There was a shortage of some fresh produce recently.
What was to blame? Brexit? Ukraine? Spanish weather?
Perhaps a bit of all, either way Therese Coffey had a simple way to sort this issue out, just eat turnips.
That’s right turnips for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Those sunlit uplands were just the reflection from billions of turnips growing for our post-Brexit pleasure.
Here she is telling the House about it at the end of Feb?
Watch
Turnip trouble?
It seems that AW Mortier, near Alderton in Suffolk, had a near monopoly on the few turnips available in supermarkets but gave up in September last year because of stores’ unwillingness to pay higher prices to make up for rising costs of energy and fertiliser, reports the Guardian.
“It just wasn’t worth them doing it,” said Andrew Thorogood, the managing director of S Thorogood and sons, a leading wholesaler that specialises in traditional English fruit and vegetables.
“They were tied into all the supermarkets, and being tied down terribly. The open-market price is much higher than the supermarkets are prepared to pay – that’s quite a normal thing these days.”
He said there were “two or three” other growers who served independent retailers and restaurants. “Most of our turnips now come from either these two or three growers or France. We import probably 70 or 80% of our product from France, and more and more from Spain and Portugal.”
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Related: Turnipgate: Therese Coffey told us to eat turnips – but there is one HUGE catch
