Another great article. Do you know what Sainsbury’s reputation with farmers is? My local store has recently put up a huge poster boasting about their long term relationships with farmers and were even making announcements over their PA system on the same theme. I’m guessing this is hogwash but as I’ve never had to deal with Sainsbury’s I don’t know.
Thank you Mark, I struggle to see how any of the big supermarkets can genuinely claim they support farmers when the whole model is built around keeping prices low and using food as a loss leader. Waitrose feels like a step above on some lines and relationships, but even then it is hardly a radical shift.
And yes, when Sainsbury’s leans this hard into “supporting local farmers” marketing, it sets off alarm bells for me too. If the support was real and baked into pricing and procurement, they would not need posters and PA announcements to convince us. It reads like farmwashing.
The Easter veg offers are the tell. Even if Sainsbury’s were slightly more expensive than other retailers, 15p an item is still nowhere near a price that reflects the true cost of growing food. It might feel like a bargain in the moment, but it reinforces the idea that food should be almost free, and that always lands back on farmers somewhere in the chain.
That so few of us are watching the hit our farmers will take from the gathering fuel crisis makes me shudder. I am glad we already use chicken manure and crop rotations for our fields but we sure do still use a lot of diesel.
It feels like it is all colliding in mid air in slow motion. The whole lot coming to a peak at once. I wish I was on my own farm frankly - not dependent in the suburbs for another year.
Brilliant article thank you. I’d love you to take a look at my post that relates to this. Yours provides a lot of useful detail that fleshes out some of the things I write about
The whole of our political system is predicated on short term thinking.
Politicians (and media) don't think beyond the next headline, the Civil Service know that this Government will be gone in a few years so they can be safely ignored or stonewalled until that happens.
The mess we are in due to the closure of the Straits of Hormuz is due to short term, what's easiest, thinking.
Anyone with half a brain could see that the Strait was a significant risk particularly when so much of our fossil fuels and other petroleum based products passed through it, but Governments of every shade have ignored it. Much better to virtue signal about Net Zero than take national security seriously.
And when Trump acts strategically they are utterly incapable of grasping what he is actually doing.
Another great article. Do you know what Sainsbury’s reputation with farmers is? My local store has recently put up a huge poster boasting about their long term relationships with farmers and were even making announcements over their PA system on the same theme. I’m guessing this is hogwash but as I’ve never had to deal with Sainsbury’s I don’t know.
Thank you Mark, I struggle to see how any of the big supermarkets can genuinely claim they support farmers when the whole model is built around keeping prices low and using food as a loss leader. Waitrose feels like a step above on some lines and relationships, but even then it is hardly a radical shift.
And yes, when Sainsbury’s leans this hard into “supporting local farmers” marketing, it sets off alarm bells for me too. If the support was real and baked into pricing and procurement, they would not need posters and PA announcements to convince us. It reads like farmwashing.
The Easter veg offers are the tell. Even if Sainsbury’s were slightly more expensive than other retailers, 15p an item is still nowhere near a price that reflects the true cost of growing food. It might feel like a bargain in the moment, but it reinforces the idea that food should be almost free, and that always lands back on farmers somewhere in the chain.
It’s constantly surprising how much the supermarkets get away with - and how little scrutiny they seem to get.
That so few of us are watching the hit our farmers will take from the gathering fuel crisis makes me shudder. I am glad we already use chicken manure and crop rotations for our fields but we sure do still use a lot of diesel.
It feels like it is all colliding in mid air in slow motion. The whole lot coming to a peak at once. I wish I was on my own farm frankly - not dependent in the suburbs for another year.
Brilliant article thank you. I’d love you to take a look at my post that relates to this. Yours provides a lot of useful detail that fleshes out some of the things I write about
Thanks for the feedback @Karen HB, you’re article is already on my reading list so I will make sure to check it out!
Vital information. How to get in front of the people who need to hear it most is the biggest question!
The whole of our political system is predicated on short term thinking.
Politicians (and media) don't think beyond the next headline, the Civil Service know that this Government will be gone in a few years so they can be safely ignored or stonewalled until that happens.
The mess we are in due to the closure of the Straits of Hormuz is due to short term, what's easiest, thinking.
Anyone with half a brain could see that the Strait was a significant risk particularly when so much of our fossil fuels and other petroleum based products passed through it, but Governments of every shade have ignored it. Much better to virtue signal about Net Zero than take national security seriously.
And when Trump acts strategically they are utterly incapable of grasping what he is actually doing.
Fools the lot of them.