Empty red pepper shelves in Aldi in St Ives, Cambridgeshire, on Wednesday morning
Tesco became the fourth UK supermarket to ration fruit and vegetables, and the UK’s largest retailer has introduced a buying limit of three items per customer on tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers.
Hours before Aldi followed competitors Asda and Morrisons by imposing customer purchase limits on salad vegetables after supplies were hit by disrupted harvests in southern Europe and north Africa.
The cold temperature in Spain and Morocco has drastically hit the availability of vegetables in British markets along with skyrocketing energy prices.
The supply issue has been blamed on poor weather, transport disruption and high energy prices making British greenhouses more expensive to heat.
Growers in Europe and North Africa are reportedly sending produce to European supermarkets rather than to the United Kingdom because they’re more inclined to pay higher prices. Yet the UK are content to send aid overseas but doesn’t want to pay out more money to feed their own.
Tim O’Malley, of major importer Nationwide Produce, said wholesale spot prices for fresh produce have soared by as much as 300 per cent in recent weeks. If passed on to British consumers, these items would add several pounds to a weekly shop.
Oh, do behave, government ministers and the Prime Minister himself are racking it in, and instead of lining their own pockets, why don’t they have some spirited compassion and put some of that money back into the economy?
Aldi (Altrincham store pictured) is now limiting purchases of peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes to three units per person
Asked about the difference between shelves in the United Kingdom and in Europe, he said that it wasn’t about Brexit, it was about different buying models – yes, of course, it was, not! I bet the Prime Minister isn’t going short of a cucumber or two!
Our shelves are now empty, and the price being demanded by Spanish and Moroccan exporters has doubled for cucumbers, peppers, lettuces and onions, and the price of tomatoes has gone up a third and courgettes are two-thirds more costly since the beginning of the year.
Asda set purchase limits on eight lines of vegetables and fruit on Tuesday, while Morrisons imposed them on four lines on Wednesday.
Expats have gleefully been filming their full shelves in Spain (Malaga pictured) and across the EU amid shortages of tomatoes in the UK
An Aldi UK spokesman said that they were limiting purchases of peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes to three units per person to ensure that as many customers as possible can buy what they need.
Tesco said that it was working hard with its suppliers to ensure a reasonable pool of vegetables for customers in light of temporary supply challenges on some lines due to unfavourable weather conditions abroad.
Some people are saying that they came back from their weekly shop and all vegetables were in ample supply. However, I went to my Tesco Express which usually has an abundant supply of vegetables and I couldn’t even get one cucumber. I then went to another shop that also had no cucumbers, although they did have some other fruit and vegetables, but not very much. I wonder where we’re going to get our five a day now?
Spanish and Moroccan peppers, courgettes and aubergines in France
But this isn’t something that’s just happened. I’ve seen when shopping for fruit and vegetables for a while now that fruit and vegetables have been lacking, and sometimes when shopping most of the shelves on the fruit and vegetable section are almost empty and it looks like they’re halfway through a closing down sale.
The problem being is that when supermarkets do get fruit and vegetable stocks, they will take advantage of this and likely put their prices up so that people can’t afford to purchase them anyhow, and then they will go to waste and be chucked out.
The saying is that ‘Ve hav waze ov making you talk, but now it’s been changed to ‘Ve hav waze ov making fruiz walk’.
But here we go again, the cost of fruit and vegetables is going to rocket, yet I bet you can’t get any rocket in the supermarket!
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 