Let's talk about supermarkets

Seemingly a lot less super than I thought.

I’ve always been a fan of supermarkets. I loved the premise of an array of food being made affordable and accessible to the majority by virtue of the scale of a chain. I liked their consistency. I liked being able to see lots of options; to be introduced to new brands; and the sheer convenience of the one-stop shop. Throw in the ability to pick up school uniform, and I was sold.

PS They are also central to the idea of home — in case you feel I’ve really gone off on one this time! — because the heart of home is nourishment, the table, and food.

Anyways… You’ll note my opener paragraph is all in the past tense, for I have been disillusioned. To be fair, I still love a one-stopper, alongside the 88% of UK shoppers who use supermarkets regularly, with over 50% of us heading to Tesco (the UK market leader). I simply do not have time to trail around several different stores and markets and still be able to put food on the table or earn the money to do so (let alone do any of the rest of the things that make a life worth living). I’m already making my own bread rolls for goodness sake in an effort to reduce plastic!

But here’s the thing. I thought that supermarkets would play fair with the people who supply them.

Yet, according to a survey conducted by the organic farmers Riverford, “almost half (49%) of British fruit and veg farmers fear they will go out of business within the next 12 months with 75% reporting that supermarket behaviour is a leading factor.” And when we consider that Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Aldi (the latter overtaking Morrisons in 2022 as the 4th largest supermarket by share) control 66% of UK consumer food sales, this is a serious issue.

Riverford have therefore launched a Fair to Farmers charter, a set of principles that they are petitioning the government to get the supermarkets to sign up to. They need 100,000 signatures to trigger a debate. At the last check they were half way there. The asks are pretty basic…

• Buy what you’ve committed to buy.

• Pay on time. UK farmers often have to wait up to 12 weeks to be paid, a practice that’s illegal in the EU.

• Commit. Build long term relationships with farmers, and give adequate notice if they need to look elsewhere.

• Agree on fair specifications (the standards for a crop, shape, size etc).

• Pay what you agreed to pay. A fair price reflecting the true cost of farming. Farmers are sometimes told one price when they agree to grow a crop, and later told that they will receive much less.

You can sign the petition here. Please do. I did. Ultimately this affects us all. And whatever the much debated environmental affects of farming, forcing small British farms to close through mistreatment is not the answer.

The bigger picture

The big four supermarkets are essentially a cartel that fix prices in order to gain power and profits. Or to put it another way, the domination of the food sector by so few means they can exert significantly more upward pressure on selling prices and downward pressure on buying prices than would be the case in a truly competitive market. It’s retail feudalism at its finest.

According to the research group Corporate Watch, farmers used to have some bargaining power on the basis of seasonality, but imports and glasshouses have destroyed this advantage. Plus, with globalisation, supermarkets shop around the globe for the best price and conduct ‘blind’ auctions for supplies over the internet. Farmers don’t know what price has been tendered by other producers and this forces them to offer their produce at a low price to ensure a sale. Producers of perishable foods are especially vulnerable. Supermarkets dictate not only how much they will pay, but also how the produce will be packaged, stored and delivered.

Their power though is wielded not only on price but through demands for consistency of supply and compliance with stringent ‘quality’ standards which allow for more efficient processing and marketing of food. Again, this makes life easier for the supermarkets, but increasingly impossible to comply with for the farmers. It also gives the supermarkets a lot of wiggle room to renege on orders.

Not forgetting that wonky veg cost exactly the same to grow as so thought ‘perfect’ veg, and they’ll have the same nutritional content, yet supermarkets sell them at a third of the price.