kittensrockmyworld
I went past a famers market yesterday and the kids were totally sucked in by the cake stall, it was at this point that i had to drag them away due to the prices!
Butter has doubled in price in 5 years. Eggs are 50% more expensive than they were 5 years ago due to the price of chicken feed. Flour is 25% more expensive than 5 years ago. Sugar is about the same price, but every other component of a good quality cake is expensive. Then there's the time to make them, the cost of the fuel - it all adds up. You can make cakes cheaply, with partially hydrogenated vegetable fats and whey powder and milk powder and high fructose corn syrup, and it'll be a tenth of the price.
£5 for some chilly Jam & £10 for some pasta. Maybe I'm slightly jealous of people being able to afford it, however it is just plain annoying that people can waste so much money on the stuff!!!
I shop at a farmer's market every week. It's more expensive than the supermarket, that's for sure. But I know the people who I buy the food from. I know how the farmers care for their animals. I know where the fish comes from. I know the baker, the couple who run the veg and fruit stalls. I've been down to a couple of the farms to see what their animal welfare is like and to meet the meat. And I know that my food comes from their farms, to me, without any intervening supply chain or multinational.
We could eat much more cheaply, and we'd have more money, but I make the choice to go without some things to have decent local food produced by people who care about it. In ten years there has been a food renaissance. Did you know that we now have more varieties of cheese in this country than they have in France? Kent's sparkling wines are beating the best French champagnes in taste tests. Who do you think is preserving rare breeds? Not industrial food producers, that's for sure. Where did the revival in artisan bread baking come from? Tesco's instore bakery? Pfft.
The quality of our ingredients in the UK is now second to none, and who's done that? Not the supermarkets or Findus or McCain but the farmers and the markets they sell at.
And the only thing that is keeping most of those farmers in business is direct selling. Did you know that the wholesale price of a pig carcass is now less than it costs to rear it? Same goes for lamb. That's thanks to your cheap food and your supermarkets driving the price of produce down, and pushing the small farmers out of business. When you see a 2-for-1 offer at the supermarket, did it occur to you that the person who pays for the free one isn't the supermarket but the supplier?
I've lots more to write about the subject, but this post is already too long.