SFG’s marketing director said that as things stand farmers in Iceland are not managing to keep up with surging consumer demand, but said she hopes supply will be back to normal “in a week or so”.

Wow, sounds serious.

Ms Sveinsdóttir from the SFG also expressed some scepticism, suggesting other factors were at play. Some cucumber farmers replace their cucumber plants at this time of year, which are not yet producing large amounts, she said.

In addition to this, schools are returning from the summer holidays, which puts additional pressure on supplies.

“Everything is happening at the same time,” Ms Sveinsdóttir observed, but said the social media trend remained one of the main contributing factors.

“This is the first time we have experienced something like this,” Ms Sveinsdóttir said, adding that had the TikTok trend become popular earlier in the summer, “when the [cucumber] production was in full blast” and the shortage would not have been noticeable.

Wow, the Chinese propaganda is so sophisticated! They must have known about all these factors in advance to be able to minorly inconvenience people who want a salad for a whole week. 🙄