Why cheap Christmas veg is not something to be celebrated |
By Dale Robinson
I read this week in a mainstream food magazine that “a new Christmas tradition” has emerged - supermarkets are entering a festive “price war” to slash the cost of vegetables.
This year you can pick up a bag of carrots for as little as 8p; last year it was 15p. This is what a supermarket calls a loss-leader.
At first glance, it’s easy to see why people celebrate it. Times are tough for many, and we no longer have a cost-of-living crisis, we simply have a high cost of living.
But when I saw 8p veg being celebrated in the national media, I found myself asking the same simple question I wrote on LinkedIn a year ago: How is this ok?
How can it be possible to buy seed, prepare soil, grow, harvest, grade, pack, store, transport and retail a vegetable for 8p. How can it be done for 15p, 78p or even 95p. The short answer is simple… It can’t.
Someone somewhere is losing out, and it isn’t the supermarket.
At a bare minimum, growers will spend the best part of a year tending to these crops:........