Aren't markets just so gorgeously, wonderfully, cuddly?

The Guardian tells us, in doleful tones, that:

‘There will be fewer British tomatoes on the shelves’

Oh, right, so why’s that then?

…soaring energy costs force growers to quit…after hefty rises in the cost of production – including energy to heat and light greenhouses ….In a typical winter, only about 5% of the tomatoes consumed in the UK are grown in Britain, and this winter it was probably a lot less, as farmers did not want to pay the bills for the lighting and heating required…..In the summer months it can be more than 50%, gradually gearing up from the end of March, but it is still all grown in greenhouses that require heating, mainly with gas, and costs have ballooned since the war in Ukraine began just over a year ago.

Of course, we’re not happy about that energy price rise - as we’ve been saying, should’a gone fracking.

However, since that energy price rise did happen clearly there have to be changes to who does what where. At some level of relative costs growing tomatoes in Spain and shipping them costs more than in these British greenhouses. At some other level of relative costs - the energy part of the transport costs is obviously vastly lower than the energy required to grow - then using the foreigners is cheaper.

OK, so against a constantly shifting background of changes in such relative costs we need a method of working through who should change doing what and where. In real time by preference.

By some wondrous chance we’ve actually got such a system too. Prices as they operate in a free market.

There are, of course, those who intimate that this is a market failure, a problem with the use of markets:

Diplock says: “If the British tomato is to have a future we need support from consumers, the supermarkets and government.”

Our response being, well, why? The entire universe, through those relative prices, is screaming at us to get our tomatoes from elsewhere. Why should government policy then demand not just that we ignore reality but actively fight against it?

Ah, yes, sorry, we forgot. That’s why people go into politics, isn’t it? To be able to ignore and or fight reality….