The direct cause of the food shortage is still unclear to me, but it was interesting to see that this issue was known about months beforehand.
Never underestimate the capacity of our media to blow something up beyond all proportion. I don't doubt that supply is a bit lower than normal, but it's not like we're about to resort to cannibalism here.
So is the desire to raise food prices, as seen by 50% food increase pricing on many things, in a year with 8% inflation (Canada).
"Taking advantage of", class 101.
For those who can't watch the video, basically the gist is most of the food in shortage (lettuce, tomato, cucumbers etc) is normally grown in the UK in large greenhouses from local producers, but energy prices got too high last year making it uneconomical to grow in a greenhouse as obviously it's energy intensive to do so. The govt refused any support and supermarkets rejected the potential higher prices and instead decided they could just source product overseas instead. The greenhouse producers therefore didn't plant much for this season, but the foreign sourced produce also had a poor harvest which resulted in no excess available for export to the UK and therefore some stores now can't stock some fresh produce. Energy prices have come down and so local UK produce growers are now growing again and should be back to normal supply in a couple of months. Although he mentions earlier in the video that this years wheat crop is doing poorly and that is normally used as animal feed which could mean potential future shortages for things like meat and eggs.
> High temperatures and a lack of rain, followed by a period of cold weather, are being blamed for creating the “most difficult season ever,” Tim Casey, chairman of the Leek Growers Association, said.
> Suppliers have warned that shortages could last weeks as a combination of bad weather and transport problems in Africa and Europe has left some fruit and vegetables out of stock.
Right at the beginning you could say that was down to profiteering, but from what I've seen the supply network for these places flexed and was able to reconfigure a lot more quickly because it's less monolithic.
I can sympathize with supermarkets having to try and mitigate every panic buying frenzy that the media are all too willing to encourage.
I think this is more of a reflection on you than it is on frenzied buying. It's pretty easy to eat multiple cucumbers a week if you like them.
As a consequence, supermarkets have become reliant on overseas producers who, sometimes, are not able to meet demand.
People want to buy locally produced fruit and vegetables but they do not want the people who pick it to have a decent standard of living.
Also, it's worth noting that it's not uniquely British; the Irish have had the same problems.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/60111856
(source: worked as a mainframe engineer in an "Agile" team a large financial corp).