to think "everyone will have the food they need" is a way of saying that food choice will be limited

[chomalungma]

It's what Gove said this morning when asked about food after Brexit.

"Everyone will have the food they need"

I am sure that's true....and who needs a wide choice of food anyway.

Fresh fruit and vegetables are already more expensive than processed crap. Those people that can't afford them now, will still not be able to afford them after Brexit, and those that can afford them, will have to do without or pay more.

I don't think it's going to make people more unhealthy in their choices - the rich-poor divide with regards to freshness of food is already well and truly entrenched in Britain. People who eat crap will continue to do so, but not because of Brexit.

well if all the labour MP had voted for Teresa Mays deal we would not be in this position would we? And I don't see how you can negotiate if you withdraw the threat of no deal - the EU will just walk all over us.

The narrative has changed now. Apparently 52% voted to leave the EU at any cost, ie with no deal. Keep up.

I'm low carbing and like lots of salad, so he'd better provide me with this.

I'm more worried about medications.

It's probably possible to make Britain food self sufficient

Britain has not been self-sufficient in food for the last 200 years. Even during WW2, when every square inch of available land was turned over to cultivation, there was nowhere near sufficient food to feed the population. Since then, although yields have increased, the amount of available land has decreased as green fields have been turned into motorways, housing estates and retail parks, while at the same time, the population has continued to increase.

pottedshrimps - bad luck on the salad!

What I mean by that is they look upon us as vegetables as in no brain matter when that's exactly how they go about things themselves.
As they are not in the real world.
Never have been never will be.

I do grow vegetables at the moment, just a few. I can't afford a greenhouse, and I don't have space in my kitchen to store anything much. I don't even have a proper freezer! Lots of people have no garden, live in flats and also have no space, so growing all their own food will not be an option..

I do slightly take issue with the idea that EU farmworkers are no longer welcome though? I know quite a few EU workers (waiters, plumber, bus driver, care workers among them) including my own husband (been here 10 years) and none of them have any intention of leaving, nor have they felt like they are expected to.
Obviously noone knows how that will be in 2 years, but as a country we need our EU workers as much as we always did.

Who will all these foreign firms sell their produce to if they choose not to sell it to the UK. If there were other viable markets, they'd have sold to them instead of the UK decades ago.

If there are shortages due to customs/transport issues, the UK govt has the power to deal with those issues, such as redeploy more customs staff to the ports.

If tariffs make the goods more expensive to import, the govt can use the tax system to temporarily reduce food prices, such as changing the VAT rates etc.

There is so much within the control of the govt - if there were problems, they could be dealt with on a piecemeal basis to solve.

"Many mums of my generation of mothers died in their fifties"

i watch a lot of the old comedies and dramas. Ones from the 1960s onwards and while doing so i google the actors to find out more about them. What shocked me when i did this was the ages they were at the time some of these programmes were made. e,g, comedy series Father Dear Father. Actress Ursula Howells was 46 when she started playing the ex wife in this (same age as i am now) but looked a lot older. Ditto Beryl Reid who was only 50 to 52 when she did some guest appearances on the same show.

I wonder if diet and lack of vitamins when younger had something to do with it. And more people smoked of course.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/mar/09/raymond-blanc-navarin-lamb-recipe

You don't have to be a Brexiter to want to make the best of things you can't change.
The protests, the pressure on MPs, the scrutiny by (some) of the media are all ways in which we MIGHT be able to change it. As a pp says, It helps create uncertainty and worry in people's minds in the last few months before Brexit. Because we don't have to do this.

Moaning about food shortages achieves nothing. It's better to think of how positives might be brought out of the situation, than to wallow in misery because the 21st Century food extravaganza might grind to a halt. Again, this is disingenuous. I hadn't heard anyone tutting about a 'food extravaganza' until it was brought into play as an argument for why food shortages might not be such a bad thing.

And as for Moaning about food shortages achieves nothing. It's better to think of how positives might be brought out of the situation, I refer you back to the morphing nature of the pro-Brexit narrative.

My cats have agreed they’ll share some of the birds and mice they catch with me, and I’m going to grow my own cress. It’s going to be great, wee gott are cuntree bakk. Oh and blue passports.

Leave voters - well done for fucking this country up you bunch of utter fuckwits.

The bollocks about surviving the war really annoys me. Around 449,000 brits (including around 70,000 civilians) didn’t survive the bloody war.

