How British supermarkets are degrading UK Agriculture
by Robert Willis
10th November 2011
The relationship between supermarket and supplier during the economic recession is deteriorating at an increasing rate and the pressure for supermarkets to do better than their retailer rivals is passed onto their producers in the form of low wages, job insecurity and poor working conditions. Farmers have revealed that supermarkets exploit them by introducing new fees and charges to pay such as the ‘pay to play’ system where the farmer has to pay the supermarket for the privilege of stocking and displaying their produce, promoting a farmers produce and making the farmer pay for the refurbishment of a store. The benefits of signing a contract with the supermarket are too good to miss, especially considering how the supermarkets offer a steady, stable income even when the rest of the economy is going under, which encourages more farmers to sign a binding contract with them, however, once the contract is signed, the farmer is forced to put up with the bullying tactics of the supermarket, such as the unreasonable increased demand in produce if the supermarket decide to promote or place an offer on the farmers produce without the farmers consent, making it impossible for the farmer to suddenly produce such a large amount of stock and meet the supermarkets demands, which results in the supermarkets threatening to de-list them.
One such case that is of massive interest and an increasing problem during the recession is the amount of dairy farmers who are de-listed because they don’t agree with the low prices that supermarkets are paying for their milk. Farmers revealed that the price of production of milk is now very close, if not, equal to the price that the supermarkets are buying the milk from the supplier, meaning the profit is considerably low or next to nothing.
The current economic recession hasn’t only meant that the supermarkets have introduced new methods of exploitation but also resurfaced some old methods that were used in the past and during an earlier recession. These sales methods that are used to negotiate a deal with a farmer, such as ‘The Clock-Face Strategy’ and ‘The Flaming Lamborghini’ are purposely there for the supermarkets to squeeze the producer for everything they are worth and not only left the producer with a lower income but also left them feeling underappreciated, intimidated, threatened, abused and like the effort they had gone through to get their produce to the supermarkets isn’t worth what the supermarkets gives them.
All these methods of exploitation of the producers by the supermarkets have a knock-on effect on the farmer and means that they have had to adapt or change in some way or another in order to meet the demands asked by the retailer. It has been shown that the decrease in income from supermarkets has forced their suppliers to change their own agricultural practices in order to produce enough food to meet the requirements and fill the shelves of supermarket. Farmers are now forced to treat their animals in such appalling conditions by cramming them together and injecting them with vaccines and changing their genetics just so they grow faster and for the purpose of making sure the farmer meets the standards set by the supermarket which goes against the laws of nature as this means chickens and pigs are growing so fast that their legs cannot support them and millions go lame every year and get painful leg deformities as well as heart and lung problems as they struggle to kep up with the pace of body growth and millions more die of heart failure all because the supermarkets ask them to produce cheaper, faster meat for themshelves.
