Western Daily Press (Saturday)
There is more to life than 10p off tin of beans
Price-cutting resulting from inter-supermarket rivalry is not a matter for rejoicing, Bridgwater and West Somerset Conservative MP Ian Liddell-Grainger tells Defra Secretary George Eustice
DEAR George, We are all, apparently, supposed to celebrate and sing the praises of St Tesco every time we read an announcement in the press that the supermarkets have embarked on another round of price-cutting.
Supermarket A will declare that it is slashing the price of X number of items so that its selected shopping basket will be Y pounds cheaper than supermarket B and Y+2 pounds cheaper than supermarket C.
Pretty meaningless to me. I generally inspect the contents of the proposed shopping basket and see very little I would be interested in buying anyway, so it’s all a bit of a con trick.
It’s all swings and roundabouts, too, because supermarket B will probably stock other items which are cheaper than both supermarket A’s and supermarket C’s.
And I cannot think that many punters are, in these hectic times, going to sit down with a calculator and embark on lengthy computations to see how much money they can actually save by shopping at supermarket A rather than supermarket B given that it’s 7.5 miles further away and generally so busy you have to drive round the car park for 10 minutes to get a space and anyway they don’t stock that breakfast cereal the kids really like and the staff all tend to be a bit rude.
But my reaction every time I read of yet another assault on prices is one of deep misgiving. Because price cuts aren’t things you pull out of thin air. They have to be paid for. And while it’s a given that the supermarket’s first duty is to protect its profits, the financing of price cuts has to be passed back down the chain.
And in the case of food (as opposed to, say, washing powder or deodorant) the effects inevitably trickle back to the farmer: the only person in the entire food chain who is unable to set his price.
Look at this in the terms of every 50p off a cauliflower being 50p off the grower’s payment for the month and the picture doesn’t look quite so rosy.
I’m afraid when they celebrate all the benefits they continue to enjoy from ostensibly cheap food consumers are entirely unaware of the downside: the hidden costs that have been and continue to be borne by the farming sector.
Ruthless price cutting has been responsible for hundreds of farmers being driven out of business over the years which is why I am glad that so many who are able to do so have taken the view that they are never going to make any money as a shackled supplier to supermarket A, B or C and are going into direct selling, either at the gate or online or – my favourite – through farm shops.
If you live in the centre of Manchester or Birmingham, of course, the option of driving out into the countryside to buy is probably not available so you are reliant on either online buying or what the countryside brings to you in the shape of farmers’ markets.
But in this region at least there are plenty of farm shops within an easy drive of large urban centres and I am delighted to see that they are becoming more and more popular. Punters are turning to them because while they might not carry 2,000 lines on their shelves, they offer local, traceable and trustable goods which are usually of a far higher quality while generally no dearer and in many cases (because of shorter supply lines) cheaper than the supermarket offering.
It’s the future, George – and I am highly thrilled to see the farm shop sector and direct sales in general growing – and increasing numbers of shoppers taking the view that there’s more to life than 10p off a tin of baked beans.