Editorial: Popeyed at stolen spinach

We all know fruit and vegetable prices have gone through the roof, but who would have thought it would come to this?
Somebody stole my spinach.
One day it was there, growing happily in a plastic tub on the patio, and the next day it wasn't.
It seemed, at first, like a strange thing to steal. It's hardly a glamour vegetable.
The tub cost a few dollars from the garden centre, the spinach plants were about $1 each and the dirt was, well, dirt.
Most likely someone drunkenly picked it up (though not without effort, because it was quite a large tub and dirt is heavy) and rolled it down the road, I thought. But there was no spinach debris anywhere. No plastic tub up-ended in the gutter. No sign at all.
Now, having just paid nearly $17/kg for limp, anaemic-looking spinach from the supermarket, I'm starting to understand the motivation.
In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if home gardeners are soon locking up their tomatoes, because yesterday they were $12.98/kg at Pak 'n Save.
At those prices, most shoppers will be thinking differently about what they buy and how they eat.
I'm certainly thinking harder about how I use what's in the cupboard and growing in the garden, and I have a new appreciation for friends with fruit trees in their backyard.
And while I'm being facetious about my missing spinach (thought it did indeed go missing), for many families fruit and vegetable prices are no joke.
People are struggling to afford fresh food - which seems a shame in Hawke's Bay when so much of the food is grown on our doorstep.
And which makes the food we grow, literally on our doorstep, all the more important.
I'd like mine back, please.