Fruit and veg shortages

[Buttalapasta]

I'm not in the UK but I keep on seeing pictures on Twitter of empty supermarket shelves for fruit and veg. Is it really a problem or are they isolated issues?

No problems here in the Midlands. You might get the odd item sold out sometimes but that’s normal for pre-covid/brexit/cost of living crisis too.

The only thing we can't get at the moment is peppers

No spinach in Waitrose yesterday
Sure I'll survive.

There are lots of gaps every time I go to the supermarket across the board. So no it’s not great but if you live somewhere else there’s no need to send aid. We can cope. There’s always chocolate and gin.

There's definitely been less veg on the shelves in my local Lidl recently. Don't know the reason. I do know there were no tomatoes of any type in the supermarkets in my town last week. The veg stacker in Tescos said there'd be none for 4 weeks due to a crop virus in Spain. Google told me British farmers can't afford to heat their greenhouses due to high fuel costs so they're not producing at the moment.

No peppers here either. Everything else is ok.

there is plenty of fruit and veg here at the moment, but very little choice, you just buy what is in stock rather than set off looking for something specific

last saturday afternoon tesco was pretty bare, no tomatoes,
not many eggs.

plenty the next day though
i am going shopping later and a bit concerned it is going to be the same situation.

I get most of my veg from a local farm shop which doesn't seem to have any issues, but I noticed that our local Tesco had no tomatoes at all on Friday afternoon.

Supermarkets still ok where I am, peppers have been coming and going for months.

i had heard about the tomato issue and stocked up on tinned tomatoes, which is not the same

Hit and miss round here. Often non of the prepack fruit which is fine for me but may be tough on those who can't chop their own.

Haven't seen a cucumber in months!

It’s seems to be specific items for a couple of weeks rather than everything. Last week I couldn’t get raspberries and this week I couldn’t get fresh tomatoes but I only tried one shops. There is is plenty of fruit and veg overall.

Plenty of everything where I am. Never seen gaps.
I regularly get everything we need - including eggs, cucumbers and peppers! The shelves are always rammed. So these issues must be very localised.

The only thing I've noticed is tomatoes, but that's only been the last week or so. Have managed to get some just not the ones I usually get, not a big issue really.

We go through cucumbers at a decent rate and haven’t had any issues. Must be area specific.

I wouldn’t be shocked to encounter shortages though, from what I can gather farmers all over Europe are having a tough time with crops due to weather (going on for some time) primarily so it’s not unexpected.

Never seen any gaps in any of the supermarkets I shop in, sburys, marks, Waitrose

When I went shopping last week my local medium-sized supermarket had no tomatoes at all, only a few packs of peppers and no cucumbers. There was a sign on the shelves saying there were problems with supplying lettuce due to recent weather conditions in Spain, the lettuces did look quite well stocked on that day though.
Tomatoes and lettuce were in stock elsewhere though (at local small co op and the independent greengrocers) so it may have been that one supermarket's supply chain issues (not for the first time)

No tomatoes or peppers in either tesco or sainsbury's here on Saturday.

Yes occasionally, now we have Brexited we are not priority/easiest for European producers so when Europe produces less we will see gaps more.

Fucking stupid to cut our excellent food trading route up, but there you go.

We were shocked at the supermarket Friday afternoon, the fruit and veg isles were almost bare. Big Tesco store. No tomatoes, peppers, bananas at all. Literally half of the fruit and veg section was bare shelves. We commented on it as DH said this is what he'd seen on Twitter.

Why is it happening?

Excuse me, we do produce fruit & veg in Lincolnshire you know.

No shortages here.

No tomatoes in Aldi on Thursday. Managed to get some in Sainsburys on Friday though (though there weren’t many). Makes sense if there’s a crop failure.

I went to Tesco yesterday (East Scotland) and there were rows and rows of empty shelves in fruit and veg. There were some potatoes, apples and broccoli. Almost nothing else. I found it really unsettling.

I thought it was a one off and they were just waiting for a delivery or something.