they use the CO2 burning it off produces). This leads to more competition on the international market. Here in the Netherlands, some vegetables and fruits are also rationed. I haven't seen any empty shelves, but you can't buy too many bell peppers at once because there just aren't that many available for the listed price. Importing food hasn't exactly been made easy after Brexit either. I imagine that plays a role in jacking up the prices and restricting availability compared to the rest of western Europe as well.

jonatron 4y ago

All the supermarkets near me don't have peppers. However all the small shops selling fruit and veg have plenty. I think it's partly due to the supermarkets demanding a specific size/shape/grade.

ploppyploppy 4y ago

My village shops don't have this problem in the south of the UK here.

rspoerri 4y ago

The UK is going "back to the roots" after the Brexit. Such as sauerkraut, potatoes and carrots ;-)

rvieira 4y ago

Interestingly, Spanish farmers say they have enough to go around and Brexit is to blame: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/feb/23/uk--fresh-food-shortages-rationing-spanish-farmers-blame-brexit-import-rules https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/feb/23/uk--fresh-f...

oliwarner 4y ago

Production is lower but EU/EEA single market countries aren't seeing these shortages. Many Brits seem quick to blame the EU for this, saying it's an artificial shortage but they'd do well to remember that bringing in fruit and veg now carries a duty tariff. Spanish tomatoes are available all over the EU but not in Tesco because it costs somebody 8.8%-14.4% extra to bring them into the UK. Thanks Brexit. It is fair to say domestic production of non-seasonal items is in the toilet because they rely on heated greenhouses and it'd be fair to blame Russia for ridiculous fuel prices. The market won't afford lettuce at three times normal price. But we wouldn't normally be eating domestic-grown salads over winter anyway.