It's the Easter holidays, when households might have
traditionally planned a Sunday feast of roast lamb, peas, roast potatoes, mint
sauce, apple pie and custard. But it's a custom many families can only dream
about.
With thousands of lambs dead in the fields and a drought in New Zealand so
bad the browned earth can be seen from space, roast lamb is too pricy for many.
Peas, potatoes and apples will also be expensive. Waitrose managing
director Mark Price has warned that last year's disastrous weather is working its
way through the market causing big price increases. And that’s even before the
impact of the current freezing weather is taken into account.
“In some commodities, the increases will be massive,” he says.
“It’s bread, vegetables, all produce. The apple crop was down 20%-30%, so apple
prices have to go up. You have only seen the tip of the iceberg.”
The price of 1 kg of Braeburn apples has risen by an average
of 20% in the big supermarkets, from £1.62 at the beginning of 2012 to £1.95.
Meat prices are also soaring, because of high feed costs. And
now farmers are having to bring early calves back indoors and buy in feed for
animals that ought to be grazing spring grass.
Wheat yields in England are down by an average of
15% and in some places as high as 35%, according to the National Farmers Union.
The world market price for wheat has risen by 29% compared to last year, after heat
waves and drought hit the 2012 harvests in Russia
and the US .
The UK government's chief scientist Professor Sir John
Beddington, in his last week in the job, made clear that the extreme weather
responsible for this growing food crisis is going to be a feature for many
years to come.
"The variation we are seeing in temperature or rainfall
is double the rate of the average. That suggests that we are going to have more
droughts, we are going to have more floods, we are going to have more sea
surges and we are going to have more storms. These are the sort of changes that
are going to affect us in quite a short timescale," he warned.
He explained that climate changes lag behind the CO2
emissions that cause them. In other words, it is the CO2 already in the atmosphere that is causing the current weather
extremes.
But capitalist economies are emitting more CO2 than ever,
and in the UK ,
the government has taken measures to boost fossil fuel burning. The situation
is not going to get better any time soon.
And of course the impact of higher food prices is worst for
poorest people. The price of healthy produce such as fruit and vegetables has
risen by 34% in the last five years and that is nothing to what is coming later
this year.
Climate change is now a key contributor to the growing
health inequality in the UK
and the government's response shows its flagrant hypocrisy. They continue to spend
millions on TV adverts urging people to eat their "5-a-day" when
their own statistics show that the 10%
of families on lowest incomes are actually reducing their spending on fruit and
veg to save money.
We need to bring the energy and food corporates into a new
and sustainable economic framework. With profit driven out of the system, we
can start acting to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and halt climate change.
And we will need to start adapting to the changes that have
already taken place; that means supporting farmers to sell their produce at a
fair price to not-for-profit co-operatives. Then every family can have a
healthy diet - and the occasional celebration!
Penny Cole
Environment editor
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