Farmers have said they have had to throw away their produce because this summer’s extreme heat has caused fruit and veg to grow in unusual shapes or colours – meaning retailers will not buy it. <\/p>\n
They said they were calling for the government to update the current appearance standards to help the country avoid “a future food security crisis”.<\/p>\n
James Pullen, a potato grower in Tintinhull near Yeovil, said he was facing \u00a3200,000 losses due to his produce appearing bruised or not growing at all. He said retailers would not purchase such produce. <\/p>\n
Sarah Dyke, MP for Somerton and Glastonbury, said she was calling for retailers to relax “rigid appearance standards” which she described as “absurd”.<\/p>\n
However, Andrew Opie, director of food and sustainability at the British Retail Consortium, said: “Retailers face the dilemma of supporting British farmers but also making sure that… customers have what they expect to buy.<\/p>\n
“Extreme weather, including drought, can affect crop yields and place upward pressure on prices.<\/p>\n
“Retailers are experienced in managing supply disruptions and will take all necessary steps to minimise any impact on customers, including sourcing from alternative suppliers and expanding ranges of odd-sized produce.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Farmers have said they have had to throw away their produce because this summer’s extreme heat has caused…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":755340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-755339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=755339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/755340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=755339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=755339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=755339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}