Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Varche]

We are very strabge in my opinion in the way we treat our farmers. Two examples.

First dairy farmers. A lovely part of our traditional landscape. Yet the milk buyers are not paying the farmers enough to even cover their costs per litre and then the supermarkets sell it at maybe a 15p a litre margin. Might be less in some cases as one UK supermarket sells 4 litres for 99p. Now there smoke screen statements like "Global glut of cream" "the housewife demands lower prices" Does she? Do you want cows grazing on lucious meadows to vanish forever and be replaced with the more efficient milked three or four times a day 8000 animal units where they never leave the computer controlled shed. More folk on the dole for the sake of 5 p a litre off someones fat profits. Meadows lost forever to arable land or more likely to yet more low cost houses

Second example is close to my heart. Olive oil. In seven years I have seen the retail price of the olive oil produced by myself and neighbours for our Co Op drop from 15 euros to 10 euros for five litres of top quality oil produced to rigourous standards (need to be accredited for spraying chemicals and pesticides and herbicides and to even prune your trees). This year our co op has only just managed to sell last years production (normally does that by May and makes farmer payments from June in time for income tax payments due). As well as the supermarkets driving down prices because "housewives demand lower prices" ,  the EU in their wisdom have allowed North African olive oil produced to less exacting standards shall we say, with cheaper labour to enter the market. People will and are selling up their small plots and join the dole once their nest egg has vanished.

All very strange. Do people really need to save those few pennies each week at the expense of farmers livelyhoods?

[D]

You would be very surprised at how stingy the current retail customer is. They demand milk/oil at a cheap price and expect to get 5p off their petrol purchase as well.

[Dishevelled Den]

Such is the keen eye of the great British consumer - knowing the price of everything but the true value of nothing.

We have made kings of foreign suppliers and retail giants but paupers of those people who form part the very heart of this country.

We will soon have the distinction of being mere consumers at the mercy of market forces directed from afar and of those who care for nothing but profit.

It’s sad to see how many in this country have capitulated to convenience – seemingly unconcerned of the potentially long term damage being caused to the essential independence and self sufficiency we must have in our food supply.