The Bath Magazine April 2020

Page 46

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FOOD | AND | DRINK

Love your local larder

The idea of Brexit has been pushed aside in these times of Covid-19, but the importance of living more self-sufficiently and relying less on foreign imports has never been more relevant. Here, Melissa Blease talks to food specialists about the impact of Brexit on the food industry, and their ideas on why local, seasonable produce is not merely a health choice

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or decades, the shopping in our baskets and larders has represented the food world equivalent of the Eurovision Song Contest, the Six Nations and the Academy Awards all sitting down together for supper – and our menus reflect the international theme. We blithely scoff strawberries in December, for example, largely imported from Spain, Egypt, Morocco and Israel. Nearly all the decent pasta that we eat is imported from Italy (if you’ve ever tried growing durum wheat in the UK, you'll understand why). We dive into Icelandic cod on a regular basis, Norwegian salmon makes a splash on menus across the land, and tonnes of tuna makes its way across the oceans from Mauritius and the Seychelles. Even British salad leaves take a

VICKI MOWAT, Riverford Home Delivery Bath The UK currently only supplies 61% of its own food, while 70% of imported food comes from EU countries; the decisions made around tariffs, quality standards and other issues after Brexit will have a big impact on us all. At Riverford, we employ lots of brilliant workers from the EU, and the availability of future labour is a huge area of concern for the entire fruit and vegetable industry. We were very disappointed to see the government’s recent points-based immigration system announcement that seems to have ignored how vital migrant workers are to the agricultural sector. We’re providing full support to all of our European workers in order for them to be able to return next year to pick for us, and we’re better able to attract British nationals as we pay above-average wages. We’re

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bruising in the colder months; the British Leafy Salads Association says that 90 per cent of the salad leaves we eat in winter come from a single region of Spain. But with Brexit now underway, we can no longer take our food supply for granted. According to Chris Elliott – founder of the Institute for Global Food Security at Queen’s University, Belfast – the UK imports about 40% of all the food we eat, with around a third of it coming from EU member states. “The UK imported more than £370 million worth of potatoes from the Netherlands and Belgium in the first six months of 2018 and, in the first nine months of last year, 94 per cent of beef imports into the UK came from EU member states, threequarters of it from Ireland alone,” he says. Meanwhile, according to a report

confident in being able to weather any storms and keep the Riverford veg boxes fully supplied, but we’re worried about the impact on growers who are smaller than us and less able to navigate this tricky issue. Given the uncertainty, now is the time to align our diets to incorporate more and more British seasonal food, looking forward to new produce becoming available as the seasons evolve rather than worrying about what we can’t get. Riverford already does this, so we’re a handy shortcut! Customers can select UK produce, and we even have a 100% UK veg box. When we do import (always by land/sea freight), we do so from grower-partners with whom we have long-term, solid relationships so we’re well protected against supply disruption, and confident that we’ll be able to work around any obstacles to keep our organic boxes filled. riverford.co.uk

commissioned by dairy giant Arla and published by the London School of Economics towards the end of last year, “the UK imports nearly all the yogurt it eats, largely from mainland Europe”, while the Republic of Ireland produces nearly 10 billion litres of milk a year, the majority of which goes into the British market. Meanwhile, the Institute for Fiscal Studies says that the future of food prices will remain ‘highly uncertain’ until solid trade negotiations are made, and the British Retail Consortium has stated that the absence of a trade deal between the UK and the European Union could see the price of imported food rise by 22% over the coming year. Help, we need expert advice! And food for thought...

NEIL MORTIMER, Lovejoys Wholesale As specialists in local and UK produce, we’re working with our chefs to compose menus that place more emphasis on seasonal produce, keeping costs down and promoting all of the local produce available. The UK food business is important to countries in the EU, and vice versa: Holland and Belgium supply the majority of frozen chips; France and Spain send huge supplies of tomatoes and other salad crops, especially in the winter. If a trade deal agreement is settled quickly, then food supplies will go on as normal; if not, the worst scenario is cost increases and lengthy customs delays. It’s hoped that worst-case scenarios will be temporary. We will work hard to keep supplies as normal as possible to our customers throughout the negotiation period, and we’re hopeful that our experience and long-standing supplier relationships will sustain us. lovejoyswholesale.com


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