Cowabunga
Member
- Location
- Ceredigion,Wales
That's not correct. The pricing of milk, for instance, varies by processor and they pay by constituents depending on what the end use is. So if you are selling to a cheese producer you had better produce good proteins and butterfat always has a premium value to all, because even liquid milk is skimmed to a variable degree and fat sold separately.You don't need to be a processor or retailer (not a bad idea though) but you need a market for your produce that leaves a good return. I think that's the biggest difference I've noticed since being here, farmers know the market they're producing for and either own some of it, like co op's or partnerships, have direct contracts or develop their own market.
Much of the UK stuff seems to be, produce what you want, how you want, then look round for a buyer and hope its paying ok.
The lack of interest in finding a market seems to have produced a lot more middlemen all taking a cut.
It's probably a scale thing too, hard to know how many acres TFF posters have but I'd bet a living can be made there on less acres than here?
The UK governments, in contrast to NZ, are very focussed on keeping food prices as low as humanly possible. They will not allow anything like a farmer co-op with a high market share but will allow a small number of supermarkets to dominate the purchase side against thousands of micro-businesses, which is what 99.9% of farms are.
Yes of course you need more output per person to make a living but your regulations and costs, including fuel are a fraction of what is imposed on British farmers, although your farmers are on the on the upward debt and cost spiral these days apparently.