Food is too cheap ?

[Loveshelly]

Food has never been cheaper, meat is unbelievably cheap. Even with a conscious move towards less meat consumption it’s clear that huge consumption of cheap meat is going on.

AIBU to think that we all need to spend more on our produce, especially in the wake of brexit, we clearly cannot rely on cheap labour anymore. So we are going to have to pay more.

All I tend to see on MN is people desperate to get food bills down, then on another thread people fretting they can’t keep heating on all night.

Have we become totally skewed about what are the things we should be spending more and less on.

My bills come to £1350. That's including everything like food, petrol, car tax etc etc etc
I don't drink, go out, eat out, do any sort of social activities, that's just pure cost of living bills
My wage varies but is a minimum of £1300pm
It's bad enough energy prices are going up and fuel, where do I get the money from to pay more for food? I budget for £50pw for food for myself which is usually fine

Not sure why people aren’t more angry that they’ve been persuaded gas and food is cheap when it never has been and cannot be. Yet housing is seen as a way to make money for those that can afford to get in on it.

But yes of course in my ivory tower eating caviar for a snack I just want all you poor folk to buy chickens for £20

Oh snd I would happily pay more for lovely meat and so money went to farmers, but I can't afford it 🤷🏽‍♀️ generally I just eat less meat, bulk it out with other stuff and have veggie meals
I use olio, too good to go and wonky bread from earth and wheat and wonky veg/fruit so that's the best I can do to support really

Costs of many things have been kept artificially cheap due to cheap labour and running costs. Obviously these now cannot be sustained.

Well quite. But that's not the fault or issue of the consumer, it's an industry standards issue.

I'm not sure what what you're suggesting. If meat gets to much more expensive then we (personally, and probably many others) simply won't be able to buy it very often.

So...then what? The meat industries fold?

Is this a thread concerned for the industry, or to suggest we should stop eating it?

[quote Loveshelly]@TartanJumper
What’s the solution then.

We have had to rely on cheap food. But we used to pay 30% of our income on food in the 1960s.

I’m not tone deaf. I am not talking about the people who have to use food banks or rely on UC. I’m talking about people who expect their food bill for 4 people to be £200 p/m and can well afford more.

There will always been extreme poverty, and perhaps there wouldn’t if we paid people more and there was decent housing, but we don’t.[/quote]
I get what you are saying and it's an interesting topic.

I think what makes it a hard issue to solve is the extortionate cost of everything else - about 65 percent of my pay goes on rent, utility bills, council tax, then about 20 percent food, then anything else has to be squeezed out of the remaining 15 percent. I'm sure I'm not unusual when it comes yo this kind of breakdown of costs, with housing eating up over half their pay

@BeepingBB
I guess the meat industries fold. Or the government decides we need less regulation

Which do you think it would be!!!

If you are poor then food is expensive, I can remember when I was first a single parent & only had €30 a week to feed ds & I, the only way I could make it stretch was to shop at Farmfoods for as much as I could get & only then go to Morrison's for things I couldn't get at Morrison's. Sometimes I used to cook something good for ds & have a tin of soup myself.

Also I don’t have a solution
I just thought culling 150k pigs because they can’t afford to supply meat that cheaply without cheap labour was a bit depressing. Even for me.

But basically the problem is housing costs, but people who make a profit from it, which is pretty much every single person who owns a house currently (not me) cannot get out of that vicious cycle either.

Food may be cheap comparatively but the cost of living in the U.K. compared to wages is not. Housing in my area - £950 a month for a room in a SHARED house. Now NI is going up, Council tax is going up, my student loans are retrospectively being upped.

Most people earn under £35k a year. They just can't afford it all!

Often cooking is more expensive from scratch than ready meals, add in those with issues, sensory and gf, df, it then becomes more expensive.
Lots still want lots of meat, I’m semi veggie much cheaper.
Things like free range eggs are more than caged, tho if it’s all you can afford, it’s just too much

@CorianderAndCream
I agree. I pay rent. It’s 60% of my earnings. Which is shocking.

