Men or machines.

[Saw-sick Steve]

If it's that much of an issue you could always grow your own food and veg?.

I do!! Unfortunately that's not an option for most people, even if growing yer own is an increasingly popular choice (witness the demand for allotments), it's not a realistic answer.

 

''A few years ago every one was saying our dairy industry was dying, but now its on the up, most dairy farmers are increasing the size of their heard and becoming more efficient.''

I don't know which dairy farmers you've been talking to, but they're living in a different world to the ones I know. Herd sizes are increasing due to economies of scale, the ones that don't through choice or costs are the ones that are going to the wall. Just check the no.s of dairy farmers now compared to 10 yrs ago.

You're right about the ''less discerning'' being in the majority. End of the day, cost will win out over every other consideration for the majority of people, despite what they'll say to a market researcher indicating otherwise.

The ''I can't afford it '' argument is the justification for the low welfare/cheap food lobby. I can't recall the exact figures, but household spend on food now is about a third of what it was (%-age wise) in the '70's.

Can't afford? Or would rather spend the money on clothes, holidays, electrical goods etc...

As you say, you pays 'yer money...

Oh, the presence of yet another one of the 'big 4' supermarkets is not neccessarily a sign of healthy competition - it's just as likely to be a cosy divvying up by a cartel. Still, creates an illusion of choice I s'pose.

[tommer9]

Nd another, which suports the argument that supermarkets are creating a consumer demand that is fair for only one set of people, themselves, through a huge media misinformation campaign, and basically, lies. They rely on the unquestioning, sheep like nature of most of society.

 

Rise in price of veg is a supermarket scandal

 

 

4 Apr 2009

 

Joanna Blythman

 

YOU probably won't be surprised by the latest figures which show that food prices rose by 1.7% in February alone, taking the annual increase to a hefty 11.5%. Expensive food has become a feature of our 21st century predicament. The spiralling cost of everything from bread and butter to rice and sausages can be explained away by world shortages of cereals (much of which is used as animal feed) caused by drought and flood brought on by global warming, as well as a booming world population. But it can't account for the enigma of UK vegetables prices, which have shot up mysteriously by 19% in just one year. I say mysteriously, because there is no reason for your spuds or carrots to go up more than any other category of food. True, last summer was a wet one, but this is nothing new in rainy Britain. So what's really happening?

 

The pricey veg mystery was elucidated most convincingly recently by a particularly articulate vegetable grower on Radio 4's Farming Today. The figures he reeled off were scandalous, offering more evidence of how supermarkets are crushing Britain's farmers and growers and leaving us recklessly dependent on imports.

 

Jeffrey Philpott gave the example of cauliflower, although his computation is doubtless typical of supermarket profit margins on other vegetables. It costs him 44p to grow a cauliflower, yet the supermarkets will pay no more than 36p a piece, even though they sell them for a cool £1.19 or thereabouts. Giving supermarkets the benefit of the doubt, each cauliflower may cost them another 14p in distribution and packing costs. Still, the arithmetic of cauliflower pricing exposes the venality of our large food retailers.

 

There they are, blitzing our TV screens with adverts for "inflation-busting" offers then putting a shameless, near 150% mark-up on exactly the sort of healthy, home-produced vegetable that public health campaigns exhort us to eat.

 

Last autumn, the National Farmers' Union warned that UK-grown cauliflower and other brassicas could vanish from plates unless farmers were paid a fairer price. If only this scenario could be dismissed as the perennial farmers' alarmism, but it can't and must be taken seriously. Supermarket profiteering is driving our native horticulture out of business. In the last 10 years there's been a 24% drop in the amount of land used to grow fresh vegetables in the UK. Our production is down 14% and imports have risen by more than a quarter. Why? Unable to sustain year after year of selling below the cost of production, farmers are diversifying into anything else as fast as they can. Great. Just when the world is running low on food and every sensible country should be building up its future self-sufficiency, our growers are giving up the ghost. Last year it was a shortage of caulis, this year already we are having to import carrots from as far away as Australia because we haven't enough of our own.

