I am so fed up of a lack of food in shops.

[OutofEverything]

This has been going on for a few years but is only getting worse. I had to go to 3 supermarkets before I found some eggs. No lettuce at all, a few packs of salad tomatoes available in one supermarket, loads of empty spaces in the fruit and veg section, and in ASDA even the freezers had loads of empty spaces.

Before anyone says yes I know we will not starve, there is enough actual food. But a visit to a supermarket now is a lottery about what will be available and what is missing. And more and more I am having to visit multiple shops to get absolute basics.

It seems very odd to not stock things that your customers could choose to buy or not at the price offered.

I am guessing that we have a few very large supermarkets that probably supply a high percentage of people's grocery shopping.

A lot of the continent are supplied by smaller outlets and markets.

People have wanted cheap prices for years and now we are paying for that business model, the suppliers have been saying for years they are struggling but few were listening.

One supermarket person did say that a major problem was restaurants / businesses stocking up first thing as their prices were cheaper than wholesale

So the limit policy actually stops this impact so the customer gets the veg at the lower supermarket price

There's a shortages of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers in some parts of the UK - not all. And you can still buy them, they have not disappeared forever from our shelves.

If you was in the UK you would see there's no East Berlin scenerio 😂

Much ado about nothing. Next week it will all be forgotten while those with anti-Brexit glasses scour news channels for evidence of someone stuck in a passport queue for 15 mins and on and on and on it goes.

I really like your reasoning.
Translated to normal speech, it says: "I live in the big London and we have everything so I don't believe you. But if you're not a lazy shite, you can surely bake those eggs yourself."

I'm in London and whilst there are no shortages at Waitrose and M & S, there are shortages at are nearest Tesco and Sainsbury’s. Prices have risen everywhere, and in the cheaper supermarkets, quality of produce is down.

Before Brexit, the UK imported much of its fruit and salad produce from Spain. Post Brexit, they switched to Morocco for a lot of its supplies. Both Spain and Morocco have had weather problems affecting their crops. I saw an article on a Spanish new site this morning that said the Spanish suppliers see no need to help the UK fill any stock gaps, as they have enough demand in the EU, and the UK had showed it's not a loyal customer, by switching to Morocco.

I think staff problems in the UK are also causing an issue, not enough workers to pick fruit and veg, and not enough shelve stackers, lorry drivers etc.

i have celery and loose vine tomatoes purchsaed from lidl tonight, no cauliflower, but i bought a swede! so that's ok
i dropped the tomatoes sadly but bought them anyway

We need to keep hammering this home. Brexit the gift that keeps on taking.

It's not going to change. The days of expecting to pay pennies for fruits and vegetables harvested by exploited people working thousands of miles away over. Throughout most of history people have eaten food grown locally, and paid prices high enough to give the people harvesting the produce a decent wage.

How is it Brexit? Brexit makes it harder for us to export. It doesn't make it harder for supermarkets to import. If it was purely Brexit we'd have had pepper shortages for years.

Brexit makes imports harder because there are fewer HGV drivers willing to drive in the UK, more red tape, more delays, and it’s a highly perishable product that loses value as it loses freshness.

I’m in Belgiim and we have no shortages whatsoever. Produce lacking in one European country are compensated by the other countries. The UK voted out, so now you have shortages. Your choice.

Next week it will be something else missing from the shelves.

And the cucumbers and tomatoes and lettuces and whatever won't magically reappear either.

Brexit means you don't have the migrant farm workers either harvesting or planting crops in Britain. It makes exporting produce into the UK hard because transportation of produce has time constraints, and delays due to paperwork can have serious effects on cargo. None of this is unexpected. In fact, all of it was predicted.

Other parts of the world are affected by weather, factors related to Ukraine, high fuel prices, and bird flu. But the UK alone has cut itself off from a major trading bloc on its own doorstep, a bloc which happens to be a major producer of fresh food and also a source of the agricultural labour that the UK doesn't have available locally.

