A comical new addition to the general impression that Britain is falling apart at the seams.
He spoke to his suppliers and supermarkets just won't pay the higher prices. The supply is there though. He had a full range of salad products.
The UK buys a lot of produce from NL (which is a huge exporter of tomatoes and other greenhouse-grown produce), they have been selling in Europe at the higher prices that factor in higher electricity cost, UK supermarkets have stopped buying from them because it would mean having to increase prices.
And finally, UK producers chose not to produce at all this winter because they believed that UK supermarkets wouldn't offer a price that made production profitable...they were right.
This kind of thing happens because, for multiple reasons, there is an obsession with providing very low food prices. UK supermarkets achieve this (the prices for vegetables are comically low here, still...my Tesco had a sale on potatoes the other week, 20p/kg...how? How is this possible? Farmers here get absolutely abused) but the result is that sometimes they don't have anything.
It has been happening with eggs, milk, meat (most UK supermarkets just don't get quality meat anymore, even their premium ranges of top cuts of beef are shoe leather), vegetables...and, of course, all anyone can talk about is the declinist nonsense rather than look at how fucked the food supply chain is.
But left without controls, these types of markets tend to devolve into monopolies if allowed and cartels if not. Markets require regulation. That’s why you can get fresher cheaper produce at a farmers market while the supermarket doesn’t be road is selling California Peaches in Georgia and Washington apples in New York.
An example I’m familiar with is a local farm that’s been in continuous operation since the 1750s. They built successful long standing relationships with local grocery chains, which allowed them to grow over 20 years. Enter modern finance - the biggest two chains get bought by private equity, who fires the grocery buyers and brings in Accenture and does a strategic sourcing engagement. End of the day, the supermarket went from buying 100 truckloads of onions to 0, having made a deal to source Canadian (subsidized) onions for 1.5% cheaper. It broke their cash flow and almost put the farm out of business.
They made mistakes for sure, but this is the pressure exerted on the production and supply chain so long as our current legal thought process persists.
I am not sure what the solution is but this problem has existed since the early 90s when the industry began to consolidate heavily into the large supermarkets. The industry has kept trying to consolidate which may lead to less aggressive action (supermarkets are fully aware of how damaging their behaviour has been), but the govt has been blocking this to keep food prices low.
One big change was Aldi/Lidl who have introduced more diversity into the supply chain without compromising on price...but that is only in some verticals, and their general position towards farmers is still quite aggressive.
But the pursuit of extremely low prices and consumer value is not a sign of decline.
Oh great, and there's me thinking it was only an amusingly trivial contribution to the nation's woes. Now I've got this whole calamity to worry about.
And by the way, the idea that supermarket meat is inedible is absurd. A fillet or sirloin from Tesco, and I'm sure others, is perfectly delicious.
The only supermarket that has decent meat is Aldi. But if you compare this to product sold into food service, it isn't close.
My village general shop has all fruit & veg as normal. This shortage is a media obsession.