Suffolk farmers are calling on the government for action to prevent future food shortages as a nationwide shortage of fruit and vegetables leaves supermarket shelves bare.
Retailers have warned that a shortage of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and lettuce could last weeks.
Supermarkets such as Asda, Morrisons, Tesco, Lidl and Aldi are restricting sales of the rationed foods per customer.
Tomato growers in particular have been pointing to soaring energy prices, saying it pushed back the start of the UK season and created a heavier reliance on imports this winter.
William Hudson, who helped to set up the degree course in Regenerative Agriculture at Writtle University College, had three words on the matter: "Supermarkets, supermarkets, supermarkets."
He believes that the government has, for many years, bought food from anywhere in the world "simply because we have enough money to afford it."
Mr Hudson added: "They've done very little to create any form of resilience in our food system.
"We are now addicted to cheap food."
As for the current shortages, he says that farms were encouraged to get bigger because the returns were less, meaning the small to medium scale horticultural businesses which focussed on salad vegetables are now less frequent.
In fact, Mr Hudson has experienced this himself, as his family's strawberry farm had to close as it could not keep up with the supermarkets.
To him, our current state has been reached by a mix of "complacent, ignorant governments and supermarkets who have the upper hand".
"If that sounds vehement and angry - it is," he said.
"I believe that we have to rebuild our whole food system. Much smaller farms and much smaller supply chains."
Andrew Blenkiron is director of the Euston Estate and chairman of the Suffolk branch of the National Farmers' Union.
This year, he will be planting 300 acres less of crops, replacing irrigated root crops such as potatoes, onions, parsnips and carrots with sugar beet.
Mr Blenkiron said: "In the farming industry, we make decisions so far in advance because we want to make sure that our customers are satisfied and we don't overpromise anything.
"Water is in tight supply this year and we're going to struggle to fill our reservoirs, so it made the decision to switch to sugar beet much easier."
Sugar beet is a plant grown commercially for sugar production and is a crop which requires less water to grow.
Mr Blenkiron says this decision will not affect consumers for a considerable amount of time, because enough of last year's crops have been set aside to last through to July.
Looking at the year ahead, he says it will be interesting to see how farmers across the region have decided to grow their land.
"Carrots and salad potatoes could be in shorter supply through summer," he said.
"But it really does depend on what harvest there is because things can vary by 25% year on year just based on weather conditions."
He added that the current supermarket shortages, which have mainly affected tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and lettuces, could be a common occurrence going forward.
"Retailers will be looking to source elsewhere if UK crops fail and this is a threat to our farming," said Mr Blenkiron.
"A lot of other countries also don't have as high environmental standards as the UK, which means we're hampered with those extra costs."
As a whole, he believes this points to the fundamental issue of national food security, saying the government should do more to address this problem.
"We wouldn't have run out of the foods we're seeing supermarket's rationing at the moment if the government had been more supportive of UK farmers," he added.
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