'No more than three lettuce heads' supermarkets tell customers as extreme weather in Europe hits vegetables supplies

First topic message reminder :

Supermarkets have taken to rationing vegetables after extreme weather in the Mediterranean caused supply shortages. Shoppers have been venting their frustration on social media, sharing pictures of empty vegetable aisles during their trips to supermarkets. Some of the largest retailers are listing many popular vegetables as unavailable online in a bid to restrict supplies.

While Tesco stores are also carrying a notice capping the number of lettuces customers can buy to just three per person.

A spokesman for the supermarket said: "Due to bad weather conditions in Spain, we are experiencing some availability issues, but are working with our suppliers to resolve them as quickly as possible.

"To make sure none of our customers miss out, we are asking them to limit the number of iceberg lettuces they buy to three."


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/03/no-three-lettuce-heads-supermarkets-tell-customers-extreme-weather/

Tommy Monk wrote:

Now we're getting out of the EU we can end the madness of the eu common agricultural policy imposed here, and we can start to support uk farming to produce more of what we need and more to export too!!!


Also getting out of eu fisheries policy can only be great for uk!

What happens to the cost and availability of different food products in the long-term has more to do with the UK’s trade deals with the remaining 27 European Union member states as it begins to extricate itself from continental laws and regulations. For starters, a uniform EU agricultural policy made it easier for the UK and European states to buy and sell goods—just one reason why Britain’s farming lobby and its secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs pushed hard for a vote to remain.

nicko wrote:Your quite correct Fred, i'v had dealings with many Farmers over the years and the big super markets are squeezing the life out of the small suppliers .

My late wife's family were large scale horticultural crop growers (she was MD) and they marketed direct to greengrocers' shops and specialist food processing firms in and around London. The "old man", (her father and the company Chairman), would have nothing to do with supermarket chains...and that was before they became all-powerful.

After I retired from the PR and policy side of the farming industry I was a freelance writer and broadcaster specialising in food and farming for a few years - just to keep the wolf from the door, you'll understand - and the disgraceful treatment of small to medium sized producers by the supermarket chains cropped up time and time again.

People shop in their stores and believe how wonderful they are at keeping prices down, but they simply don't realise just what absolute shits they are towards the little people who grow the stuff that they sell.

Fred Moletrousers wrote:

nicko wrote:Your quite correct Fred, i'v had dealings with many Farmers over the years and the big super markets are squeezing the life out of the small suppliers .

My late wife's family were large scale horticultural crop growers (she was MD) and they marketed direct to greengrocers' shops and specialist food processing firms in and around London. The "old man", (her father and the company Chairman), would have nothing to do with supermarket chains...and that was before they became all-powerful.

After I retired from the PR and policy side of the farming industry I was a freelance writer and broadcaster specialising in food and farming for a few years - just to keep the wolf from the door, you'll understand -  and the disgraceful treatment of small to medium sized producers by the supermarket chains cropped up time and time again.  

People shop in their stores and believe how wonderful they are at keeping prices down, but they simply don't realise just what absolute shits they are towards the little people who grow the stuff that they sell.

Good evening moley!


Its always a pleasure for me to read your posts... i find them to be most informative and insightful in a great number of ways... as well as always providing me with a feeling of comfort in what you say, as being a completely honest and accurate recount of events/facts, as you saw them at the time...!


I would be most interested in hearing some of your general views on the eu Common Agricultural policy and the eu common fisheries policy if you have time to share them here on thread...?


Cheers geezer!

Tommy Monk wrote:

Fred Moletrousers wrote:

My late wife's family were large scale horticultural crop growers (she was MD) and they marketed direct to greengrocers' shops and specialist food processing firms in and around London. The "old man", (her father and the company Chairman), would have nothing to do with supermarket chains...and that was before they became all-powerful.

After I retired from the PR and policy side of the farming industry I was a freelance writer and broadcaster specialising in food and farming for a few years - just to keep the wolf from the door, you'll understand -  and the disgraceful treatment of small to medium sized producers by the supermarket chains cropped up time and time again.  

