“Gas prices being so sky high, it’s a worrying time,” said Tony Montalbano, who grows cucumbers in a 30,000 square meter glasshouse in southeastern England. This glasshouse supplies supermarkets with cucumber, and every square meter of it is empty. He and many other cucumber farmers who rely on glasshouses to grow cucumbers are unable to operate them due to soaring energy costs.
Elsewhere in the country, other farmers have also failed to plant peppers, eggplants, tomatoes and other crops due to soaring fuel and fertilizer prices.
“All the years of us working hard to get where we are, and then one year it could just all finish,” said Montalbano.
Last year, Montalbano noted that he paid between 0.40 to 0.50 pounds ($0.49 to $0.61) per therm (British thermal units) of natural gas. This year, he was paying 2.25 pounds ($2.75) a therm after briefly hitting a record eight pounds ($9.76) a therm in late February.
Jack Ward, head of the British Growers Association, warned that operating costs have increased to the point that farmers in Britain are unable to do anything about them. What this means, he warns, is that the industry will experience a massive contraction, as many farmers will be unable to keep their operations going without enough profits. This severely threatens Britain’s food security, and is a situation that is occurring all over the globe....<<<Read More>>>...
