How the supermarkets came to own UK agriculture

[maen]

Interesting to contrast that with the "negotiations" around building new nuclear power stations where our government agree to underwrite the cost of construction and guarantee both a level of demand and an escalating price for output long term.....

Effect of strong buyer/ weak seller vs strong seller/ weak buyer.

 

[Wombat]

Interesting to contrast that with the "negotiations" around building new nuclear power stations where our government agree to underwrite the cost of construction and guarantee both a level of demand and an escalating price for output long term.....

Effect of strong buyer/ weak seller vs strong seller/ weak buyer.

Not just that, the effect of lots of relatively small in effect competing producers. There is always someone more in the hole that will have a go at doing it for less and the supermarkets know that. They just have to hold long enough and someone will fold as they cannot risk or won;t risk going all in. Job done for them

 

[colhonk]

If only we had a Union for farmers who actually worked for their farmer members benifit.

 

[maen]

I rest my case.

Some of the big coops have been giving more shelter to their farmer owners but they do so by being robust.

There is probably not an owned farm in the UK that can stand up commercially. Return on investment. Have said that many many acres of land that are farmed by rich individuals, extended families, companies with no intention of every seeing a return. They are owned for other reasons apart from profit.
It is a problem for the industry as a whole because government allow these conditions of land ownership, tax, inheritance to merge together in a bit of a mess. It stifles new talent and maintains the old guard. The next step, now that Brexit has happened, is for change.

 

[Hindsight]

I rest my case.

Some of the big coops have been giving more shelter to their farmer owners but they do so by being robust.

There is probably not an owned farm in the UK that can stand up commercially. Return on investment. Have said that many many acres of land that are farmed by rich individuals, extended families, companies with no intention of every seeing a return. They are owned for other reasons apart from profit.
It is a problem for the industry as a whole because government allow these conditions of land ownership, tax, inheritance to merge together in a bit of a mess. It stifles new talent and maintains the old guard. The next step, now that Brexit has happened, is for change.

You might need an AK47 to start with

 

[Johnnyboxer]

Copy the French maybe?

They are rooted in the land and agriculture

PO seem to do them ok

 

[maen]

You might need an AK47 to start with

 

[maen]

Sadly some absent land owners probably run them!
As long as you have money you are welcome to buy. No questions asked.

 

[Henarar]

The various assurance schemes ( Red Tractor) will be the mechanism the British Retail Consortium seek use to bring the beef and sheep sector under their complete control. They seek vertical integration which is their prefferred business model where they dictate price and do not have to compete in an open and transparent market.
Whole Life Assurance will be the way that Supermarkets see their control of the market being delivered through Red Tractor. By a simolecstroke of the pen an animal will not be whole life assured if it moves through a market and at a stroke the livestock markets are no longer viable. Supermarkets determine what moves where and when.
It has happened with the pig and poultry sector.
Beware it is but a short step for livestock farmers to hecome serfs at the mercy of the robber baron supermarket cartel.

And yet some farmers support WLA for beef and sheep, you couldn't make it up.
The only thing I can put it down to is jealousy, they may be buying store animals and have to be RT to sell fat so they don't see why other farmers should get away with not being RT, they would rather RT had the money and the supermarkets had the power than other store producing farmers had it, can't they see where this is going ? some would rather do other farmers down than the clipboard wheedling parasites and the likes of bloody Tesco

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

Not just that, the effect of lots of relatively small in effect competing producers. There is always someone more in the hole that will have a go at doing it for less and the supermarkets know that. They just have to hold long enough and someone will fold as they cannot risk or won;t risk going all in. Job done for them

The last good example of farmers working together to face down the supermarkets was the MMB and Maggie disbanded it as "anti-competetive"

I bet if someone started up a farmer owned national arable co-operative the big mills would do their damnedest to crush it from the start to protect their oligopoly and the UK government would let them.

 

[Hilly]

As @Kidds demonstrates above, it happens because a few farmers allow it for a short lived benefit. It is then a quick process of the rest being forced to join or be pushed out.
I believe Waitrose and Tesco already have a reasonably small number of producers contracted to supply the majority of their lamb and the current push by RT and the government will 'seal the deal'.
I fear the problem lies in the fact that many of us who work very long hours, have relied on our union to look after our industry. They have failed or been complicit in it's ruin.

All they have to do is use live markets but no ...