People shop in their stores and believe how wonderful they are at keeping prices down, but they simply don't realise just what absolute shits they are towards the little people who grow the stuff that they sell.

Good evening moley!


Its always a pleasure for me to read your posts... i find them to be most informative and insightful in a great number of ways... as well as always providing me with a feeling of comfort in what you say, as being a completely honest and accurate recount of events/facts, as you saw them at the time...!


I would be most interested in hearing some of your general views on the eu Common Agricultural policy and the eu common fisheries policy if you have time to share them here on thread...?


Cheers geezer!

Wow I sense a little dig here from Tommy lol, over me not believing Fred in regards to his experiences when debating the EU.

The reason I rightly did not believe Fred is very simple.
His view of the EU, is based from an already biased starting position. Where he has already wrongly judged the EU as authoritarian and undemocratic. Both of which are false. On top of that, he is basing his own personal experience whilst working for or dealing with a very small section that makes up the system of the EU. By then attributing his experience working, to thus try poorly to justify his previously wrong accusation that the EU is authoritarian and Undemocratic. 

Its a poor guilt by association, to try and claim off his experience. That the entire EU system is authoritarian and Undemocratic. I again have no doubt he experienced this, but he tried poorly to use this, as if as evidence to claim the EU was authoritarian. By using this methodology, would be like claiming all Brits are racist, because the only Brits you met were racist to you.

Which would be absurd.

So this is why I showed contempt for his poor reasoning (even more so as I respect him) and rightly did not believe him, because it was based off an original lie. In claiming the EU was Undemocratic and authoritarian and if Fred is being honest, he will admit this.

Now I am also interested in his views on this and experience he has had on the points you raised, but is he then speaking for everyone within that industry or how they feel? 

No

He is then just one point of view on the issue and how he feels after his own experience. Why then even worse, because he is rightly respected. To then take the view, that his position must be right. Without questioning the motive or whether the EU is democratic or not. Makes people allow themselves to take a stance on a view and not facts.  We both can be right and wrong on topics, but this is exactly why some people are sheep. Someone who can better articulate themselves and thus is thus more convincing, is believed. That I admire, but it does not mean their opinion is the right one.

Hence why Fred was silly to my reaction and I even sillier to get caught up in it and react as well. He values his integrity, but again if he is honest, he knows he let that down. By trying to argue that something was how he perceived by a personal experience to something was how the whole EU system was. It would have been only a very small cog of within the massive network system of the EU he experienced.

I still have huge respect for him, but I am not going to bow down to the "have taken offense card" being played. Why to me, in my opinion Fred is wrong on the EU. He is again like others, born from being proud of this nation. A nation once born very much in the past. On former glories. To of this believe it is best to be separate from others, as if only people here have on a right in having a say. The EU is based on more than just Britain, but based on all Euro nations having a say. Hence why in reality on 2% of legislation was opposed by the UK. The EU is based on equality for all people that reside within EU nations, not just Britain. 

Its no different when laws and polices come into force, that we do not like in the UK. Many people will have issues with some or many policies.  The Uk has not been self sufficient for years. Where even more EU nations already need each others help to function. It makes those EU countries. On their own small in reality, be part of something far bigger and offer up far greater protection and security. That they have never had in previous decades or their history. Which made many of them vulnerable to aggressors. Unity through numbers gives strength, to divide and cast your safe off in isolation from others, dramatically will weaken you. 

Case in point, no one nation won WW2, collectively, the Allies nations did.

To take the selfish avenue of thinking to go alone, shows how badly people still will not learn. The world functions together, through trade and business and the sooner everyone starts to work together for humanity, the better it will be for everyone. Trying to divide societies through an invented concept, will just continue to keep humanity in perpetual conflict. The real reason for why many people voted to leave, is because they simply are afraid to reach out to people. They would rather build an imaginary wall around themselves, wrongly thinking it protects them. Its just makes them even more vulnerable.

Hope that helps Tommy and i wanted to explain this before to Me Lord, and very glad to have gotten it off my chest.

