Is tesco rationing???

[Santaslittlemelter]

I'm trying to do the online shop here and not only is stock a bit shit, like no dishwasher salt, no pork mince, no organic cucumber, no most types of tomato, but I have noticed that a load of the things in my basket say I have reached my maximum quantity. So I am allowed one red pepper, one pack of two small salmon fillets, one pack of tomatoes, one cucumber.....I have a family of 6.

I haven't heard much recently on supply issues. But is anyone else finding this happening? Its a bit shit for a huge retailer.

The Spain thing explains why I could only buy the massive bags of spinach in M&S, this morning. No shortage of tomatoes there as half their stock is British. Not cheap, though. All of their basic tomatoes were sold out.

Low stocks here in Kent. Maybe it's all stuck with those poor lorry drivers stuck on the M20 or gridlocked in Dover.

@MySecretHistory Thanks for the heads up but we do this trip twice a year (pre pandemic) so are well aware of our limits but it is kind of you to mention it.

God knows what's going on..... I've been waiting for Ikea to get stock of the sofa im after for weeks now.

Brexit.

@eatsleeprantrepeat if we did become reliant on only home grown produce then that wouldn't include much salad at all between October and May as we have neither the climate nor the daylight to produce those crops year round without extreme measures. They definitely wouldn't be affordable for many people.

If we ate only home grown, our diets through the winter would be fresh root veg, cabbage, kale, leeks and onions, apples, spuds, greenhouse tomatoes and frozen or tinned/jarred anything else we can produce in the summer that can successfully be preserved.

@PickAChew No more MASSIVE salads for us then!

😂

[quote PickAChew]@eatsleeprantrepeat if we did become reliant on only home grown produce then that wouldn't include much salad at all between October and May as we have neither the climate nor the daylight to produce those crops year round without extreme measures. They definitely wouldn't be affordable for many people.

If we ate only home grown, our diets through the winter would be fresh root veg, cabbage, kale, leeks and onions, apples, spuds, greenhouse tomatoes and frozen or tinned/jarred anything else we can produce in the summer that can successfully be preserved.[/quote]
And health-wise that would be fine - the veg you've mentioned have a high amount of vitamins and minerals. There's a surprising amount of vitamin C in onions, for example. Anyone eating fresh salad veg in winter is mad - I buy in season because its cheaper and freeze what I can, other stuff is bought direct from the freezer like peas.

We really have lost sight of seasonality.

Tomatoes and salad can only be imports at this time of year

Export of tomatoes from Morocco has been suspended, causing shortages. This is not Brexit related.

It's the ever rising cost of our demand for high-food miles off-season produce. It's not going to stay cheap, because of the global pressures and energy price increases. It's not going tomstay readily available either.

Moving away from high food-mile commodities would be extremely good for the environment. Yes, it would mean a reduction in the ability to pile 'em high and sell 'em cheap (regardless of season). And that in turn is likely to herald a shift in affordability. Which is of course concerning.

True @VikingVolva - food has actually been too cheap to be ecologically sustainable for a while now thanks to heavily industrialised farming. The sheer amount of food waste in the UK points to that.

It's housing costs being so ridiculously out of whack that's causing a lot of the income issues, to the point that smaller increases on everyday items will cripple people as they're the last straw. This is my bugbear with celebrity poverty campaigners - several of them/their close relatives own buy to lets or second/third/fourth homes. Not only are they content to see people homeless but they'll skew rental market rates to ensure people go hungry as well.

France this morning every shop is stocked to heaving. Gorgeous fresh produce even in Carrefour city branches. 9 varieties of tomatoes for example.

U.K. this evening & the shelves are empty. Swing by McDonald’s to grab a quick bit before another flight & they have run out of tomatoes. .

What the hell is going on.

@Singlebutmarried

Shortage of salad type goods. Some sort of strike I think in Spain with the lorry drivers.

I've seen recently that the winds blown up from the Sahara that deposited some red dust on us have played havoc with farming in Spain.

