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"There cannot be a crisis next week. Europe schedule is already full": Recession, food shortages, rising cost of living, failing government healthcare system, the UK Govt grappling with multiple crises have spiraled out of control almost simultaneously

The empty supermarket shelves aren’t just a blip. They’re a symptom of a dysfunctional system
 |  Satyaagrah  |  News
The empty supermarket shelves aren’t just a blip. They’re a symptom of a dysfunctional system
The empty supermarket shelves aren’t just a blip. They’re a symptom of a dysfunctional system

The lack of tomatoes in UK supermarkets is a little disconcerting when you’re used to eating what you want, whenever you want. Thanks to global supply chains, Brits have become accustomed to eating avocados in the depths of winter and spinach at the height of summer. Now, as supermarkets ration cucumbers and bell peppers, our salad days may be over.

Of course, bare shelves aren’t completely unprecedented these days. The great loo roll and pasta shortages of the 2020 pandemic are gone but not forgotten. But the dearth of produce in 2023 may just be a taste of what’s to come as the climate crisis screws up weather patterns around the world.

The UK imports 46% of its food, with self-sufficiency at about 54% in fresh vegetables (tomatoes, though technically a fruit, count as a vegetable here) and just 16% in fruit. This is highly dependent on the season: From December through to March, the nation imports 95% of its tomatoes and 90% of its lettuce. When it works, it’s great. Some imported foods actually have a lower carbon footprint than the home-grown stuff — a 2009 study found that importing lettuce from Spain to the UK during winter results in three to eight times lower emissions than producing it locally.

But the collision of Brexit, the energy crisis, and climate change have wrenched salad off the menu for the next few weeks at least.

Crop yields are suffering after a cold snap in Spain and floods in Morocco — and we Brits rely on these countries to feed us in the winter. Meanwhile, high gas prices have put off domestic and Dutch growers from planting in greenhouses over the cold months. Some growers actually found it far more profitable to sell their gas contracts than grow food. We’re yet to feel the full brunt of Brexit’s impact on our food supply chains, as border controls on food coming from the European Union are not due to be introduced until 1 January 2024, but it’s striking how supermarkets on the continent have tomatoes and peppers in abundance. 

Although the UK’s great salad shortage will hopefully be temporary, it highlights the very real global problem of food security.

With the world’s food supply built on teetering blocks of super-suppliers (76% of global maize exports come from just four countries, and 86% of the world’s soybeans are grown in just three nations, for example) and just-in-time supply chains, it doesn’t take much of a shock to cause shortages in even the most food-secure countries. And you can bet those shocks will start coming faster as the climate crisis increases the intensity and frequency of droughts, floods, and other weird weather events. In the meantime, natural gas is only going to get more expensive as fossil fuels are eventually phased out, making life harder for growers and farmers, who are already diversifying away from food in order to make ends meet.

The other issue, of course, is that agriculture also happens to be one of the leading causes of climate change. From field to supermarket, food accounts for 26% of global greenhouse gas emissions, thanks mostly to land-use change and a proliferation of methane-belching animals.

So, if we’re going to build a sustainable, resilient food supply, then we’re going to have to change what we eat and how we grow it. Thankfully, that doesn’t have to look like Environment Secretary Therese Coffey’s suggestion of “turnips.” There are ways to boost domestic production and move toward net zero at the same time.

Take two giant greenhouses in England, covering 70 acres and growing about 12% of the UK’s tomatoes. Unlike standard gas-powered greenhouses, these use waste heat from adjacent water-treatment works to warm themselves by way of industrial heat pumps, reducing CO2 emissions by 75%. Future projects by developer Oasthouse Ventures plan to capture and use waste carbon dioxide from water plants in the greenhouses as well (to speed up the growth of the tomatoes or other plants, growers increase the amount of CO2 inside).

According to Andy Allen, director of Oasthouse Ventures, there are about 40 potential sites in Britain that could use the same method, recycling waste heat and CO2 to enable the UK to grow much more of its own food — or even flowers — throughout the year with a fraction of the carbon footprint. Though they’re more expensive to build than standard gas-powered greenhouses, the economies of scale, increased yields and better efficiency mean it’s more cost-effective in the long term.

This is the kind of innovation we’ll need to reach our net zero and food security goals, but the UK isn’t making it easy. Last year, the company had to abandon a plan to build two greenhouses between a sewage work and an abattoir in Wrexham, Wales. The local planning office rejected the proposal for reasons related to its location in the countryside and impact on the landscape — grounds that were later found to be unjustified upon an appeal. It was eventually approved, but by then the government’s non-domestic Renewable Heat Incentive scheme had ended, meaning the project had to be ditched.

