Soaring energy prices and bad weather have led to a salad crisis in the UK as supermarkets ration tomatoes and cucumbers

• The UK's largest supermarket chain put a cap of three sales per customer on salad ingredients like tomatoes and cucumbers.
• High energy costs and bad weather conditions have contributed to the food shortage.

The UK is having a salad crisis right now as high energy costs and bad weather hit certain vegetable growers.

The country's largest supermarket, Tesco, has been rationing certain fruits and vegetables, setting a limit of three sales per customer on salad staples like tomatoes and cucumbers.

Environment Secretary Thérèse Coffey said on Thursday that the shortages could last another month, and even suggested that Brits switch to turnips and other seasonal veggies for the time being.

"It's important to make sure that we cherish the specialisms that we have in this country," Coffey said.

She added: "A lot of people would be eating turnips right now rather than thinking necessarily about aspects of lettuce and tomatoes and similar. But I'm conscious that consumers want a year-round choice and that is what our supermarkets, food producers and growers around the world try to satisfy."

Farming Minister Mark Spencer said the main reason for the supply crunch was "frost in Morocco and Spain in November and December which damaged a lot of the salad and brassica crops which we have traditionally relied for imports at this time of year," he told reporters this week.

The UK imports around 95% of its tomatoes in the winter months, most of it from North Africa and Spain, according to the British Retail Consortium.

The National Farmer Union's president blamed the country's reliance on imports during the winter for the supply crunch. The rise in energy prices, according to Minette Batters, also led domestic vegetable growers to scale back on operations.

There may soon be some relief for the shortage, according to the British Tomato Growers Association, which forecasts "significant volumes" of British tomatoes on food retails shelves by the end of next month.