The ongoing heatwave is starting to burn a hole in Britons’ pockets, as higher food prices linked to scorched harvests across Europe reach shops and restaurants.
“Today I am selling a box of broccoli for £8 but by Monday that could have doubled,” says Paul Murphy, a director of Yes Chef,based at London’s New Covent Garden market, which supplies fruit and vegetables to restaurants in the capital.
“Broccoli is cooking in the fields ... farmers can’t get them out of the ground quick enough before the sun yellows them,” he said. “We’ve not experienced anything like this in decades. The prices we expect to see over the next couple of weeks could be nothing compared with what’s in store for autumn if the heat has done the damage growers think.”
The major supermarkets are partially insulated from sharp price moves by long-term supplier contracts but the price of broccoli on their shelves has already risen by more than a quarter, year on year, according to the Grocer trade journal, while carrots are up 8.3% and onions 3.5%. An iceberg lettuce is now 52p on average compared with 49p this time last year, as some salad suppliers are being forced to ship in produce from the US as soaring temperatures across Europe leave plants wilting in the fields.
Anthony Gardiner from G’s, one of the UK’s largest suppliers of salad leaves to supermarkets, said yields were down, with last weekend’s rain “not significant”.
“The whole of northern Europe has seen higher than average temperatures,” said Gardiner. “Belgian supermarkets are struggling to find lettuce; there are difficulties in Germany and Scandinavia. It varies week on week, but generally the salad industry is having to import from the US or other parts of Europe to meet demand.”
By comparison, Murphy reports bumper supplies of tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers, which are grown under glass.
British wheat farmers are also fearful after the driest start to summer on record, with crops expected to fall to a five-year low. The searing heat has also devastated wheat crops in northern European.
The German Farmers’ Association expects this year’s winter wheat harvest to be the smallest since 2003. The crop, wilted by the highest May temperatures since 1881, is expected to shrink 25% this year to 18m tons.
Wheat production across the EU is expected to fall below 130m tons for the first time in six years, according to cereal market analysts at Stratégie Grains. The bloc is the world’s largest wheat grower with the grain a key ingredient in staples such as bread, biscuits and breakfast cereals. “The situation is catastrophic in northern Europe,” said Stratégie Grains head analyst, Andrée Defois.
Wheat prices have surged more than 20% on European and US markets in the past three weeks as worries ave mounted over global supplies, but analysts say high stocks and other grain crops could compensate for part of the shortfall.
The price of beer could also rise in the coming months as the malting barley crop, which is used to ferment the brew as well as provide flavour and colour, has been a casualty. Expectations of a tightening supply has sent the wholesale price of European malting barley to a five-year high of €236 per tonne.
