Fresh vegetables

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32612, 21 May 1971, Page 8

Fresh vegetables

Sir, Leone Stewart’s article was excellent. For too long the produce merchants (and the commission buyer) have held housewives to ransom and exploited growers. When fresh vegetables have been in short supply (sometimes manmade shortages) housewives have had to pay exorbitant prices for vegetables or go without. But when vegetables are in over-supply, a glut on the market, and the price is completely uneconomic, fresh edible vegetables are dumped. The produce merchants are to blame for less fresh vegetables being sold and children not getting the vitamins neqessary to the nation’s health and their mothers becoming professional can-openers. Yours etc., FLEMING ROSS MILLER. May 20, 1971.

Sir,—Real live vegetables! I would dearly like to know where these can be obtained, apart from growing one’s own or visiting the grower on his premises. By the time these vegetables have g< ie through the normal market regulations they are flaccid and drooping in the shops, and this practice of putting carrots in 31b plastic bags makes me hot under the collar. If an old-age pensioner wants carrots she has to buy 31b or do without She uses about three for a meal and even if taken out of these plastic bags the next time she goes to use some they are soft and furry because they have been in this plastic bag so long before she bought them. I never buy carrots notv. I do without, unless some kind gardener gives me some of his homegrown ones. Believe me, fresh vegetables are a real luxury that progress has put out of reach.—Youts, etc., TIME FOR A SURVEY. May 20, 1971.