YESTERDAY I was in my favourite coffee shop, and heard a woman from the next table saying, "I've spent all morning trying to buy a pepper - six supermarkets, and couldn't find one in any of them!" "You need to get a life," her friend said.
If you have been to a UK supermarket in the last few days you too may have noticed large gaps in the fruit and vegetable sections (see the photo below). While some of us may not be too upset at not being able to eat our salad, it is nonetheless always worrying when important foodstuffs disappear from our shops. As this article recounts (asda-morrisons-ration-tomatoes-peppers-fruit), the supermarkets Asda and Morrisons (***Breaking News - now Aldi and Tesco's too***) are restricting the amount of some types of fruit and veg to only two packs per person - and when rationing of something starts, that is a sure sign of problems in markets.
The secret about learning Economics is that although it is hard at first, many of the ideas you study in the first year are relevant forever after, even for university academics or newspaper journalists. Here are the factors that seem to be causing the shortages. Think about how you would use a supply/diagram to talk about this, and you will have a spot on analysis of the whole situation.
(1) Bad weather and storms in the Mediterranean and North Africa.
(2) Bad frosts before Christmas affecting UK crops.
(3) High energy costs putting off growers in the Netherlands, who use large greenhouses to produce fruit and vegetables all year around.
(4) Time consuming and costly UK border checks discouraging overseas suppliers from wanting to sell their produce here.