 

[Cowcorn]

Tesco benchmark (based on KPI's not financials) all their dairy farmers and drop the bottom 5% every year.

The loss of the Tesco premium has cost a nearby farmer his dairy herd and most of his farm

Divide and conquer is alive and well eh ? All very well getting the Tesco premuim but when through no fault of your own you end up in the bottom 5 % and then out the trapdoo The real Tragedy of the British dairy industry is the lack of a strong group of Farmer owned co - ops to balance out the market and keep the supermarkets in check .
Farmers need to tell Tesco to shove their " preference " contracts up their arse and stand together . Im all right jack only works for a while until its your turn for the shredder . Over here a co - op like Lakelands will still offer a contract to any farmer in their area who wants to start milking whether he wants to milk 20 or 500 cows he will get the same price and service And this is a country where most of the Dairy production has to be exported !!! A net importer like the UK should have a vibrant and prosperous Dairy industry instead of the current shambles where a farmers right to produce is governed by the whim of Supermarkets and weak " one trick pony " buyers who can go bust overnight because the lost their main contract .
And a young fella cant get a start milking because he cant get a contract the whole thing is crazy Red tractor has a lot to answer for .
French farmers have been known to release Rats in badly beheaving supermarkets and then suggesting to management that the plaque of Rats might cease when the supermarket desists from certain predatory practices ......

 

[AM_Arable]

Market share is the root of all evil.
The concentration of market share in food retailing was happening by stealth since WW2, as improved road networks allowed ambitious retailers to spread beyond their home turf.
The transformative years, however, were on Maggie's watch. At the height of her liberalization frenzy she was warned by one of her senior aides "Uncontrolled competition leads to a monopoly". She ignored him, and hence the market was left to get on with it.
That's why food mirrors banking and the utilities. A cartel. That presents a veneer of competition to the outside world, but behind closed doors runs the country. Too big to fail.
You can change it, but only by working with your allies are in the environmental and social justice movement.
https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/tescorona.313517/

It started with Ted Heath according to his biography. He shepherded through the Resale Prices Act of 1964, prior to becoming Prime Minister. This abolished retail price maintenance, which had allowed manufacturers to set the price their goods were sold at, meaning small grocers could compete on a level playing field with early supermarkets.

Between 1957 and 2017, average household spending on food has fallen from more than a third of weekly income to around 16%. There are many reasons for this but the above is undoubtedly a contributor.

 

[delilah]

If only we had a Union for farmers who actually worked for their farmer members benifit.

What do you want them to do ?
Nothing personal; addressed to everyone on here. These threads moaning about the supermarkets come along on here regular as clockwork. To what end ? Does anyone want to do anything about it ? Or is it just a pointless whinge fest ?

 

[2wheels]

So they should have taken a big price cut to supply the wholesale market who in turn supplied the greengrocer who was never going to be able to compete on price with the supermarkets? The trend for UK shoppers to shop in supermarkets put the greengrocers out of business so who do the horticulture industry supply to then?
Or are you saying we should have forced the supermarkets to source only through the wholesale markets?

For what it's worth, we stuck with the wholesale markets and hardly ever supplied the supermarkets directly. We concluded two years ago we were wasting our time and gave up altogether.

when we were producing 600+ prime lambs they went direct to the abbatoir thence to restaurant/butcher trade.

 

[puppet]

Farmers tend to be independent souls so it is hard to get them to work together. Too often we see ourselves in competition with other farmers which means a race to the bottom. The power should lie in those bodies who market the produce, the Unions can only promote agriculture.
The dairy processors have farmers on their boards and farmers fund investments so if anyone could make a difference then surely they could.

 

[glasshouse]

Failure to support wholesale markets with top quality produce was a grave error by the horticulture industry undermining the main price setting mechanism.

Failure to embrace producer organisations was another error.

Lessons there for farmers?

Bollox
There was nothing wrong with the veg markets.
There was little waste and no plastic

 

[glasshouse]

Tesco benchmark (based on KPI's not financials) all their dairy farmers and drop the bottom 5% every year.

The loss of the Tesco premium has cost a nearby farmer his dairy herd and most of his farm

Thats like a forced march where they shoot the two at the back every hour.

 

[glasshouse]

Copy the French maybe?

They are rooted in the land and agriculture

PO seem to do them ok

Whats po

 

[Johnnyboxer]

Whats po

Producer Organisation or CoOp