A variety of British vegetables, from tomatoes to cauliflower, risk being rationed this year as farmers struggle to meet rising energy costs, the head of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) has warned.
Minette Batters, president of the England and Wales industry group, said shoppers could face limits on some vegetables, with the production of British tomatoes and cucumbers already falling.
We are going into “uncertain times” Ms Batters said in an interview in Birmingham on Tuesday.
“Everybody wants to avoid rationing, effectively, which is what we saw with eggs in December.”
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“But I think there are going to be challenges on availability of some food items,” including tomatoes, peppers and salad ingredients in general – which are often grown in heated, covered buildings.
“Field veg” such as potatoes, cauliflower and purple sprouting broccoli could also be impacted, she said.
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Ms Batters stressed that the “last thing anybody wants to do is to create a level of panic buying” and was hopeful rationing could be averted.
This would require government to extend support via the Energy and Trade Intensive Industries scheme to horticulture and poultry, some of farming’s most energy-dependent sectors, which are currently excluded, as an existing support scheme comes to an end in April.
She later warned in her speech to the NFU conference that “the clock is ticking” for the government to act.
“The real danger here is that unless we can give farmers and growers the confidence to keep investing, they’re producing less. That will drive further cost inflation for consumers. That’s what we want to avoid,” she told Sky News.
“This is, of course, all driven by the price of gas, which has come down, but is still three times higher than it was in 2019,” she added.
The government today announced at the conference £168 million in grants for farmers, focussed on new technology and innovation, such as robotics or cow mattresses to tackle lameness, to improve animal welfare and productivity.
Labour shortages, animal feed increases, inflation and supply chain disruption from the war in Ukraine are also challenging, Ms Batters said, as is adjusting to Brexit changes.
Her warning comes as the British Retail Consortium (BRC) warned that tomatoes were running low in supermarkets including Tesco and Sainsbury’s due to “difficult weather conditions” in the South of Europe and Northern Africa.
In winter, Britain has typically imported around 90% of crops like cucumbers and tomatoes, but has been nearly
self-sufficient in the summer.
Ms Batters urged retailers to be “sympathetic to renegotiating contracts” with farmers “while we’ve got this extreme volatility”.
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As well as costs, water security is also a “massive issue,” for farming, she said. Last summer’s record heat and a prolonged drought, fuelled by climate change, reduced yields for crops like potatoes and barley.
We are “lucky” in the UK with a temperate climate, she said. But with extreme drought in agricultural areas like Portugal and Italy last year, and Italy already bracing for another year of drought, “globally, water security is becoming a massive issue”.
“That’s an even greater need for us to take all self-sufficiency seriously and be producing more of our fruit and vegetables here, which has been the ambition that we have held for a long time,” she said.
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