First the truck drivers were missing, then the eggs and now the tomatoes. While Germany only temporarily ran out of pasta or toilet paper during the pandemic, shortages are no longer a rare occurrence in Great Britain. “Three pieces per customer” signs have recently appeared on many vegetable shelves in British supermarkets. Experts are already speculating what next products could be missing.

In the fall of 2021, gas stations temporarily ran out of gas. A year later, eggs and Christmas turkeys became scarce. In addition, there is a labor shortage on all fronts, especially in service occupations and catering. So now the vegetables are also missing – and not for the first time. When the Brexit rules first came into force, there were also gaps in the shelves.

Brexit is compounding the problems

The reasons for the shortage are various: petrol was in short supply at the time mainly because after Brexit and the pandemic there were no longer enough truck drivers to transport fuel. Bird flu and the killing of many animals were responsible for eggs and turkeys, while shortages in vegetables began with poor harvests due to adverse weather conditions.

“Brexit makes the situation worse,” says the head of the German-British Chamber of Industry and Commerce (AHK) in London, Ulrich Hoppe, in an interview with dpa. Exports to Great Britain, he points out, have become more difficult and more expensive, while when demand exceeds supply, other countries have priority. As for the lack of skilled labor, the barriers for foreign workers have become higher due to visa regulations.

What could be missing next

The trade association British Retail Consortium considers, for example, possible shortages of olive oil due to poor harvests in growing areas, while economist Andrew Lee, a professor in Baden-Württemberg, also considers imported cheeses as threatened products. As extreme weather events are expected to increase, the impact on supply chains will hit Britain harder than EU countries, Lee told dpa. “Britain may then be able to sell more cheddar, but it is doubtful that this can compensate for the absence of cheese imports from the EU. – and whether consumers will want to eat only British cheese is an entirely different question.”

The National Farmers Union also expects tomato and cucumber shortages to continue as the harvest of domestic varieties also thins out over the years. Farmers expect that for these products, the 2022 season will turn out to be the lowest on record in 40 years. The trend is similar for pears and peppers. “Food safety in the UK is over, the government needs to take this seriously,” said the association’s vice-chairman David Exwood.

There are several reasons why this situation is unlikely to change in the near future – one of them being Brexit. Hope estimates that the UK will be hit by the effects of climate change by 10-15% more than European countries. “Brexit has increased the risk of disruption to supply chains,” he says. So far, the British government has rejected the idea of ​​ever rejoining the EU’s single market. Finally, as mentioned above, extreme weather events and droughts, a consequence of climate change, will in turn limit harvests even more.

Germany will also be affected

But even Germany will not escape the effects of climate change and disruptions to the global supply chain, resulting for example from sanctions or conflicts. When truck drivers were in short supply in Britain, industry unions pointed out that Germany also had a shortage of tens of thousands of workers and that this would worsen. The additional barriers in the UK merely reveal under a magnifying glass the areas in which there will later be shortages in other countries.