How often do courgettes make mainstream national news? Not often, but that has been scarce comfort for the beleaguered veg and salad industries over the past few weeks, which have been dealing with what’s quickly turning into the worst supply crisis in recent history.
Heavy rain and floods in Murcia proved catastrophic for Spain’s key growing region before Christmas, quickly compounded by freezing temperatures and snowfall blocking access and halting picking.
Challenging weather conditions were not restricted to Spain: temperatures of down to -16°C turned Italy from a seller to a buyer, Turkey’s Istanbul airport and major shipping straits were closed due to snow, and Germany, France and much of the rest of Europe has seen supply crippled by ice and snow. Last week, as the shortage began to hit retail shelves, mainstream papers picked up the story as consumers began posting images of empty shelves across social media, under the hashtag #courgettecrisis.
In fact, the chaos is far from confined to courgettes. Lettuce – particularly wholehead iceberg and Gem – aubergine, broccoli, peppers and endive are among the worse hit.
Yields on some Spanish crops are around 30 per cent of what they should be, while prices have spiked to eye-popping levels, including iceberg selling for £1.30 a head on the markets. The impact on growers is yet to be fully realised, but one importer told of a salad grower in Spain in tears due to losing more than half her crop and letting customers down, while others reported “shocking” levels of decimation to fields, and “the worst conditions for 15 years”.
Some salad processors have been importing from the US where possible, while Morocco has been able to fill some gaps on courgette, although this route was slowed last week due to snow delaying progress on the roads.
Although the damage has been done in many cases, as heavy rain in December damaged young plants and halted drilling, as well as destroying current crops, there are some tentative signs of recovery. Ed Bowers, salesman at Bradford’s Burbank Produce, said 50 litres of rain fell in southern Spain last Friday after the snow, but there is “some light at the end of the tunnel”. Forecasts are slightly better for this week, albeit temperatures are still quite low at 15 degrees, and some predicted sunshine will help the situation, he added.
But Juan Marín, president of Murcian exporter association Proexport, has warned that markets will remain undersupplied until the new production cycle reaches the market in March or April. And MD of QPI Spain, Julian Isaacson, said supply “is not going to get better any time soon”. “There are also big problems in Turkey, Greece, Morocco and southern Italy, which are all countries that normally supply at the same time as Spain. Some Turkish crops have been completely decimated after they had heavy snow recently,” he said.
While media attention will help in getting the message out to consumers, its fleeting coverage will be little comfort to growers and importers who will be dealing with the impact of this winter for many months to come.
