News Potatoes
British potato price stunt kicks in for farmers
English farmers are furious with the supermarket chain Sainsbury's. In the week before Christmas, the supermarket placed potatoes on the shelves far below cost price, the news website Grocery Gazette reports.
A 2,5kg sack of potatoes was available in Sainsbury's shops for 19p. Converted, this is approximately € 0,081 per kilo. The price is far below the cost price of the growers, even before the potatoes have been washed, packed and transported. The budget supermarkets Aldi and Lidl also stunted with the prices of various vegetables in the run-up to Christmas. Due to the stunt prices for potatoes and vegetables in the supermarket, the supermarkets are lowering the value of these products. In the meantime, growers are faced with large increases in cost price. The supermarket chains are pushing farm shops and other small suppliers out of the market due to the extremely low prices, fear several critics.
Earlier this month, the English association for sustainable agriculture Sustain wrote another highly critical report about profit distribution in the food chain. According to Sustain, farmers often have less than 1 cent left over per kilo of product. For various products, less than 1% of the profit in the chain would end up with the farmer. The majority of the profit ends up with processors, transport companies and retailers.
Jurphaas Lugtenburg
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