Brexit: No Deal, No Food?
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 5 February 2019
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
If the UK crashes out of the EU on 29 March with no agreement on continuing trade relations, how will it affect Britain's supplies of fresh food? Could the country's supermarket shelves be left empty?
Dan Saladino speaks to farmers, traders and officials fretting at the unknown but potentially serious consequences of a "no deal" Brexit for food security in the UK, as well as one middle class family who are already stockpiling their own food supplies.
Interviewees include Guy Singh-Watson of Riverford Farm, Professor Tim Lang of City University London, Ian Wright of the Food & Drink Federation, Andrew Opie of the British Retail Consortium, Emily Norton of Nuffield College Oxford, Tim Worstall of the Adam Smith Institute, and New Covent Garden mushroom trader Michael Hyams.
(Picture: A mother and her son look at the empty bakery shelves in a supermarket in Tewkesbury, England following flooding in 2007; Credit: Matt Cardy/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Dan Saladino. Welcome to Business Daily. And today we look at a very British pickle. |
| 0:07.9 | The UK Parliament is deadlocked over Brexit. The dreaded no-deal scenario, where Britain leaves the EU on |
| 0:14.5 | the 29th of March, without any agreement to continue existing trade relations, is looking like a very real possibility. |
| 0:22.4 | It's a prospect making many ordinary Brits anxious. |
| 0:26.4 | But imagine you're in the food business, with crops in the ground or perhaps import orders |
| 0:31.3 | in the pipeline and shelves that need to be filled on March 30th. |
| 0:37.5 | I'm Guy Watson. I'm from Riverford Farm. |
| 0:42.7 | It's January the 20th on a cold morning. |
| 0:47.8 | I'm standing in the middle of a field of winter brassicas trying to work out what we can pick for our veg boxes this week. |
| 0:54.9 | Guy Watson record it a little audio diary for us, |
| 0:58.7 | capturing his mood as he set about sourcing the fruit and veg |
| 1:01.9 | that would fill the 70,000 boxes destined for homes around the UK. |
| 1:07.5 | At this time of year, and increasingly so towards March 29th, much of that food will need to come from the continent. |
| 1:15.3 | There is a period between early March and, say, mid-June, when green vegetables are in very short supply within the UK. |
| 1:25.0 | Indeed, I would estimate that 80% plus of them will be imported mostly from |
| 1:30.3 | the south of Spain and south of Italy. This is the period that we call the hungry gap. |
| 1:37.3 | I am absolutely terrified of the implications of a no-deal or a disorderly Brexit. I mean, from our |
| 1:43.7 | point of view at Riverford, it will take |
| 1:46.2 | about four days lost trading to wipe out any potential profit. It'll probably take a fortnight |
| 1:53.3 | for us to breach our banking covenants and be effectively bankrupt after 30 years of building |
| 1:59.9 | the business. |
| 2:01.5 | On December the 18th last year, the Department for Exiting the European Union |
... |
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