Scandal as THOUSANDS of British cucumbers are being tossed away by growers every day
THOUSANDS of British cucumbers are being tossed away by growers every day as cheap foreign imports flood the market.
The scandal comes just months after supermarkets rationed salad produce amid severe shortages.
Up to 30 per cent of daily harvests in the Lea Valley — an area of Hertfordshire, Essex and North London dubbed the country’s cucumber capital — are being binned.
It costs about 30p to produce a cucumber but European suppliers are selling them for 16p or less.
As a result, UK supermarket buyers are rejecting homegrown ones.
Lee Stiles, of the Lea Valley Growers Association, said: “It’s the complete opposite of what happened earlier this year.
“It’s desperate.
“We all delayed planting, so did the Dutch because of energy costs and the Spanish were hit by bad weather.
“But now there’s a massive overproduction because Europeans are extending their harvests to recover some of their losses and the market has been completely flooded.
“We’re giving cucumbers to charities and food banks but thousands are dumped or shredded for fertiliser.”
Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons sell cucumbers for 79p each, with the price up by a third from the average 59p a year ago.
In February, stores rationed salad crops as bad harvests in Spain and Morocco caused shortages in stores here.
High energy bills and a lack of support for commercial greenhouses also meant growers here cut back.
