Monday, 7th January 2008
Why cheap food is no reason to celebrate
The news from Asda that a basket of groceries is 22% cheaper today than 10 years ago (The Herald, December 29) is nothing to cheer about. In fact, it is symptomatic of the entire approach of the supermarket giants which now dominate the food retailing sector.
By using their massive buying power to force down prices paid to suppliers, they have maximised their profits at the expense of our farmers, many of whom have been forced out of business.
For example, in Scotland we have gone from 14,000 dairy farms 10 years ago to 6000 today. Recently, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) produced a report suggesting that UK supermarket giants were involved in a cartel, artificially depressing the price paid to producers, and fines of more than £1m were handed down.
For many dairy farmers it was already too late. Thankfully, the dairy sector is doing better now, with increases of up to 50% in the value of milk, but a surge in the worldwide price of cereals has driven up feed costs for all of Scotland's livestock farmers. Profitability is still a struggle.
In the UK, 30% of farmers are aged over 65, while only 3% are under 35. There is a lack of recruitment into the industry. The long hours, burgeoning bureaucracy, dire financial returns and gross instability of the sector have completely overwhelmed our farmers. Food security in Europe means looking after our home production and not always handing a commercial advantage to our non-EU competitors. We insist on the toughest hygiene and welfare regulations in the world and then allow endless low-cost imports of beef from Brazil, chicken from Thailand, turkey from Israel, lamb from New Zealand and vegetables from South America and Africa, where restrictions are much less onerous. As a result, the EU is now self-sufficient in just over 60% of its food supply and the trend is downwards. We have to rely on imports for the rest.
If we continue down this road we risk losing traditional farming entirely, becoming almost wholly dependent on imports in the same way that we have become almost wholly dependent on imports of oil and gas. This would be catastrophically dangerous.
So we should not celebrate food that is 22% cheaper today than 10 years ago. Scottish farmers produce some of the best food in the world but supermarkets such as Asda should pay them a fair and equitable price for it. Cheap food is just not a sustainable option.
