Supermarket ‘gamble’ on foreign imports and Brexit rules blamed for nation’s vegetable shortage crisis

A supermarket industry source told The Yorkshire Post that problems are partly down to supermarket chains telling British growers in negotiations in autumn that they would look abroad for more imports rather than upping their payments as requested to cover their rising costs.

Lee Stiles, secretary of the Lea Valley Growers Association which produces much of the country's tomato, cucumber and pepper crops during winter months in heated greenhouses, said that account was “exactly what happened”.

He said supermarkets had made a similar “gamble” on going overseas last year.

“There weren’t the issues we are having with weather and transport that we are having this year so it kind of went unnoticed last year,” he said.

“What a lot of people don’t understand is that salads grown in Spain and Morocco are under plastic without heat so are more susceptible to the weather. We do it in glasshouses with gas boilers but they don’t, so if they get a frost or cold weather, the crop simply doesn’t grow as fast.”

The Growers Association represents around 80 growers in the South-East of England and Mr Stiles said around half of the membership are not growing this year after being unable to secure an increased price from the supermarkets to cover rising energy bills and fertiliser costs.

He added: “You start talking in about September or October because you need about 30 days or so to order your plants and to have everything delivered, etc, ready for December.

“In 2021, supermarkets dragged it on as long as they could and it meant there wasn’t time left to order the plants and get staff in and all the rest of it. It just wasn’t logistically possible.

“This year they have basically said, ‘We are going to concentrate on increasing imports from Spain and Morocco, even Turkey and Egypt’, and it has failed.

“They kind of won last year, they lost this year.”

He said while supermarkets negotiate on an individual basis they “generally offer the same prices”.

Speaking on behalf of the supermarket industry, Andrew Opie, director of food and sustainability at the British Retail Consortium, said importing food from abroad was cheaper than using greenhouse-grown produce from the UK and therefore allowed them to offer “best value for money” to customers.

Mr Stiles said the cost and challenges of importing vegetables into the country have also increased as a result of post-Brexit decisions by the Government, who he also accused of focusing on finding growers from even further overseas rather than concentrating on supporting the nation's existing producers.

“Of course now it is a lot easier for them to drive it into Europe instead of a four-day road trip to the UK, sitting in queues, coming back with an empty lorry and dealing with all the additional paperwork and customs fees, etc. It has about £40 a pallet I think and when we were in the EU, it was nothing.

“It is the decisions made by the Government post-Brexit that have resulted in this.”

Mr Stiles said ministers appear to be concentrating on sourcing vegetables from alternative countries rather than supporting national producers.

“There is no talk about supporting British growers,” he said.

“I think they have got one eye on Mexico at the moment and have already done trade deals with Australia and New Zealand. So it looks as though they are more interested in securing produce from further and further afield which is reducing our self-sufficiency, having environmental impacts on food miles and carbon footprint.”

Yorkshire strawberry farmer Annabel Makin-Jones, whose firm Annabel’s Deliciously British is based in Micklefield near Leeds, said: “What you are seeing now is that there are British cucumbers and tomatoes but they are grown in green-houses due to the weather. Heating them has gone up, it is expensive and retailers have gone ‘no, we will buy it from Europe’. Europe has had bad weather and they have shot themselves in the foot.

“The issue you have is the balance between giving the consumer a fair price and the reality of growing food at home in the UK. There is no equilibrium.

“The situation has been coming for the last ten years but never made the headlines because our industry is not big enough.

“This has not just happened overnight - this is due to us being paid poor prices.”

Mr Opie of the British Retail Consortium, said: “Retailers have long established relationships with the farmers in the UK and beyond, and they understand they need to pay a sustainable price for these goods. During winter, retailers source much of their summer produce, like tomatoes and lettuces, from countries like Spain and Morocco, where the good weather allows them to grow all year round without the added cost of heating greenhouses. This, in turn, allows supermarkets to offer their customers the best value for money at a time when the cost of living has risen sharply.”

Mr Stiles said the association would like the Government to help with greenhouse growers to transition to renewable energy sources, which he said can cost around £500,000 per facility.

“We lost 10 per cent of our growers last year. They packed up and ceased trading and the nurseries have already gone for housing developments and industrial sites and won’t be coming back.

“It looks as though we may lose the same amount this year.

“Although 10 per cent of our growers have renewable energy, we are still reliant on natural gas to heat our glasshouses. We need to transition to renewable energy but the costs are about £500,000 per grower. You couldn’t get a lender to give you the money if you wanted to.

“We need Government help to move to a more sustainable energy source.”

Ms Makin-Jones added: “The government needs to get behind us, needs to understand and needs to say ‘we do care or don’t care’ about growing our food in this country. There are subsidies for not growing that but what about subsidies that say do grow this?

“Back UK farmers or farmers will cover it with solar panels and go to Barbados instead.”

A Defra spokesperson said: “We understand public concerns around the supply of fresh vegetables, however, the UK has a highly resilient food supply chain and is well-equipped to deal with disruption which is the result of poor weather in Spain and North Africa. Ministers will hold a roundtable with industry next week to discuss how they can return supplies to normal.

“We are helping businesses with their costs through the Energy Bill Relief Scheme, business rates relief and a £2.4 billion fuel duty cut, and small businesses will be fully protected from next year’s rise in corporation tax. On top of this, we have also increased the number of seasonal worker visas to 45,000 to support the horticulture industry.”