What is the Hungry Gap?

Guy Singh-Watson of Riverford Organics is warning about the risks of Brexit-related disruptions to our food supply, timed to coincide with the ‘Hungry Gap‘. He says “to be told by people who have no idea how their food is produced that this is ‘project fear’ makes me incandescent with rage”. Farmers and seasoned gardeners will be nodding their heads, but everyone else may be a little perplexed. What’s the Hungry Gap?

The Hungry Gap occurs because we live in a climate with four seasons. Most plants, and certainly most crop plants, don’t like growing in the UK in winter. It’s cold, it’s damp, and the short days and frequent cloud cover means there’s not much light around to fuel growth. There are hardy vegetables that will survive it – things like winter brassicas and leeks – and those are our seasonal veg in winter.

By the spring, the winter vegetables have either been eaten, or are getting ready to run to seed (‘bolt’). Farmers and gardeners are busy sowing and planting new crops, but they can’t go in too early and it will be a while before they can be harvested. So there’s a gap of several weeks between the last of the winter crops and the start of the early spring crops, and that’s the Hungry Gap.

It’s not a familiar term these days, because modern Britain has all but eliminated the hungry gap by importing fruits and vegetables from warmer climates (often Spain or Italy), or growing them here with copious amounts of heat and light. It’s not particularly carbon-friendly, but the issue at hand is what happens if our supply lines from Europe are disrupted. Because we rely on ‘just in time’ delivery systems, and because fruits and vegetables have a short lifespan, we could be faced withempty shelves.

Riverford are already