That’s not such a frivolous dream any more. Or it might not be this year, at least. The National Farmers’ Union is warning that we could see a wholesale desertion of the crop in 2008 after last year’s bad weather saw the chunky staple of a British roast dinner turn into a loss-maker for its members.

For every acre of cauliflower they grow, they lose somewhere between £400 and £500 as the supermarkets refuse to pay them more than 18p a head. When it costs 35p a head to produce its an income that can’t be sustained.

And yet for once it’s not entirely the supermarkets’ fault. Last summer’s floods meant that the crop had to be planted late, and so the harvest that should have started at the beginning of winter is only now getting underway. As such we have a glut on the supermarket shelves, and the likes of Sainsbury’s are having to punt them out at two for £1, or risk having tons of unwanted produce going to waste.

Suddenly cauliflower isn’t the guaranteed cash crop it once was, and so its continued propagation – in the UK at least – is in doubt. That will likely push up prices next year as we face a shortage, making growing at home a financially sensible proposition.

In the UK, Thompson and Morgan sells 325 cauliflower seeds for £1.69, which assuming an unrealistic 100% success rate could average out at around half a penny per head.

For £1.29, Unwins will sell you 100 seeds ready for planting four weeks from now and harvesting from September onwards, while Suttons does 250 seeds for a bargain £1.25.

But the biggest consideration isn’t the cost of the seeds, but the size of the land you need to grow them. Cauliflowers are a greedy vegetable, demanding 18in of space both horizontally and vertically for each plant, so they’re not really suitable for a smaller plot or allotment. Not when you consider how many beans you could grow in that space.

More information about the falling price of cauliflower crops and the threat to a future harvest, can be found through these links:

Low prices force farmers to give up on cauliflowers, The Independent
Greedy supermarkets are ‘killing off caulis’, Metro
Cauliflower under threat, says NFU, Telegraph

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farming, flooding, garden, self sufficiency, self+sufficiency, vegetables

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