Pay less for your Christmas dinner

Its Christmas week. It may appear that we have been in the Christmas period for about four months already, but now we can truly start to celebrate Christmas. Its time to do the final bits of shopping and head off to where ever you are going to spend the Christmas period. Its an exciting time. In a couple of days time, you will be able to enjoy the once yearly dose of turkey, cranberry sauce, bread source and all the other bits and pieces which rarely get eaten except for Christmas dinner.

In farming and food manufacturing too, it is a time to get excited. The busiest period of the year is nearly over and those working can look forward to more relaxing time after Christmas and also start to see if the much anticipated Christmas period has made them as much money as they had hoped for. However, you can be sure that what you paid and what the farmer received are quite different!

Looking at the typical Christmas dinner there are huge discrepancies. When you bought the turkey for £12/kg, you may not have realised that the farmer only received £7.50/kg. Of the 67p/kg you paid for your potatoes, the farmer only got about 12p/kg and those sprouts? About 50p/kg for the £1.99/g you paid for them.

With these figures in mind, it begins to be easier to see why farmers often head down the intensification route and food manufacturers provide such minimal pay and conditions to their workers. Life at the bottom of the food supply pyramid is not easy. In fact, with these prices paid, it is amazing that the products in the supermarkets are as good as they are.

So what is happening to the amount the supermarkets are taking? Well firstly, there are the basics. Once the food reaches the distribution centre, the costs start to build up for the supermarket. They have to transport it, have the infrastructure to hold and supply the products to store. They have to pay for distribution centres, logistics, retail space and advertising. They have to pay staff on the floor and in head office.

The solution to this appears to be obvious. Cut out the middle man and his high costs and buy direct from the farmer or supplier. That way we could pay less than a supermarket and the farmer could still earn more. There are many reasons why we don’t do this, but probably the biggest is simply the fact that we don’t have the time or energy to do so. It is fairly easy going to a supermarket and buying all your products in one place.

It might be too late to do anything about it this year, but maybe it is something to think about next year. Our desire for convenience is affecting our food supply — probably even more than our wish for cheap food. We simply do have the time or inclination to change this behaviour. Maybe its one for the New Year. A resolution to try!

Thanks for reading!

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Originally published at shrinkthesupplychain.com on December 22, 2014.