Today’s news round-up. Estimates of this year’s harvests are coming in
Great Britain, brassicas, yields down by as much as 25%. Outside Scotland, farming across the whole of Britain had a very bad season in everything.
In Czechia the longest drought since records began and veg yields a third lower than last year.
Farmers in Italy took huge losses too. Celery yields for example will be 70% down
Bad news on leeks in Belgium, there’ll be less of them and produced at a higher cost
In Greece the lemon harvest is shaping up to be near 30% smaller than in past years.
Because climate change isn’t just smaller yields, it’s often higher costs of producing those smaller yields, if only because you have to irrigate.
Spain, France, Germany and Poland took serious losses this year as well. Basically the whole of European farming.
The effects will show after the harvest, within a few weeks veg won’t just be dearer, some of it may start going missing off the shelves
Which is all the worse news because, unlike cocoa say, you can’t really stock up on veg
It’s not only Europe taking the hit. The Australian cherry harvest will be down 15%. Drought and exceptionally high temperatures hit the other hemisphere too, farming in Martinique among others. In Mexico the weather caused massive losses as well. In some mango growing regions the losses run to as much as 80%
Nigel Clare from the farming firm Peloton Produce, one of the leaders of the veg market in Great Britain, commented on the current situation in farming like this
These extreme weather conditions are becoming the norm, and we’re already wondering what we should plant next year and where we should plant our crops, but it’s very hard to predict
Meanwhile, according to at least some estimates, as much as a third of perfectly edible, good veg never makes it to sale.
That’s mostly veg that looks bad, is too small, too big, odd. And gets binned for it. Exactly like with people.
And when it comes to veg I get it
Buying veg myself, I pick the big spuds, because I’ve got 5 kilos to peel and bigger potatoes peel quicker and, just as important, there’s less waste, because the skin takes up a smaller share of a big potato.
Only when you look at the figures above, it’s exactly those ugly veg and fruit that are the reserve we can and should reach for first in Europe.
If the free market won’t do it, and in theory that’s where this veg should be turning up cheaper, then European states should, through intervention buying. Subsidising that buying and the whole process from farm to fork.
Because this is a security issue. A completely basic one.
Food security is absolutely the first security, just as food is the completely basic need, without which the others don’t exist.
Because when you’ve got nothing to eat, you die and you haven’t got any needs any more.
It’s the first need, without meeting it all the rest stop existing, and it should always be the foundation of the security of a country and state.
The kitchen is my space for lifestyle medicine.
I'm not a dietitian or a doctor – I'm a chef, and a member of the Polish Society of Lifestyle Medicine. Nutrition is essential to a modern kitchen, and that's nothing new: working from Hippocratic dietetic principles was part of a cook's craft centuries ago. At Rude Kitchen I tie that tradition to modern science — and to lifestyle. Read more about how I bring cooking and lifestyle medicine together on the About page.