No Sunflower /Vegetable oil / tomatoes in shops...!!

[earsup]

We have bought 4 bottles a few weeks ago...yesterday and today went to 5 different supermarkets to get bits....and no oils at all...just some expensive Olive oil left on shelves....also no tomatoes for a few days now....!

Just out of interest, how much sunflower oil does an average family get through? I'd expect a bottle to last month's.
Not saying this won't become an issue in the making of lots of other things. Just wondering at a household level what you do to need a bottle after a week

Just buy a different oil.
And stop stockpiling it!

Our reasonably large Lidl had a lot of empty shelves today. They've not had flour for a couple of weeks now, i think I got the last box of dishwasher tablets, very few crisps to choose from etc.

We buy a bottle of olive oil every week (not stockpiling, this is generally how much we use) and maybe one bottle of rapeseed oil a month, no issues with either.
Tomatoes I’ve been getting fine but dd alerted me to a potential tomato shortage while deliverooing a McDonald’s the other day and was told that with a particular burger they were only putting in one slice due to shortages - she wasn’t particularly bothered as said she would have only asked for the tomato to be removed anyway!

How can you use a bottle of oil a week?

Errr, I don’t know, we just do

If you bake cakes then you can get through a lot of oil. Several off my recipes use sunflower oil not butter.

I have that feeling before lockdown when people were saying what was coming and noone was payinh much attention.

Why aren't we listening to farmers/supply line peopme at shops etc.

What will happen? What will it affect? What meeds to change?

If fiid is going to increSe like gas that will hugely affect us, and I imagine many families. Maybe not ghe mumsnet "high earners" but those on average or below incomes are being really hit.

Lmao at people having to defend their use of oil. Some people need to stick to doing their laundry. You can get big 5l bottles at Asda for 6/7 pounds...if you normally buy those then it would make sense to buy 4-5 one litre bottles from Aldi....

OP I've had a problem buying tomatoes for the past 2-3 weeks

I know you bought it for friends but that's actually still part of the problem. Buy what you need, when you need it, and let them do the same, then there will be far fewer issues.

Also get some perspective? If your friends (or you) can't get hold of a specific oil of your preference for a couple of weeks, it really isn't the end of the world. You don't need to panic buy 4 bottles for them.

I'm sure we are going to have to get used to this.
Annoying but as long as there are substitutes not a major problem. Bread is the big worry. But we'd survive.

You could always chose to have a normal diet and then you'll be fine.

Pathetic.

There have been sporadic shortages of all sorts of things, on and off, since Brexit. Currently our nearby Tesco and Lidl have had no boxes of tissues for 2 weeks.

Obviously sunflower oil production and distribution has been badly affected. But there is other oil available.

@VeganVampire

I'm surprised that the whole food supply thing isn't worrying more people to be honest. In the agricultural industry we've known about the problems for weeks - the Ukraine isn't called the bread basket of Europe for nothing - we're basically shitting ourselves and waiting for it to really happen.

It's very worrying especially as the shortages won't kick in fully until the food that should have been planted around now isn't available later in the year.

We're going to have to get used to having a lot less choice and things costing a lot more.

We probably won't get to the stage where food is genuinely short, but we will need to use another oil or animal fat instead of sunflower oil and maybe use less of it by changing recipes and cooking techniques accordingly.

No household needs a bottle of oil a week, whatever they do with it.

Weirdly, I bought a bottle of vegetable oil yesterday for a school cooking project. I never normally buy it, but as I was looking for the most economical and smallest bottle (I need about a teaspoonful) I spent a minute or two scanning the shelf - the shelves were full with several different options.

I had no idea there was a shortage. I’ll make sure I find a good home for the rest of the bottle.

I eat a lot of tomatoes and hadn’t noticed a shortage there either.

I should have said, there were several types of sunflower oil as well as vegetable oil.

We are nowhere self-sufficient in many basic foodstuffs in the UK, so the government's response is to encourage farmers to 're-wild' and grow less food.

I was listening to The Daily podcast yesterday and they had an episode on fertiliser from Russia. It's worth a listen if your anxiety isn't already sky high. I think there will be many challenges with food in the near future.

There were no tomatoes in morrisons yesterday they are one of ds safe foods too hoping its not the same everywhere locally

I think it would take me more than a year to use 4 bottles of oil.

OP maybe you need to rethink your diet.

so the government's response is to encourage farmers to 're-wild' and grow less food.

It's not farmers rewilding it's big corporations buying up farm land to plant trees on to offset their huge energy consumption.

Win win for the big corps, lose lose for the uk resident
Listen to farming today on radio 4 today.

@underneaththeash it's great to hear that there are no problems. I'll let the agricultural industry know that as long as everyone chooses to have a 'normal diet', they won't be affected by the shortage of wheat for bread, biscuit, pasta and animal feed, or the lack of diesel to run tractors for harvest (we couldn't buy any the other week when we were planting spring barley) and then no adblu (trade with Russia) to keep engines running.

The shortage of food oil can be replaced from the thousands of acres of oilseed rape that are no longer grown because of the inability to control cabbage flea beetle (banning of neonicotinioids) - where the actual fuck do you think the replacement oil will come from?

And I suppose that you believe the idiot on the television who claims that the UK has so much nitrogen kicking around that we don't need to rely on imported fertilisers - you're all fucking delusional!!

Mumsnet react by calling Lidl 'crap'

Retail have been warning about this for quite a while now. This is the reality out here in the real world...

Stores have been slated ( not just food retail) because of vendor problems. We get called all sort of names daily by customers 'suppose you'll blame it on covid like everything else'

Well yes! And Brexit,war.... all a reason for it no, not an EXCUSE

There is going to be a paper shortage as a significant amount of pulp was sourced from Russia. I work for one of the largest paper suppliers in the UK, and we have had to prioritise supplying the NHS and the police.