A number of supermarket chains have indicated they have no plans to introduce restrictions on sales of many salad items as shortages hit shelves across the UK.
Market leaders Tesco, Asda, Morrisons and Aldi are major names to have confirmed this week that limits are in place for items such as tomatoes, peppers, leafy greens and cucumbers.
The government admitted on Thursday that the disruption could last until the end of March and it had scheduled a meeting with major retailers for later in the day.
While supplies Europe-wide have been hit by poor harvests overseas, especially in Spain and north Africa, the UK has been particularly exposed to shortages because of supermarket contracts and high energy costs facing domestic suppliers.
UK, and growers in other northern European nations, need to heat their greenhouses to maintain crops during the winter months.
In this country’s case, the costs have been prohibitive because of record prices in the wake of the war in Ukraine.
The producers’ main gripe is that the government excluded horticulture from the Energy and Trade Intensive Industries scheme that provides help with energy costs.
M&S was yet to comment on its sales policies.
But Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Lidl and the Co-op were four other supermarket chains to tell Sky News on Thursday that they were operating with no restrictions.
That does not mean, however, that their shelves are filled with a bounty to leave rivals green with envy.
Shortages will inevitably lead shoppers to seek out supplies where they exist.
Panic-buying is unlikely, however, as salad items are hardly essential items (remember the rush for loo rolls at the start of the pandemic in 2020?).
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Restrictions on things like tomatoes, where they exist, will also help preserve enough to go around.
Tesco and Aldi are limiting customers to three of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers as a precautionary measure.
Asda is also limiting customers on lettuce, salad bags, broccoli, cauliflower and raspberries.
Morrisons has set a limit of two items per customer across tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and peppers.
Sky News reported on Wednesday how the country’s largest domestic grower, APS Produce, had warned that British tomatoes were likely to remain scarce until the end of April.
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Tomato shortages ‘could last another two months’
It blamed the soaring cost of energy and fertiliser.
Therese Coffey, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs secretary, told MPs the disruption was expected to last for a further two to four weeks.
“The United Kingdom has a highly resilient food supply chain as demonstrated throughout the COVID-19 response and is well equipped to deal with situations with potential to cause disruption,” she said.
Ms Coffey added that she expected industry to be able to mitigate supply problems by utilising alternative markets.
The British Tomato Growers Association said of the shortage: “Whilst this is predominantly a consequence of the lack of imported product at this time of year, the British season will soon begin and we expect significant volumes of British tomatoes on shelves by the end of March and into April 2023.”
Justin King, who was CEO of Sainsbury’s for a decade to 2014 and currently a non-executive director of Marks & Spencer, told the BBC: “There is a genuine shortage but we did rather bring this problem upon ourselves.
“We could have chosen to subsidise the energy this winter as we have done for other industries.”
He said most UK supermarkets still had “very good” supply of salad vegetables coming in but overall the country was short.
