Vocal Voices

In recent days there have been reports that food catering companies, those producing ready meals and tinned goods etc, are going out of business at the rate of 400 per year because they cannot make a living out of their work. We also learn that dairy farmers are being offered only 27p per litre of milk when it costs 33p to produce. They say that this cannot go on or many of them will go out of business.

The blame for this mess is being laid squarely at the doors of the supermarkets, and with some justification. Their profits might have taken a hit due to competition from Lidl and Aldi, but they are still making money by the bucket load. What they are being accused of is squeezing the producers to keep those profits up.

This should be a worry for DEFRA and us consumers. The UK already imports nearly half of our food and if food producers and caterers cannot make a living from it they will fold. When that happens we will be importing more food and often from places with lower standards in animal husbandry and prepared food production.

Reducing home grown food production will also free up good arable land and the temptation/pressure will be to build, build, build. Once that happens the land will be lost forever. Something has to be done.

Big business runs the country and enables political parties to keep going - they never would from their members' subscriptions, that's for sure.

So something needs to be done, but which politician has the nerve to do it?

Using taxpayers' money the EU and Westminster subsidise farming. Without those subsidies wholesale prices would increase. Supermarkets who buy direct from the cow or the field are effectively buying subsidised goods. It should be the government's job to set a minimum price for such goods.

As things stand the supermarkets are profiteering off the backs of their customers.

In dairy farming, what we have been seeing for some time is the demise of the "Mom and Pop" smallholdings milking 30-50 cows, and the rise of the super-dairies, where up to and beyond 5,000 cows are shedding in massive barns.
Here's one I knew quite well backalong, as we used to say in the West Country - a couple of hundred cows on two farms in those days, 30 years ago, but it's a lot bigger now, but it's nowhere near the biggest ....

http://www.bakerscheddar.co.uk/

Economies of scale. Milk that number of cows, kept in perfect conditions, 3 times a day (rather than twice) and you'll make your profit. Arable farming went the same way in East Anglia years ago.

I guess it's "progress", but if you're happy buying your 4l container of milk from Asda or Sainsbury's for £1, that's what has to happen. I think I posted this link a couple of months ago when we were discussing a similar topic:

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014 ... itish-milk

Have you got a link about the food catering companies, WM - I'd be interested to read it.

Links for Ossie.

This one is for suppliers
http://news.sky.com/story/1379169/super ... -producers
And this is for dairy farmers.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30200732

I am sorry, but I got the numbers the wrong way round.

Thanks for the links, WM. Interesting reading.

Sainsburys & Tescos, for example, have shareholders to satisfy. Not sure about Aldi and Lidl, whether they are publicly or privately owned. Privately owned companies need not be so profit-driven ....