We are capable of growing salad vegetables under glass in the UK all year around – not enough to meet supply, but certainly enough to deal with shortfalls.
True.
Adam Smith and growing those grapes in Scotland comes to mind.
The problem is that growing salad vegetables in the UK has been made economically unviable, both by those shortsighted supermarkets and in large part by Brexit. Growers in the Lea Valley around London, regarded as Britain’s salad bowl, have started applying to knock down dozens of acres of greenhouses so the land can be used more profitably for houses.
OK, that sounds good. Moving an asset from a lower value use to a higher value use is the very definition of the place becoming richer. That’s what wealth creation is, by that very definition.
Some will argue that the supermarkets are refusing to pay more because they can’t pass on the costs to already hard-pressed consumers battling a cost of living crisis; that to suggest we should pay more for our food when so many are reduced to using food banks is a grossly insensitive argument made from a place of affluence. But if we structure our food system so that those in poverty can access it, we will only further damage our agricultural base. We need on the one hand to deal with the functioning of our food system and on the other with poverty, with a chronically unequal distribution of wealth. We need to stop talking about food poverty and just call it poverty.
And there’s the stupidity.
The Jay Rayner solution to expensive salad vegetables is to insist on growing them more expensively, in a more expensive place, so that they’re more expensive.
Well done that man, vry well done
Well, it’s Jay Rayner. Inherited toxicity from his mother, Clare. With added midwittery
I think these people have never heard of “air freight”
“The problem is that growing salad vegetables in the UK has been made economically unviable,
both by those shortsighted supermarkets and in large part by Brexit”by the policies of successive governments in their war against fossil fuels.The BDS is strong in this one….
Addolff, you tell the truth all too plainly.
There’s a 3 word refutation to the fresh tomato shortage being due to Brexit. Republic of Ireland.
How exactly could Brexit have made growing salad veg in the UK more difficult? Its UK production for UK consumption. Where does anything to do with Brexit (ie issues getting stuff from the continent to the UK or vice versa) come into it? The only thing stopping you building and operating greenhouses in the UK are a) UK planning laws, b) UK energy costs and c) what the supermarkets will pay (which isn’t enough because they are cunts). All unrelated to Brexit.
“The Jay Rayner solution to expensive salad vegetables is to insist on growing them more expensively, in a more expensive place, so that they’re more expensive.”
No the JR solution to expensive salad veg is to subsidise expensive UK production, pay the consumer more benefits and tax everyone else to the hilt to pay for everything. See UK energy policy.
How exactly could Brexit have made growing salad veg in the UK more difficult?
Because everything is the fault of brexit.
Or thatcher.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail…
I wonder if Mr Rayner has ever grown anything more than mustard and cress on a piece of blotting paper?
How is it even possible to have shortages of tomatoes, but you can still buy a big fuck-off bag of weed anytime you want for the usual price?
@Steve
What Tim said. Weed is a higher value cash crop than tomatoes. Hence it is still being grown and sold.
As for food banks: people tend to see these as a mark of shame for the country. I think they are great. When the country was confronted by a poverty problem, the nation pulled together and created a bunch of privately run food banks that succeeded in feeding the poor. It was done with speed and efficiency. British people can organise and run things when we want to. The food banks prove it.
How long would it have taken the government to do it?
We are capable of growing salad vegetables under glass in the UK all year around…
It is perfectly possible to exist without salad vegetables (whatever they are) when the season it says “no”.
…not enough to meet supply, but certainly enough to deal with shortfalls.
A bit like using traditional electricity generation when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow? When there are no shortfalls, the expensive back-up salad vegetables can be turned off.
We need to stop talking about food poverty and just call it poverty.
Fair enough although alternatively different types of poverty perhaps deserve the status of protected characteristics: let’s hear it for Beluga poverty, Lamborghini poverty and, woe, Petrus poverty.
Salamander – so you’re saying we should replace tomatoes with organic, seasonal, locavoreish British magic mushrooms?
I agree, and so does my mate Pete’s dragon.
@Steve – Between the weed and the magic mushrooms, do you have some kind of drug problem?
😀
JG – I wouldn’t call it a problem? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Shortage of vegetables? I’m eating English asparagus in February!!!
Growers in the Lea Valley around London, […] have started applying to knock down dozens of acres of greenhouses so the land can be used more profitably for houses.
1957 I was 2½ when the family moved to a new-build house in the Lea Valley that had previously been greenhouses.
1957 I was 2½ when the family moved to a new-build house in the Lea Valley that had previously been greenhouses.
At about that time I was being introduced to angling in the Lea Valley.
Will the greenhouses be knocked down, or carefully dismantled so that they can be put up somewhere else? Come to think of it, there would be room for some pretty big greenhouses in my garden.
MSM: “there’s a shortage of X” (often based on a few empty shelves in the Highgate Waitrose). As a reaction, people stock up on X (see bog roll immediately post-Brexit). Result = a real shortage of X.
File under: wet pavements cause rain.
there was a big tomato producing greenhouses near to me, but they stopped production because the conservatives and their net zero delusion.https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/business/21264737.gas-price-rise-forces-suffolk-tomato-giant-cease-production/
“not enough to meet supply, but certainly enough to deal with shortfalls.”
Is he really stupid enough to advocate growing crops on the off chance that there might be a shortfall in supplies from overseas? He’s so dim he must be a quisling.
Grow them more expensively *and* keep the poor on a short leash with ration cards and government subsidies.
The last part is the real goal.
The supermarkets like a lot of businesses obviously thought that major supply chain issues weren’t a high risk, the question now is how do they view the risk and what mitigation do they want to put in place.
TMB,
“Fair enough although alternatively different types of poverty perhaps deserve the status of protected characteristics: let’s hear it for Beluga poverty, Lamborghini poverty and, woe, Petrus poverty.”
One thought: Did we have fresh tomatoes in February 35+ years ago? Or was everyone running on tins? Like, I was born long after wartime rationing, I was certainly not deprived, but I remember lots of fruit being tinned, especially in winter. Which makes me wonder if tomatoes were. Like salads were a summer thing. You got out in the garden and had some. Winter, you had some chops or casserole with potatoes and swede.
I mean, are there any scenes like Michael Buerk reporting from Ethiopia in 1984? No. We’ll no doubt be nagged with stories about how fat everyone is once this passes.
Did we have fresh tomatoes in February 35+ years ago?
Largely grown under glass in Holland and pretty tasteless. This technology is not new.
I remember apples rrom NZ in the 1980s, SAfrican, Sicilian and Israeli citrus fruits as well. We didnt get much in the way from N Africa in those days except Egyptian spuds and Libyan terrorists, it mostly went to France
BoM4 – Rationing ended in, I think, 1955 but even ten years after that the now ubiquitous avocado pear in all its guises -smooth and green, dark and knobbly- was an outlandish delicacy rarely seen while olive oil was bought at the chemists, probably to assist with problems with one’s insides.
People were generally happy with seasonality well into the 70s but exotic stuff was canned: pineapple in rings or chunks, peaches in halves or slices and Birds custard or Carnation added that sophisticated finishing touch.
Yesterday Mme Bison bought some cherries reduced from exhorbitant to ridiculous. I have six espaliered cherry trees against a wall. I hope to send the fruit to Argentina in a few monthys to see if we can work the wheeze in the opposite direction.
dearieme – enough to deal with shortfalls
Absolutely, he IS that dim. Also dim enough to believe that being salad-poor in winter is an affront to one’s human rights.
As a matter of interest, why does one never hear of people who are fag-poor or booze-poor?
Shortage of summer vegetables in the middle of winter, shock horror.