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    Would you care to elaborate, not guess Archived Message

    Posted by Chris Rogers on March 2, 2023, 8:22 pm, in reply to "Re: The small price of sticking it to Putin"

    Ken,
    Where is your data for the 95 percent claim?

    Further, the Lea Valley actually supplies 75 percent of the UK's cucumbers, sweet peppers and aubergines - do check out the Lea Valley Growers website for full data - these being collectively known as Salad foodstuffs.

    Further, and as persons have bees in their bonnets about tomatoes, guess what, since 2016 Moroccan Tomato imports have grown greatly, indeed, they have taken market share from Holland and Spain and as far as tonnage is concerned is now second to Holland in exports to the UK - do see this: https://www.tridge.com/stories/uk-imports-of-moroccan-tomato-increase-outperforming-spanish-imports

    Oh, and strangely, Moroccan tomatoes are far cheaper than Dutch or Spanish tomatoes, the hey day for Dutch imports being 2011-2014, i.e., well before Brexit I'm afraid.

    Now, conversely, UK grown tomato tonnage has fallen sharply since 2018, there again total import tonnage of tomatoes has also been in decline since that date according to hortidaily.com. Indeed Ken the value of imported tomatoes in 2021 was the same as in 2016 according to Statista and I don't recall shortages in that year, whilst peak imports were in 2017 and 2018, that is after the Brexit vote.

    Now, could you explain to me where this dishonesty is as Watkins clearly is discussing SALAD Veg, of which tomatoes make up a small part, unless you are making tomato sauce and, as the stats indicate tomato imports have been dropping since 2019 whilst costs have been increasing, as the author quite clearly points out.

    Suffice to say, Morocco could supply all of the UK's tomato requirements, although France and Spain may be a little miffed as they don't like paying high Dutch costs and that's with EU Tariffs applied - of course, putting all your eggs in one basket ain't a good idea, hence the UK's mixed picture with Morocco growing in import.

    Maybe, just maybe Watkins has a valid point, namely its easy to blame Brexit for everything, rather than look for genuine causes. We also have the Big Four supermarket chains unwilling to pay UK farmers the actual cost of produce, preferring cheap imports. Indeed, only 45 percent of the UK's fruit and veg requirement is home produced, the remainder imported, and since the SEA much of this came from the EU. As with Morocco, alternative sources are available in North Africa, however, please, please don't buy Israeli products.

    Now, you can whinge about Brexit as much as you like, but change must come and that means being more self sufficient in foodstuffs. With regards rising costs do read Tim Morgan's Blog, namely surplusenergyeconomics, which kinda backs up what Tim Watkins states.

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