Fresh Food Shortages? Not at HFM...

Over the last few days social media seems to have been full of posts about fresh produce shortages. Again.

I’m always baffled by this and I’ll try to define where the issue lies in the following post.

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been wincing at the price of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and iceberg lettuces as I examine the invoices we receive from our growers, importers and suppliers. It’s not unusual for specific items of fresh produce to spike in price and is usually due to a reduced supply. Quite often because a supermarket has a promotional price on that specific item, although this tends to disproportionately affect independent food shops more than anyone else. Other reasons are to do with seasonality and adverse weather conditions. More broadly though it’s a classic problem of demand outstripping supply. However, this doesn’t equate to food shortages. Imports of tomatoes from Almeria for example are down by 22% compared with the same three week period last year. If we take that statistic in isolation, certainly regarding media reports, supermarket shelves appear to tell a different story.

It’s interesting this time around that food security is being questioned by the media. If we take tomatoes, for the last few years the same problem has occurred at this time of year. Last year McDonald’s caused a stir when they began rationing tomato slices on their menu items which had a certain specification for tomatoes. I’d imagine that if they haven’t already started, they’ll soon be doing the same thing this year. I’d also imagine this is more to do with cost than actual supply.

Similarly, in the supermarket sector, for as much as they take every opportunity to extol the virtues of their being on the side of their customers, the primary focus is the input cost of their produce and the perception their customers have of whether or not they’re expensive compared to the competition. This strategy in itself is what can lead to less well informed people panic buying and stockpiling.

The work supermarkets have done to keep food prices lower than almost anywhere else in the western world is admirable. But like all things that are cheap, there is a cost to someone or something somewhere.

The real responsibility for this can probably be placed somewhere between government and supermarkets. Successive governments have seemingly had a hands-off approach to managing food security. Evidence of this can be traced back to the start of the pandemic, when cabinet ministers were claiming to have been consulting supermarket bosses about normalising food supply issues in their stores. Of course, none had been consulted!

Ignorance to the lack of any action or regulation on the part of any government for the past few decades simply isn’t an acceptable excuse. And a supermarket is there to satisfy its shareholders, so it shouldn’t be a surprise when they act solely in the interest of increasing profits.

But this is where the root cause of the problem is. Our society revolves around one of the most extreme forms of Capitalism in the world. Unfortunately this has been edging further toward the extreme for some time and is now starting to show the cost to not only the environment, but also to society.

It is of course crucial for any business to be as efficient as possible. But at what point does efficiency cost others? And is this ever acceptable?

Our food and farming systems in this country have been in decline for as long as supermarkets have been a dominant force. This is in part due to the reduced prices the buyers are prepared to pay at the farm gate. The reduced income on farms has meant reduced profit to enable reinvestment in more efficient working practices. This has led to an increased reliance on cheaper imports of fresh food from Europe and North Africa, as well as from further afield. Large farms in the UK are remarkably quick at reacting to market demand, and over the last few months, they have done so. Tomatoes became 27% more expensive to produce between 2021 and 2022 according to research published by the National Farmers Union due to the glass houses having to be heated to 20°C. UK farmers kept supermarket buyers informed of this, so supermarkets chose not to support them, instead favouring Southern European and North African producers, so many UK farms simply didn’t plant Tomatoes. Unfortunately, the weather in these alternative regions has been less temperate, meaning a reduced harvest.

So what’s the solution?

The genie can’t go back in the lamp. An ideal solution for the climate crisis would be to return to a more local and seasonal way of shopping and cooking. But where does one draw the line? Citrus fruits have been imported for centuries and form an important part of the national diet in terms of vitamins and nutrients. Tomatoes are considered a staple which are found in the majority of UK shopping baskets. But when was the last time you really enjoyed a tomato? I mean really thought about the flavour and texture as you ate it. For me it’s only ever during the summer when they’re in abundance from local producers, whether a small Market Garden producer like Lisa on Mannings Lane in Hoole, or a much larger grower with acres of glass houses. The varieties grown by local growers are produced for the best flavour and texture, whereas tomatoes from Holland, Spain and Morocco have been bred specifically with travelling in mind. They’re harvested when under ripe and have a thicker skin to prevent damage in transit.

It’d be easy to suggest a higher price which is shared more equitably through the supply chain, but with so many actors competing in such a long and convoluted supply chain, the extra value in the shelf price would unlikely end up with the producer.

So it is a problem with British food culture? What’s an acceptable price for any given item of food? What is the cost to society of cheap food? What’s the cost to the environment?

I have a few opinions, but unfortunately I don’t have any answers.

If fresh food prices rise, this will disproportionately affect the poorest in society and push them further towards cheaper ultra processed food, so surely a form of subsidy ought to be introduced somewhere. Whether this is applied at the production end or with the consumer is for more intelligent people than me to decide. It should go without saying that ultra processed foods have a proven cost to health and therefore the NHS. So incentivising the consumption of fresher, more nutritious food would probably tip the balance in favour of lower health costs. This isn’t a quick fix though.

The Office for National Statistics measures the ratio households spend on food compared to income. During 2020 to 2021, 14.4% (or £69.20) of household expenditure went on food, averaged over all households. So for the very poorest in society, food price rises are simply too much to bear. I know in our household, food is treated with the highest priority, meaning we’ll forego almost anything to ensure the food we eat is of the highest quality and best provenance. This should never be a political point to pontificate over though, as several politicians have learned over the last year. I do think that as a nation though, if you’ll forgive the sweeping generalisation, we ought to value good food much more highly than we currently do.

The cost to the environment of our industrialised food system is definitely too great. But as previously mentioned, there’s no going back. Rightly or wrongly there’s an expectation that everything should always be available - no person can stand in the way of progress without being cast aside. There have been schemes invented to alleviate the guilt of corporations regarding their environmentally damaging practices, such as carbon offsetting. But as Greenpeace reported on, this doesn’t actually work and only really fuels more extreme Capitalism.

So this brings me back around to the idea that the problem is the extreme form of Capitalism that is practiced by too many companies.

Capitalism is a brilliant way to lift people out of poverty, and done well can really incentivise the very best sort of progress. However, the main issue with Capitalism is the fact that it solves problems. It incentivises the solutions to every problem that has ever existed.

But there’s no incentive to prevent the root cause of the problem.

I’ve struggled with this thought process for a long time now and HFM is a manifestation of the kind of responsible Capitalism that I’d like to see practiced in this country. I’m not so naive as to think that we're going to change the world. But I do hope that we can change the hearts and minds of those people who don’t really think about the affect of how they spend their hard earned money. We are far from perfect at HFM, but we are always working to improve the impact our business has on the environment, both from the points of view of people and nature.

For as admirable as a supermarket is in their super-marketing of “how hard they’re working for YOU” keeping costs down. Try to think about the cost to the grower of the food they’re selling and how they’re unlikely to realise the true value of their produce. As food becomes more expensive to produce, whether locally or from another country, the range of what’s available for what may once have been a reasonable price, may become unavailable.

As ever, we pride ourselves on our consistency of service. Even as I type, I’ve just received an iPhone notification to say that Tesco and Aldi are the latest retailers to introduce rationing on their fruit and veg offering.

We won’t be introducing any limits on quantities. Just as during those dark days of the first weeks of the pandemic, we’ll have a good supply of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and iceberg lettuces.

The only limiting factor will be the price, which will always reflect the true cost of production.

Thanks for reading.

Jason

Hoole Food Market Ltd.