 

Price-aware shoppers have long recognised that supermarkets are expensive places to shop for fruit and vegetables. Anyone who uses an independent greengrocer, farm shop or even farmers' market stall can expect to slash their fruit and veg bill by a good 40%. But when most people felt flush, they didn't baulk at paying £2 for four overpriced apples in a shrink-wrapped pack. We haven't had a clue about what the going market rate for Canary cherry tomatoes or South African grapes might be, so fruit and vegetables have given supermarkets a licence to print money. But in the current economic climate, this profiteering has one very tangible result: people eat less. Last year, fruit and vegetable sales went down by a knee-jerk 12% when prices first began to soar, demonstrating the direct relationship between price and consumption.

 

Since 2001, the Department of Health alone has spent more than £6 million pushing its five-a-day health promotion message (the minimum intake to ensure wellbeing), and that's before you calculate the cost of similar initiatives in Scotland. It might as well have saved its breath. The last review of the Scottish Diet Action Plan, which prioritised this message, found that in a decade, there had been no increase in consumption; in fact vegetable consumption had dropped, so you'll be lucky if most Scots eat three a day. It's a miracle that we're not all coming down with scurvy and rickets. It's not just the nation's health we should be worried about. As concerns about the world's ability to feed itself mount, bodies such as the United Nations are urging us to eat less meat and eat more home-produced plant food. But the supermarkets are ruthlessly subverting these messages with their rapacious mark-ups.

 

We need a Scottish government inquiry into fruit and vegetable prices, but don't hang around for that. Ditch the supermarket, cherish the independent greengrocer, farm shop or market stall, and if you can, grow your own.

 

Supermarkets are depressing the uptake of fruit and vegetables through their greed and endangering our future food security along with it. They must be stopped.

[armchairarborist]

i only go to tescos when the woman has broken down, never out of choice, can't stand supermarkets, all that trolley pushing, they even do key cutting at sainsburys but like everything there i doubt they would cut the sort of keys i need anyway.. when lots of small businesses struggle like in some towns after tescotypes move in it seems very wrong.. -machines are ok..-people can be pillocks

[Saw-sick Steve]

Jeez, Tommer, you don't half type fast (compared to my fat fingers )

[Dean Lofthouse]

I think the small size of the average back garden in the UK means that alot of the waste must be handballed out.

 

Spot on Mike

 

Every job I do I look at whether I'd be able to get crane/hiab access and how much time it would save and to be honest, unless you are working on mainly parks and open spaces or Street trees it's not work having machinery sat there doing naff all.

 

Most of my jobs are reductions, crown lifts or trimming, very few big meaty stuff roadside or even withing reach of Daves Hiab

[tommer9]

Jeez, Tommer, you don't half type fast (compared to my fat fingers )

 

Haha.......its a subject fairly close to my heart. I find the hard headedness of business absoloutely stomach turning, and what is worse, the blind faith with which people parise supermarkets. It is all down to the culture of selfishness that prevails nowadays. For most people a favour wil only be done if something is in it for them. I find that that isnt a favour, but a service, and i find it dsitasteful to say the least. I was brought up to put others first and that it is better to give than to receive. Unfortunately i thn that few others seem to adhere to that policy (i honestly wish i dint at times) and that it has become the norm to be putting number one before all else.

[Frankie Lawrence]

We still cut kindling by hand 2 old boys who love to do it do it for a very small few and then I go in and bag it by hand on saturdays for extra cash. This way everyone is a winner if we got a machine in there would be one man earning this way there is four: Me, the old boys cutting it and the boss.

 

Thats just an example i do love machinery to make my jobs easier

[skyhuck]

Haha.......its a subject fairly close to my heart. I find the hard headedness of business absoloutely stomach turning, and what is worse, the blind faith with which people parise supermarkets. It is all down to the culture of selfishness that prevails nowadays. For most people a favour wil only be done if something is in it for them. I find that that isnt a favour, but a service, and i find it dsitasteful to say the least. I was brought up to put others first and that it is better to give than to receive. Unfortunately i thn that few others seem to adhere to that policy (i honestly wish i dint at times) and that it has become the norm to be putting number one before all else.

 

But Tom, that is how a sound community works.

 

Its people who expect a favour with no reciprocation that cause the break down of society.

[tommer9]

 

Its people who expect a favour with no reciprocation that cause the break down of society.

 

I agree, ebtirely. I thnk that was the point i was trying to make:001_smile:

[tommer9]

I even agree entirely lol