Tomato shortage in the UK has politicians looking for answers

Published 2023년 3월 1일

Tridge summary

The U.K. is experiencing a tomato shortage, among other produce, due to a combination of factors including a poor harvest in Spain and Morocco, increased energy prices resulting from the Ukraine war, and the financial impact of Brexit. The high costs of transporting tomatoes from the continent to the U.K. are also contributing to the shortage and driving prices up. Economist Tim Harford believes that while the pandemic has caused global supply chain disruptions, these issues are not primarily due to Brexit. The government has advised the public to try alternative vegetables like turnips in the meantime, leading to humorous social media reactions.

Disclaimer:The above summary was generated by Tridge's proprietary AI model for informational purposes.

Original content

It's not easy to find a tomato in the U.K. right now. And if you do, you'd better savor it. Supermarkets like Tesco and Aldi have placed strict limits on the number of tomatoes customers can buy, as well as other produce, like cucumbers and broccoli. Economist Tim Harford, host of the podcast Cautionary Tales, serves tomatoes to his family a lot. So when he heard the news about shortages, he rushed to the local Tesco. "There's this whole shelf that normally has crates and crates of different kinds of tomatoes," he recalls. "And there were just three packs left." Limit per customer: one package. The last few years, this has been a familiar story. The pandemic created supply chain crises and shortages all across the global economy. Mostly those have been resolved, so what's going on with tomatoes? The main issue, says Harford, is a bad harvest out of Spain and Morocco, where Europe and the U.K. get a lot of their winter produce. A late frost and flooding killed a lot of the crops. ...

Source: Npr2