{"id":43546,"date":"2019-02-05T08:52:20","date_gmt":"2019-02-05T13:52:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43546"},"modified":"2019-02-05T08:52:22","modified_gmt":"2019-02-05T13:52:22","slug":"uk-vegetable-and-fruit-supplies-at-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43546","title":{"rendered":"UK vegetable and fruit supplies at risk"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

UK vegetable and fruit supplies at risk<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Potatoes on the wing \u2013 and thin pickings for all as UK crops wilt. Image: By Lucas Sankey<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Britons\u2019 familiar and well-loved fish and chips could become scarcer as politics and climate change imperil UK vegetable and fruit supplies.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

LONDON, 5 February, 2019 \u2212<\/em> A combination of Brexit \u2212 Britain\u2019s move to leave the European Union<\/a> \u2212 and climate change is threatening UK vegetable and fruit supplies for its 66 million people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brexit-associated delays at ports could result in widespread shortages of a range of imported vegetables and fruit such as lettuces and tomatoes<\/a>, particularly if the UK crashes out of Europe at the end of March this year with no deal in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now there\u2019s more bad news on the British food front; a just-released report says climate change and resulting abnormal weather conditions are causing significant decreases in the UK\u2019s own vegetable and fruit harvests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study<\/a>, produced by the Climate Coalition<\/a> in association with the Priestley International Centre for Climate<\/a> at the University of Leeds in the UK, says about 60% of food consumed in Britain is domestically produced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The unusually warm summer in 2018<\/a> \u2013 the hottest ever in England since records began in 1910, according to the report \u2013 led to a drop in the onion harvest of 40% and a decline of between 25% and 30% in the carrot crop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2017 the UK\u2019s apple growers lost 25% of their produce due to unseasonably warm weather followed by an unusually late series of frosts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really hard work growing fruit and vegetables, but erratic and extreme weather pushes you over the edge\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The study says climate change-related extreme and unpredictable weather is putting at risk future supplies of potatoes \u2013 a staple of the British diet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe UK could lose almost three-quarters of the area of land currently well-suited for potatoes by the 2050s under climate projections\u201d, says the report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UK vegetable and fruit supplies at risk Potatoes on the wing \u2013 and thin pickings for all as UK crops wilt. Image: By Lucas Sankey on Unsplash Britons\u2019 familiar and well-loved fish and chips could become scarcer as politics and climate change imperil UK vegetable and fruit supplies. LONDON, 5 February, 2019 \u2212 A combination of Brexit \u2212 Britain\u2019s move to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,7],"tags":[5582,141,9245,279,284,319,23978,2080],"class_list":["post-43546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-geopolitics","category-survival-2","tag-brexit","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-news-network","tag-eu","tag-european-union","tag-food","tag-kieran-cooke","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43546"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43547,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43546\/revisions\/43547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}