And the UK only survived because there were food convoys from the US, supplied through loans which we finally paid off in 2006, 61 years after the end of the war. The country would have been utterly stuffed without them, and there were 20 million fewer people in the UK then. I don't know if the readership of the Daily Express and the Torygraph thinks that Trump is going to boot up the Lend Lease programme again but (spoiler alert) he isn't.

Anyone who thinks the situation in WW2 is even vaguely relevant to a no-deal Brexit situation knows fuck all about WW2 (or Brexit).

FFS, my phone double checks before it installs an upgrade, so surely the UK can double check before it restructures 40-odd years of economic and legal structure

This made me laugh. So true.

And the UK only survived because there were food convoys from the US, supplied through loans which we finally paid off in 2006, 61 years after the end of the war

And this tells you all you need to know about the so-called "special relationship".

Just so everyone under 60 knows, rationing continued for another 9 years after the end of WW2, until 1954

and it actually got worse after the war. My mum was 6 when the war ended and she says she was always hungry.

Who will all these foreign firms sell their produce to if they choose not to sell it to the UK. If there were other viable markets, they'd have sold to them instead of the UK decades ago.

They do already sell to a number of markets - they quite literally don't put all their eggs in one basket. The UK is large and will still need food, but if it cannot get through then producers will find other markets. A market that you can't deliver to is no longer a viable market.

If there are shortages due to customs/transport issues, the UK govt has the power to deal with those issues, such as redeploy more customs staff to the ports.

There is a finite number of ports, a finite number of ships and a finite number of customs officers. One of the main criticisms of the government is that they are far from being prepared in terms of customs processes, infrastructure and trained officers.

If tariffs make the goods more expensive to import, the govt can use the tax system to temporarily reduce food prices, such as changing the VAT rates etc.

There is no VAT on food, and no customs tariffs on most of the food entering the UK (and none at all on food from Europe, much of Africa and South America). It is not tariffs that will cause price rises - it is the increased cost of transportation, fuel, the fall in the value of the pound and the market effect of a reduction in supply (food will go to the highest bidders).

There is so much within the control of the govt - if there were problems, they could be dealt with on a piecemeal basis to solve.

The government is hardly in control of anything. It does not control the markets or consumers (being Conservatives, this government actually despises any sort of controls), it does not control the value of the pound, or the actions of trucking and shipping companies, or the actions of officials in our partner countries, who they seem to be going out of their way to antagonise.

I wonder when the tinned cheese will arrive?

Somebody called?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/eu_referendum_2016_/3653528-Brexitannian-NewSpeak-Dictionary-WIP

Oh, and a pretty graph.

@BonnesVacances 52% of those who voted . Millions did not even vote . And I said we should keep no deal on the table . Keep up .

More food choice means that people eat more, it's as simple as that

That's one of the stupidest things I've ever read.

Susie I just struggle to understand the blame being laid at the feet of "Labour MPs" for blocking the WA when apparently everyone who voted to leave were now voting for a clean break (which is clearly bollocks ) And that's what they're going to get. So surely they should be happy, not blaming anyone?

Havanananana technically possible - get rid of all the meat and dairy farming, and with it the need to grow animal feed. Stop growing non food (biofuels) - replace with biointensive farming of roots and tubers, and vertical farming (turn the remaining countryside into a mass of high tech polytunnels).

Obviously water and fuel would be massive challenges.

Not realistic or desirable (especially by next month) but probably possible, at the price of the countryside as we know it, a complete change in national diet, and probably considerable environmental damage...

Taking back the country and all!

The sooner UK crashes out the sooner UK goes crawling back to negotiation table with tail between legs & takes whatever transition deal EU will offer.

And this is why I genuinely feel like crashing out, and the awful consequences, would be better (if it wasn't painfully obviously that it will cause deaths).

What will actually happen is there will be a last minute reprieve, Johnson and his cronies will boo hoo about all the traitors, call a GE, win by a landslide, blame all the problems on dirty Remainers and the EU, plunge the UK into poverty and violence, use it to scare the populace into submission and it will take a decade or two at least to get the UK back into asking for membership, which will be on massively worse terms as we slide down the economic rankings.

But at least people will learn how to grow, preserve and eat shitty food. Hopefully, just like my Dad, children born today won't see a banana until they are ten years old. Happy days. I mean he lived on poached salmon. You know actually poached, by poachers, not gently poached in French wine.

get rid of all the meat and dairy farming, and with it the need to grow animal feed. Grass