Vegetable rationing hits UK supermarkets!
The BBC news website carried the above rather hyterical headline linking to this article which actually carries the heading ‘Iceberg lettuces rationed as vegetable crisis hits supermarkets’. Somehow, most of the UK newspapers also carry this story as headline news today.
Why am I bothering to write about this? Well, it’s mis-information (fake news) and the article is shallow in that it misses a vitally important point.
Firstly mis-information: Anyone who regularly shops for fresh produce in a UK supermarket or street market already knows that product availability is affected by seasonal variations. Yes, we all cheat that seasonal variation from time to time by buying produce imported from different parts of the world when it’s not ‘in season’ more locally. A good example is oranges imported from Mediteranean countries (particularly Spain) in the UK winter and from South Africa in the UK summer. The article seems to suggest that this is news. It happens every year in every season; produce becomes scarce from one supplier and is replaced on the shelves by produce from another supplier in a different region. The cost of the produce is subject to different production costs, export/import duties, transport and storage costs, wasteage and competition (willingness to pay). As with all businesses it is in the producers’ interests to maximise their long-term (multi-year) profits by growing sufficient product, charging a competitive price and maintaining a diverse set of buyers interested in buying and not getting a reputation for profiteering. The buyers’ from the supermarkets also need to maximise their employers’ long-term profits - if they have to buy produce at prices inflated by scarcity they can damage their company’s reputation for ‘always low prices’ or take a hit to profits by selling to the consumer at a loss - but supermarket businesses have to take a long view and balance all these concerns over the seasons and still make a profit for their owner/shareholders. The last cog in this machine is the consumer. If we find lettuce or courgettes to be scarce in our shops and the price inflated, what do we do? Some of us will compete for the small amount of scarce produce and others will look to buy different, more currently abundant produce. One more point on this: I have not bought an iceberg lettuce for 20 years - revolting stuff; shame about the courgettes though…
That news headline should actually read: ‘Shock as supermarket buyers fall for vendor lock-in and fail to maintain diversity of suppliers’. Yeah, OK - it’s not as catchy as the headline the BBC used.
So much for mis-information. What about the depth of analysis? The article touches on unusual flooding and a ‘cold snap’ in Spain (and elsewhere) without ever mentioning ‘Climate Change’. Good - it’s weather, not climate. The ‘bad weather’ affecting supplies may be an indication of climate change or it could just be natural unlucky variation, nobody can really tell. What climate scientists do tell us is that variations in local weather are likely to become more extreme as climate change progresses.
I put quote marks around the words ‘bad weather’ because the scarcity of produce from Spain has caused buyers to approach growers in California to obtain supplies. ‘Bad weather’ for Spanish growers is great weather for their competitors from California.
So did the California growers magic up the produce that they’ve now begun to sell into the North European market? It’s more likely that they observed the bad weather beginning in Spain and took a business risk in growing more produce than usual in the hope of selling into the less usual market. It’s either that or the products that we’re now consuming were diverted from some other less profitable market. Perhaps there should be a headline to the effect of ‘UK iceberg lettuce consumption threatens rationing in California. Trump imposes export ban’. Ok, that last is definitely fake news.
The point that the BBC article misses completely is that the growers are businesses too and need to make a profit. They have employees and owners/shareholders who rely on the profit. If they consistently fail to make a profit they will go out of business. Why should owners invest in running a business if they can make more profit putting their money in a building society account? If the growers have less produce to sell they need to be able to charge more per unit to make sufficient overall profit to continue in business. If the supermarket buyers push the growers’ margins down too much then they will go out of business - and the buyers will lose diversity of supply with the known consequences when a supplier they rely on fails them.
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