The Rising Cost of Food

[Deleted User]

I was talking to someone last week who has 3 allotments, they are almost given one to the other as in a brown envelope. No-one in my view should have more than one allotment as long as there is a waiting list. Those good times for £15 a year and multiple allotments should be well and truly over, fair shares for all in my view. I have a half allotment and pay £38 a year, we get water and that is it, no maintenance as it is private. I still make a massive paper profit and am no burden on any tax payer. The one who has 3 is a well to do professional person, it just isn`t right when other people cannot make ends meet

ceridwen

Agree with you Kittie - but there are some issues I have never been able to work out personally - and one of them is the "Hungry Ghost Scenario" - ie people who take more/sometimes far more than their "fair share" of something and then proceed to work out all sorts of excuses as to why thats perfectly acceptable....:(:mad::(

It just seems to boil down to that Human Nature thing (at least in our Western societies - where we are all socialised into grabbing for ourselves personally....) and a heck of a lot of people WILL grab for everything for however-much-they-want for themselves personally and "devil take the hindmost" and grabbing/keeping more than one allotment is symptomatic of this and I'm blowed if I know the answer as to how to deal with this...

bonnie_bumpkins

ladymarmalade wrote: »

I have seen countless programmes showing things like, small eggs, smalle onions, wonky cucumbers etc get thrown away because supermarkets won't sell them. I would certainly buy odd veg anyway, especially if it drives prices down.

Who throws the food away? Would there be enough people to buy the wonky food do you think, if it was well-publicised? Now I'm imagining a world where all over the country there are places having a "weekly wonky food day" where all the strange-looking but perfectly good food is gathered together for the non-fussy to buy!!
btw I am sober :rotfl:

blackandwhitebunny

My neighbour works on a veg farm and he says they throw away tons of veggies every day as they are too fat, thin, long, short or just the wrong shape. Most of them end up in land fill. It makes my blood boil :mad:especially when the government preaches at consumers about wasting food but does nothing about such large scale waste. Maybe we need to go back the war time regulations when throwing edible food away was against the law.

bonnie_bumpkins

blackandwhitebunny wrote: »

My neighbour works on a veg farm and he says they throw away tons of veggies every day as they are too fat, thin, long, short or just the wrong shape. Most of them end up in land fill.

That's outrageous :eek::mad::eek:

So what can be done - turn up at veg farms and ask for the curly carrots and ugly onions?? As well as literally throwing away the veggies surely they are throwing away a potential source of income? Is there anything legally stopping veg farmers from selling wonky veg or is it too time-consuming for the return.

So many questions... I'm going to look into this further.

And if I don't get a job after one of the two interviews I've got this week then I think I may have identified a possible career change

Money_maker

That is shocking - surely they can at least be used as ingredients for soups/pies/readymeals? Or at the very least as animal food.

GreyQueen

bonnie_bumpkins wrote: »

Who throws the food away? Would there be enough people to buy the wonky food do you think, if it was well-publicised? Now I'm imagining a world where all over the country there are places having a "weekly wonky food day" where all the strange-looking but perfectly good food is gathered together for the non-fussy to buy!!
btw I am sober :rotfl:

I love this line! I want wonky food, too!

The trouble is that the supermarkets contract the farmers to supply X tonnage of Y veg on Z day with vicious clauses if they fail to deliver. As any gardener knows, you cannot guarantee your crop so they have to overplant to be sure of having enough to meet the contract.

Then, the spec is for standardised crops, not too big, not too small, sprouts must be tight not "blown", lots of stuff which is cosmetic and has no effect on the eating quality and nutrition but which the supermarket buyers will reject. Sometimes they reject a whole crop leaving the farmer with a whole lot of perishables and no Plan B. A huge amount of fresh food is wasted before it ever gets anywhere near Jo(e) Customer.

Back in the 1950s when my Dad was a farmworker, if the wholesale price of a veg fell too low, as it was apt to do if it had been a particularly good year for that crop, it wasn't possible to pay for harvesting and get a profit so the loss-making crop would be ploughed under.

Sickening, isn't it? Even this year, I've seen ploughed-under carrots and a few years ago was walking on the Pembrokeshire coastal path and saw plenty of spuds on the field margins which had been left. And, if I hadn't been on a hiking holiday, I'd've blagged a few.

When cycling or walking in country areas, it's a good idea to have a few bags with your as lorries shed their loads on curves and you can find carrots and onions in little drifts on country roads, although you have to be fast to get the carrots before the woodlice. Apparently they should have cargo nets on the lorries to prevent this happening but I've done a lot of delivery-driving in rural areas at harvest time and have never once seen a netted veg truck.

Also in country areas, some entreprenurial types with trailers will buy, for example, a tonne of carrots wholesale, and sell them at their gate in large netted bags for £1 - £1.50 to passing traffic. If you have a car and go down country ways, keep your eyes peeled for carrots and tatties and maybe a few other things. HTH.

ceridwen

Are we talking about a bit of roadkill GreyQueen my lass by any chance?:D:rotfl:

Confuzzled

blackandwhitebunny wrote: »

My neighbour works on a veg farm and he says they throw away tons of veggies every day as they are too fat, thin, long, short or just the wrong shape. Most of them end up in land fill. It makes my blood boil :mad:especially when the government preaches at consumers about wasting food but does nothing about such large scale waste. Maybe we need to go back the war time regulations when throwing edible food away was against the law.

well, the pressure put on the govt by people that is backed by the likes of hugh fernley whittingstall and jamie oliver over throwing back perfectly edible fish (which are by then dead) in the big fish fight campaign seems to be working... perhaps with their help and specifically help from the chef that did the peoples supermarket show (good show btw) we could pressure them the same way.

i don't care what size or shape my fruit and veg is as long as it's healthy and edible and i'd happily pay for it. it's a sad state of affairs when supermarkets won't even sell these products cheaper... i honestly think it's because they fear eventually everyone will go for them and they'll lose money! they say it's because people don't buy them but people buy them at green grocers and the decline of green grocers isn't to do with wonky fruit it's to do with massive supermarkets moving in and pricing them (and local butchers, fishmongers, bakers etc) under the table til they fold...

i honestly believe that with a long committed campaign backed by some celebrities we COULD force the gov't into doing something about this kind of wasteage. if not by forcing supermarkets to offer them then at least by making them more readily available to the public somehow though personally i think the supermarkets need to get off their backsides and stop filling us with their 'oh no one buys them' lies... not everyone will buy them but people WILL buy them and as it becomes more socially acceptable (for heavens sake what a joke that is sheesh!) then even MORE people will buy them...

ceridwen

As you say confuzzled - "as long as its fresh and healthy" and that is the most important thing about food. After all - we probably only chop it up after we get it home - so whats the difference?