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I've been hearing about the UK food shortage recently, so I was curious to see what the cause was. A Google Search turned up this article from over two months a

• mynameisvlad 4y ago
  The article mentions > High temperatures and a lack of rain, followed by a period of cold weather, are being blamed for creating the “most difficult season ever,” Tim Casey, chairman of the Leek Growers Association, said. > Suppliers have warned that shortages could last weeks as a combination of bad weather and transport problems in Africa and Europe has left some fruit and vegetables out of stock.
  • b800h 4y ago
    Oh, don't let that get in the way of a good anti-Brexit story! Come on, man!
    • bee_rider 4y ago
      Easier trade would help smooth over short-term shortages.
      • b800h 4y ago
        As with Covid, I think one major contributor is the inflexibility of the supermarket supply chains. Even when local supermarkets have been missing cucumbers or something, they have been readily available, at slightly higher prices, at small shops. Right at the beginning you could say that was down to profiteering, but from what I've seen the supply network for these places flexed and was able to reconfigure a lot more quickly because it's less monolithic.
        • the_mitsuhiko 4y ago
          Why is this a uniquely British problem?
          • b800h 4y ago
            We have pinch points at the English Channel, which probably doesn't help. I expect that means that the delivery system is more "release train" and less "agile". Also, it's worth noting that it's not uniquely British; the Irish have had the same problems.
            • YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
              Looks like Agile to me: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/60111856 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/60111856 (source: worked as a mainframe engineer in an "Agile" team a large financial corp).
          • dazc 4y ago
            The people who complain about shortages of produce are the same people who complain prices being too high. As a consequence, supermarkets have become reliant on overseas producers who, sometimes, are not able to meet demand. People want to buy locally produced fruit and vegetables but they do not want the people who pick it to have a decent standard of living.
        • deleted 4y ago
          [deleted]
        • dazc 4y ago
          I saw a lady with a basket full of cucumbers in the supermarket the other day. I have never in my life bought a single cucumber and managed to consume the whole thing before it has gone off. I can sympathize with supermarkets having to try and mitigate every panic buying frenzy that the media are all too willing to encourage.
          • rcme 4y ago
            > I saw a lady with a basket full of cucumbers in the supermarket the other day. I have never in my life bought a single cucumber and managed to consume the whole thing before it has gone off. I think this is more of a reflection on you than it is on frenzied buying. It's pretty easy to eat multiple cucumbers a week if you like them.
    • Veen 4y ago
      They won't. Brexit and the Tories must be bemoaned every time a UK story appears on HN.
      • olddustytrail 4y ago
        When there's a train wreck, it's difficult to talk about the train without mentioning the wreck.
    • jjgreen 4y ago
      "Swedes to be renamed 'victory tomatoes'" Brexiteers proclaim
    • xxpor 4y ago
      Why are all of these things in Ukrainian supermarkets then?
      • b800h 4y ago
        Because Ukraine is in the EU? I don't know, you tell me.
        • docdeek 4y ago
          FWIW Ukraine is not in the EU.
        • megous 4y ago
          It's not. But it's a huge agricultural country the size of France, located in a different area.
          • b800h 4y ago
            Yes, that was sarcasm.
          • xxpor 4y ago
            It's also the middle of a war zone. Why is it easier to get tomatoes there than the UK? Why can't the UK use its massive GDP advantage to get them?
            • b800h 4y ago
              I had some lovely tomatoes last night. I expect it's just that Ukranian newspapers have better things to discuss than cucumber shortages, so there's no panic buying.
  • rcme 4y ago
    Interestingly, none of those reasons were listed in this article from December which seems to have perfectly predicted the current shortage. The article from December made it seem like farmers were squeezed by rising costs of labor, fertilizer, and other inputs and were facing buyers unwilling to budge on the price. So their only option was to reduce output.
    • mardifoufs 4y ago
      I think that could be right for turnips, but the produce shortages are, I think, not related. The weather in morocco has been pretty bad for vegetables, and agriculture there is extremely rain dependant. Not a good year for produce, and the moroccan government is pressured to lower exports even more since the optics of exporting food products that are scarce to europe is extremely bad.
    • fivefifty 4y ago
      The local producers did reduce output for those reasons, supermarkets etc instead went to source replacement produce from overseas, but those overseas suppliers also had a poor season and couldn't supply enough.
• cameronh90 4y ago
  I've been hearing about a UK food shortage recently too. However, living in the UK, I've not seen any evidence of it so far. Some things are out of stock sometimes, but that's reasonably normal. Never underestimate the capacity of our media to blow something up beyond all proportion. I don't doubt that supply is a bit lower than normal, but it's not like we're about to resort to cannibalism here.
  • b112 4y ago
    Paid stories are a thing. A very common thing. So is the desire to raise food prices, as seen by 50% food increase pricing on many things, in a year with 8% inflation (Canada). "Taking advantage of", class 101.
  • Semaphor 4y ago
    I read the Brexit subreddit for entertainment, last time there was a shortage, it seemed to be very regional. One place, people would post pictures of empty shelves, another everything would be normal.
• fivefifty 4y ago
  The Harrys Farm youtube channel explains it fairly basically in this video, I'll try and link direct to about where he talks about it specifically (although whole thing might be worth watching if you're interested in how farming works in the UK) https://youtu.be/b6m29rSSmCM?t=552 https://youtu.be/b6m29rSSmCM?t=552 For those who can't watch the video, basically the gist is most of the food in shortage (lettuce, tomato, cucumbers etc) is normally grown in the UK in large greenhouses from local producers, but energy prices got too high last year making it uneconomical to grow in a greenhouse as obviously it's energy intensive to do so. The govt refused any support and supermarkets rejected the potential higher prices and instead decided they could just source product overseas instead. The greenhouse producers therefore didn't plant much for this season, but the foreign sourced produce also had a poor harvest which resulted in no excess available for export to the UK and therefore some stores now can't stock some fresh produce. Energy prices have come down and so local UK produce growers are now growing again and should be back to normal supply in a couple of months. Although he mentions earlier in the video that this years wheat crop is doing poorly and that is normally used as animal feed which could mean potential future shortages for things like meat and eggs.