Cost Of Food Set To Soar

camNolliesMUMMY

Popperwell wrote: »

Free at present Guide to shopping and cooking frugally...

Just got this but had to pay...only £1.20 or something?

zcrat41

Cooltriker - rr charging for your pork you really need to work out what you've spent on the pigs for food, medicine, housing, straw if you have it and your time. It's pointless charging £3 a chop if you've spent £5 rearing it.

Can I just Point out that pork prices aren't going up now because of higher welfare standards - that happened over 10 yrs ago and is why there are so few pig farmers left in the uk. Now, it is more down to the massive increase in feed costs (feed wheat 3 yrs ago was £100 a tonne, now its £180 and has hit £200) due to worldwide weather and speculators.

However, arable farmers really only break even at abou £160 these days so the prices aren't far out for a fair market. We've all just got
Very used to cheap subsidised food.

Butterfly_Brain

While food was cheap companies were able to get away with low pay for workers, now prices are rising people will want higher wages which will add to inflation. But this won't happen because I haven't got a clue Osborne is following the austerity path that as many economists know doesn't work. America on the other hand is spending on infrastructure and employment and growth have started to rise. And seeing as this government loves American ways of doing things such as workfare, food banks, food stamps, pillorying the sick disabled and poor :mad::mad::mad::mad: I am surprised that they haven't done the same thing.

COOLTRIKERCHICK

zcrat41 wrote: »

Cooltriker - rr charging for your pork you really need to work out what you've spent on the pigs for food, medicine, housing, straw if you have it and your time. It's pointless charging £3 a chop if you've spent £5 rearing it.

Can I just Point out that pork prices aren't going up now because of higher welfare standards - that happened over 10 yrs ago and is why there are so few pig farmers left in the uk. Now, it is more down to the massive increase in feed costs (feed wheat 3 yrs ago was £100 a tonne, now its £180 and has hit £200) due to worldwide weather and speculators.

However, arable farmers really only break even at abou £160 these days so the prices aren't far out for a fair market. We've all just got
Very used to cheap subsidised food.

The food prices are part of it, but we import a huge % of our pork from Europe, and alot of the european pork producers cant afford to bring their premises up to EU standards, which british breeders/producers have allready done.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2187595/Price-bacon-set-soar-new-rules-force-European-producers-closer-line-UK-welfare-guidelines.html

so what we have is a double whammy..

Europeans getting out due to new EU legislation

British producers getting out of it due to increasing feed costs..

zcrat41

True - I'd forgotten about the European imports. I'd still not trust their welfare levels though!

GreyQueen

Phew! I thought I was a lone nutter in finding the so-called baby veg offensive. Can't stand the idea that most of the inputs have been wasted because the crop wasn't allowed a few more weeks in the soil or on the plant to mature.

I have a wonderful resource called the Magic Greengrocer, one of the 3% remaining independant greengrocers. He and his missus are brilliant and I knew his old dad, too, now retired.

The MGs package up slightly-imperfect fruit and veg at 3 bagfuls for £1 and often chuck in extra items for favourite customers (like me ). It's all perfectly good stuff but there may be a few speckles on the skin of an apple or a blemish or a ding on a pepper. I'm happy to whip out any imperfections with the tip of a knife and the MGs are happy to feed the thriftier members of the public from the reduced section.

Heck, they're so thrifty, they'll even trim veggies and give the trimmings away to people for their pets and livestock, they genuinely cannot abide waste, and we often have long chats about the state of veg-retail and the wider economy. They'll also feed themselves off the discount box, should anything be unsold at the end of the day.

I think there is a huge potential market out there for what's called Class 2 veg; I quite enjoy comedy carrots and a few other oddities and having an irregular shape doesn't affect the nutritional qualities.

Perhaps rising costs will cause a return to values which should never have been abandoned in the first place.

steerpike

Prices going up across the board - I'm no economist but I don't understand the immediate price hike on lots of things as a result of the poor harvest surely the wheat doesn't come off the field to be whizzed through processing and onto the supermarket shelves within a couple of weeks? The stuff that is currently on the shelves (biscuits etc) aren't these likely to have been made from last years harvest?

katep23

CTC, I have seen smallholders selling a side of pork for anywhere from £90 (british lop, think it is small-ish) to £200 (certified organic) so there doesn't seem to be a standard price.

£4 - £5 per kg would be a great price (I would happily buy a half at that price) but it depends if you can afford to sell it for that.

6kg might be feasible - at 20kg a side would be £120 or at 25kg it would be £150. The kind of person who buys from you is most likely going to compare prices against a butcher rather than a supermarket.

Popperwell

COOLTRIKERCHICK wrote: »

I havent got a kindle....its not a necessity for me... but for people do have one, its good to see they can pick up some free stuff to read..

Why dont they sell the unusual shaped veg etc, and just bring the price down a bit??? THIS WOULD BE A WIN, WIN SITUATION...we would get cheaper food, the growers will not be left with food to rot in the ground, and the supermarkets will make some sort of profit too..

camNolliesMUMMY wrote: »

Just got this but had to pay...only £1.20 or something?

CTC,
I don't have a Kindle but downloaded it to the PC

Agree about the vegetables but being single the veg I buy lasts ages and sometimes after so long I have to get rid of what I have not used. My worst buy and what often gets wasted is salad items which often costs more than root vegetables.

CNM,
There are some stock of free cook books but they sometimes take some finding and they can be there one minute and disappear the next so you need to be there at the right moment. Glad you did not have to pay too much.

lilylola

Right, I will grow my own veg! I say it every year, but I mean it this time!