I work in retail management and there absolutely are shortages. A lot of products are unavailable or can’t be assessed due to supply issues. It’s why you might have noticed shops changing their shelf layouts and stock offerings quite frequently- everyone in planning is trying to get what stock we can get in and get it on shelves. But there’s always a slight delay on the stock being unavailable, planning doing the changes and this filtering down to stores where they need manually changed, which is why there are periods of very empty looking shelves that then look a bit better the next week, before getting gappy again.

It’s really shitty, for myself as an employee and as a consumer. I really do hope things improve but I can’t see it happening any time soon, unfortunately.

All my items that said I couldn't increase are in the order, the only substitution is a butternut lettuce for iceberg which is fine.

I find getting the receipt online is much better now than when it came with the shopping as it gives me more chance to think about whether I want the substitution.

France (and Spain) always do well for tomatos, being major producers. It's a little early for the main French season, but they import far more from their former North African colonies than others.

Those whuch depend only on Morocco (who have suspended exports) are largely stuffed (metaphorically, you understand) since the the suspension of exports.

Food prices in France are relatively higher than in UK and tend to have greater seasonality and fewer food miles. Well not be able to emulate fully, owing to huge difference in population density and land available to farm. The more we can go down that route the better, even at the higher cost to consumers

In France they were rationing in Leclerc yesterday, ex. 2 bottles of oil max.
My H just came back from the pharmacie, & said the chemist said there are are medication shortages

A lot of shelves in LIDL seemed empty yesterday but then they seem to employ half the amount of staff compared to the ALDI round the corner so it could just be an issue with getting stuff onto the shelves.

It's housing costs being so ridiculously out of whack that's causing a lot of the income issues, to the point that smaller increases on everyday items will cripple people as they're the last straw. This is my bugbear with celebrity poverty campaigners - several of them/their close relatives own buy to lets or second/third/fourth homes. Not only are they content to see people homeless but they'll skew rental market rates to ensure people go hungry as well.

This ^

Tomatoes and salad can only be imports at this time of year

Salad, probably, yes, but to be pedantic, you can buy British tomatoes out of season.

@JesusInTheCabbageVan you can, but it’s heavily reliant on gas to heat greenhouses and to produce fertiliser (unless they are heated by biomass!). I’d expect farmers will be producing less for a higher cost.

I’ve found a shortage of some items in aldi, pitta breads for example. Guessing it’s good old Brexit again, maybe covid, Ukraine? Dunno.

@elbea true. I'm never quite sure what's better at this time of year - more food miles or higher energy use when growing the things.

Obviously best option by far would be to only but local seasonal produce, but that doesn't leave much and I just don't have the willpower.

My delivery came this morning with all the salad I had ordered.

I was a bit when he driver announced that my cooking oil had been substituted with Mozzarella. I was all ready to post on the weird substitutions thread - there has to beone somewhere.

It turned out to be Mazola

Anyone eating fresh salad veg in winter is mad - I buy in season because its cheaper

This would be a helpful maxim if it were wholly true, but if you don't understand horticulture or agriculture you actually get very few price signals from retailers in respect of seasonality.

In Lidl, courgettes are £1.99 a kilo 49 weeks of the year. The other three weeks - in November, February and May - they come down to 99p because it's their turn in the 'Pick of the Week' promotion. When they are at the peak of the season in August and allotment holders can't give the things away they are still depressingly £1.99/kg.

Iceberg lettuce is the same price now as it was in December, which is the same price it was last July.

[quote elbea]@JesusInTheCabbageVan you can, but it’s heavily reliant on gas to heat greenhouses and to produce fertiliser (unless they are heated by biomass!). I’d expect farmers will be producing less for a higher cost.[/quote]
I read at the outbreak of the war when gas prices shot up again that many greenhouse-grown vegetables were just going to be dug up and composted before they could be harvested, because it wasn't worth keeping the heating on unless you wanted a £8 aubergine.