The biggest single reason for the shortages at the moment is that UK retailers won’t pay the prices that the shortages of crop in Europe and Africa has caused. So growers sell to retailers and countries that will pay those prices. UK retailers are, generally, obsessed with keeping prices reasonably constant year round, which is a nonsense when you look at the seasonality of the cost of growing. European retailers happily change the price of product to reflect the season. So Brexit has little to do with the fundamental reason there are gaps in supply supply, its good old supply and demand. If demand (retailers) exceeds supply then product goes to those that pay the most. UK retailers expect suppliers to take a loss. European retailers increase prices so the consumer pays, but has product.

Yep. 13 years of Tory arrogance, incompetence and corruption has been a UK only phenomenon. They've absolutely wrecked the country.

Am I allowed to say TC is the very definition of a salad dodger and don't know these days.

"The biggest single reason for the shortages at the moment is that UK retailers won’t pay the prices that the shortages of crop in Europe and Africa has caused. So growers sell to retailers and countries that will pay those prices"

Agree with this, supermarkets are the current problem. Markets and independent retailers all around me are well stocked. A local veg shop has changed their facebook profile photo to a pile of tomatoes and lettuce with a laughing emoji. Local market had about 7 different types of tomatoes in 3 different colours - piles of them.

@NatskuThanks for reporting back. Really good that Finland is growing its own. Have you seen food prices go up due to energy costs as well? You are a good bit colder so presumably it must cost more. Or are energy prices being subsidised by government?
I looked up prices here and we only seem to have Spanish tomatoes. They are £2.49 kilo in Tesco for vine tomatoes. I couldn’t find the price for cheaper ones online because all the others say “out of stock”.
Cucumbers are £1.75kg and come from U.K., Canary Islands or Netherlands but no choice of where .

I don’t really understand why we are still paying so little and still getting enough stock to have supplies on the shelves (although less than before) and enough for independents to have plentiful supplies.
Although honestly I am relieved it’s still cheap with more expensive choices when I can afford more ethical produce.

Hey folks, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The climate ‘emergency’ means that farmland in this country needs re wilding. No one will be allowed to eat anything that isn’t sanctioned by the caring sharing climate police.

After all we must follow the science, donchano. The same science that tells us a dude with a penis is a woman and that we needed to be locked down in our homes to save us all.

"The biggest single reason for the shortages at the moment is that UK retailers won’t pay the prices that the shortages of crop in Europe and Africa has caused. So growers sell to retailers and countries that will pay those prices"

The reporting is that Morocco is supplying the EU before the UK because 450 million trumps 65 million and the EU gives them grants.

Obviously being a member of a large trading bloc is totally undesirable though. And I think it's a sneaky trick reality has played to make it seem so.

Yeah prices went up much higher than they usually are in winter because of inflation thanks to increased energy costs and everything else but that's peaked now at least and energy prices are going down so I expect they'll be cheaper again soon. Energy costs didn't get as bad as predicted here because milder winter than usual, everyone cut down on usage nicely, and there's been a lot of wind so the wind farms have produced loads. Basically nowhere near the energy crisis of the UK despite the new nuclear plant being plagued with trouble and still not fully operational.

There was talk in the news late last year about people buying less fresh veg etc. because it got too pricy so the prices have gone above what many are willing to pay here, but the response has been lots of strikes by different sectors to increase wages so they can afford these higher prices!

Jesus
Give it a rest

Just had a Sains delivery, Full complement of veg.

Local Tesco Meyro overflowing with tomatoes. I wonder if this is a location thing?

Logistics - or the lack of them - will attenuate any underlying irregularities.

Plus you generally only see a snapshot of a few minutes over a 24 hour day. It's all very well tweeting a picture of full shelves at 6:59 before you open. I'd be more interesting in the picture 15 minutes later.

A study of history and propaganda (which ain't even my day job) taught me many years ago to be wary of "photos". As the recent airbrushing of Boris from Grant Shapps side shows.

But there’s not been an issue with either shop at all. Not just today.