We must face that it’s crunch time for British food shoppers – and not just because of Russia. According to market research specialists Kantar, grocery price inflation hit 4.3% in February. Apart from the start of the pandemic, that’s the highest since September 2013.
The sharpest rises are in snack foods (13.6%) beef (12 %) and cat food (11%), but while usually there would be some price falls to balance them out, says Kantar retail analyst Fraser McKevitt, “what is going on at the moment is…there are price rises on pretty much everything that you might buy.”
As the world order rattles, is it time to look to our own back yard? Official figures show that Britain imports nearly half of its food, but food analysts reckon the real figure may be as high as 80%, since any food processed in the UK is said to be produced here, even though the ingredients may have been imported. Growing more of our own makes sense, with concerns over climate change and food security higher than ever. Resilience – even if it costs a little more – is the best weapon we have.
Nuts
Cost of imported £10 per 500g (almonds)
Cost from here £12.50 for 500g (cobnuts)
We imported more than 15,000 tons of almonds from California in 2020 – yet water and pesticide used in cultivation in the drought-stricken state, where 80% of the world’s crop is grown, are causing alarm to environmentalists. Palestinian almonds (zaytoun.uk is a good brand) are grown without irrigation, making them far less environmentally damaging, and they have less than half as far to come than those Californian nuts.