It was funnier before when you wrote 'clog' instead of 'cog'...!!!

I wrote cog Tommy

Do you need to go to specsavers?

Fred Moletrousers wrote:

nicko wrote:Your quite correct Fred, i'v had dealings with many Farmers over the years and the big super markets are squeezing the life out of the small suppliers .

My late wife's family were large scale horticultural crop growers (she was MD) and they marketed direct to greengrocers' shops and specialist food processing firms in and around London. The "old man", (her father and the company Chairman), would have nothing to do with supermarket chains...and that was before they became all-powerful.

After I retired from the PR and policy side of the farming industry I was a freelance writer and broadcaster specialising in food and farming for a few years - just to keep the wolf from the door, you'll understand -  and the disgraceful treatment of small to medium sized producers by the supermarket chains cropped up time and time again.  

People shop in their stores and believe how wonderful they are at keeping prices down, but they simply don't realise just what absolute shits they are towards the little people who grow the stuff that they sell.

Not just in Britain and Europe, either...

Supermarket chains have been increasingly screwing-over farmers down here -- especially dairy farmers, and fruit and vege' producers -- and distorting the market-price mechanisms and supply chains, since the 1970s, at least..

WhoseYourWolfie wrote:

Fred Moletrousers wrote:

My late wife's family were large scale horticultural crop growers (she was MD) and they marketed direct to greengrocers' shops and specialist food processing firms in and around London. The "old man", (her father and the company Chairman), would have nothing to do with supermarket chains...and that was before they became all-powerful.

After I retired from the PR and policy side of the farming industry I was a freelance writer and broadcaster specialising in food and farming for a few years - just to keep the wolf from the door, you'll understand -  and the disgraceful treatment of small to medium sized producers by the supermarket chains cropped up time and time again.  

People shop in their stores and believe how wonderful they are at keeping prices down, but they simply don't realise just what absolute shits they are towards the little people who grow the stuff that they sell.

Not just in Britain and Europe, either...

Supermarket chains have been increasingly screwing-over farmers down here --  especially dairy farmers, and fruit and vege' producers -- and distorting the market-price mechanisms and supply chains,  since the 1970s, at least..

Dairy products, fruit and vegetables and, to a lesser extent poultrymeat and egg production, are the sectors which have probably suffered most because what leaves the farms gate is principally what appears on supermarket shelves after having been purchased largely directly from individual suppliers or producer marketing co-operatives.

The other major sectors such as grain,  beef, sheepmeat and sugar beet (do you grow that in Australia?) are far more likely to go through the processing system
before appearing on the high street as finished products.

We also formerly had the particular problem of structural surpluses in Europe (milk lakes and grain mountains) which arose principally because of the rapid expansion of production spurred on by guaranteed prices and subsidies paid under the European Common Agricultural Policy.

It was a system much maligned by the public and politicians at the time, though consumers had largely forgotten that it was originally introduced to address the very real problem of critical food shortages following WW2 and, more importantly, to create future food supply security. One spin-off, of course was that over-production created the buyers' market which was then eagerly seized upon by the by then rapidly expanding supermarket business who were able to use abundance and availability to drive down retail prices and increase their own profit margins.

Here in Australia --  and around much of S.E. Asia, the South Pacific, and Central and South America, sugar cane is the main source of white sugar (sucrose) and golden syrup...

Beetroot is used as a salad vegetable in Oz, NZ, and parts of Asia and the South Pacific --  whereas at the same time, 'beets are often little known as a human food in much of Europe, northern Asia and North America.. 'Sugar beets' are little known as such outside of Britain, Europe and Africa. Sorghum is probably the #3 source of white sugar, worldwide ?

With the poultry industry down here, chicken, duck and turkey production is mostly controlled by a handful of big corporations (the likes of Baiada and Inghams..),  who then contract out to hundreds of individual private owned growers;  while there are also hundreds of small 'boutique' growers producing the likes of bantams, geese, and game birds for niche markets and local markets.

Most of the time, the supermarkets are dealing with the big boys for their poultry lines..