Oasthouse Ventures is now hoping to get planning permission for two other lo- carbon greenhouse projects in England which, if approved, would produce 54,400 tons of tomatoes a year. In 2021, the UK produced just 68,300 tons, so it’d nearly double the UK’s tomato production. But the Wrexham incident has cost a lot of money and time. Allen says the company is now also looking at expanding to the US, citing a more pro-business attitude than in the UK.

It’s a frustrating example of how red tape, NIMBYism, and a lack of long-term thinking in government are holding back both food security and the net zero transition. Britain needs a radical overhaul of its land use, food, and planning strategies, and quickly.

There are plenty of other solutions that the UK, and others, will need to get behind in order to strengthen food security, such as embracing technologies including vertical farming, precision fermentation, and genetically-modified crops. Regenerative agricultural methods show promise in improving both yields and biodiversity. Growers have called for a more reliable workforce and fairer retail negotiations, as well as investment into better water capture and storage to stave off droughts. The UK is likely to always be dependent on imports, but it could also diversify its suppliers so that when drought hits one region, the risk is mitigated.

This won’t be the last time that climate change threatens to empty supermarket shelves. - (Source - washingtonpost.com)

You can blame the weather and Brexit. But there’s more to the UK’s food supply crisis - 

In October 2014 I () told the Defra select committee that we needed to start paying more for our food. If we did not do so, we risked paying vastly more later and experiencing shortages in supply, resulting in empty shelves. For decades the supermarket sector had been given a free run at our food supply chain by governments of both stripes. Just a dozen companies then controlled 95% of UK food retail and used that economic might to force such drastically tight deals on producers that many had gone out of business. Our self-sufficiency had withered. We were now, I said, at serious risk from external shocks disrupting our food supply because we were so dependent on imports.

I didn’t expect one of those external shocks to be self-inflicted, but then the Brexit vote came along. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of how deformed our food system had become knew it would have a drastic impact.

And now here we are in 2023, with shelves emptied of salad vegetables and rationing in supermarkets. Is it solely a product of our leaving the EU? No, of course not – a fact that bug-eyed Brexiters cling to. Yes, there have been weather issues. But isn’t it curious that the supply problems we have here are not being replicated in France, Spain or even Ukraine; that social media is plump with pictures of their stores groaning with fresh produce?

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. There are those who claim grandly that there’s something intrinsically distasteful and wrong about eating such foods out of season; that, as environment secretary Thérèse Coffey said last week, we should make do with turnips. That’s to misunderstand the history of agriculture. Humanity has been interfering with how and when crops grow since wild grasses were first domesticated on the banks of the Nile thousands of years ago. It’s called progress.

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. As the Lea Valley Growers Association has explained, the post-Brexit seasonal workers’ scheme only granted six-month visas when they were needed for nine months. It meant bringing in two cohorts and doubling the training. That means extra costs which are not being met by supermarkets.

Then came the energy crisis. The government chose not to subsidize the energy costs of growers. Last week APS Group, one of the largest tomato growers in the country, admitted it had left some of its glasshouses unplanted for the first time in almost 75 years.

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.

Turning to overseas markets for our supply when there has been disruption does not, of course, make things cheaper. It makes them vastly more expensive. The supermarkets have been able to get some stock, but wholesalers supplying other parts of the economy, like the hospitality sector and independent shops, have been left very short. Supermarket rationing has been introduced in part to stop those smaller businesses from buying what they need from supermarkets.

And why is the UK not being supplied as once it was? Could it have something to do with getting trucks through borders mired in post-Brexit paperwork? Dutch lorry drivers complained last week on social media about border checks adding hours to their shifts. Far easier, then, to get stock to supermarkets across a borderless Schengen zone.

This is the problem with running down British agriculture and depending on imports. In 2006, Labour published a paper on food security nicknamed in food circles the “leave it to Tesco” report because it argued that in a globalized world, a rich UK could buy its way out of any supply issues. It failed to recognize the growing dominance of emerging economies like India and China, which were buying the crops we wanted. But at least we had the EU and the ease of supply. And then we left it.

In a few weeks, perhaps a few months, the current problems will ease. The shelves will fill again. Those with an interest in doing so will insist it was just a blip. It isn’t just a blip. It’s a symptom of a dysfunctional food system. It’s a symptom of an overly mighty supermarket sector failing to behave like the custodian of the food supply chain it has become. And yes, it’s also a symptom of Brexit.

References:

theguardian.com

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