But yet I see other industries booming, there is a huge amount of spending on other things. Like fashion.

Maybe I’m wrong, maybe no one is spending money on clothes. Yet ASOS is worth ten times more than the poultry industry. And I think most people eat poultry.

Btw gas wasn't artificially cheap previous to this month. What's happened this month is that both our main sources of gas have realised the UK has got fuck all gas reserves and no bargaining power now we're not in the EU.

It's a bent as fuck market anyway. The suppliers are just different arms of the wholesalers. I mean they're selling to their fine fucking selves half the time. (And the other half they're Putin ...)

So talk about the cost of gas is misleading.

I agree re the cost of property means that there is little left over for food. Our youngest pays £159 a week for a room in a student house. I mean , 6 years ago my DD was at the same uni and paid £75 a week for a similar standard property.
DS goes to Morrisons every night to buy reduced veg to make soup but hey at least his landlords doing OK

All the farmers should have just become landlords. Probably better odds

[quote Loveshelly]@CorianderAndCream
I agree. I pay rent. It’s 60% of my earnings. Which is shocking.

But yet I see other industries booming, there is a huge amount of spending on other things. Like fashion.

Maybe I’m wrong, maybe no one is spending money on clothes. Yet ASOS is worth ten times more than the poultry industry. And I think most people eat poultry.[/quote]
I mean I can't help you with the meat idea. I'm a vegetarian so my food shop is likely considerably cheaper. Chickpeas are cheap :').

I do buy clothes a few times a year and probably spend too much on shows/events etc. But we shouldn't have to spend 99% of our wages on just food, shelter, water. That's surviving not living.

@Loveshelly

The point about the bloody pigs is we pay people shit, because we can’t price the pork more. So it’s a fucking vicious circle.

At some point we either pay people more which makes pork more expensive or we live in this spiral of cheap labour and people on UC that actually work but need top ups because of the shit labour and wage condition.

We were sold a lie

I get your point. I don’t think you’re saying that a person who can only afford a £2 chicken now should pay £20 tomorrow. I don’t think you’re tone death or stupid. The point is, if people were paid a fair wage*, and housing costs were astronomical for many, then they could afford to pay more for food which in turn would mean that those in the food industry were paid a fair wage. I don’t know how you step in to fix that… but I don’t think the OP meant that the first stage was just to put prices up tomorrow.

*I don’t know what a fair wage is, but I certainly think it’s one that doesn’t have to be propped up by in work benefits

I agree OP. Not in a ‘fuck the poor’ way but in that the meat industry has been artificially propped up and it’s about to collapse.
We’re lucky enough to be in a fortunate position but I’m already changing the family diet to be bits of meat for flavour, bulked out with veg. Use bones for stock. Nothing wasted.

I agree, lots of food is cheap to the point that someone is being exploited in the supply chain for them to still turn a profit. I mean a packet of chicken thighs for £2, ham for 50p, carrots for 21p- who's being paid a fair wage? It started with the supermarket wars when every last penny was being squeezed out to try and be competitive with one another, ask a farmer if they get a fair price for their milk for example. The cost of living elsewhere has crept up and that's what the struggle is for most.

@Loveshelly

Food has never been cheaper, meat is unbelievably cheap. Even with a conscious move towards less meat consumption it’s clear that huge consumption of cheap meat is going on.

AIBU to think that we all need to spend more on our produce, especially in the wake of brexit, we clearly cannot rely on cheap labour anymore. So we are going to have to pay more.

All I tend to see on MN is people desperate to get food bills down, then on another thread people fretting they can’t keep heating on all night.

Have we become totally skewed about what are the things we should be spending more and less on.

If prices were raised in most cases the extra profit would just go to the corporation that is selling the products, unless all farmers agree to fix prices at e.g. X price , but given reality some farmers would im guessing charge less to undercut the other farmers, which pretty much results in the same current situation.

Yet the supermarkets are making huge profits.
It’s the suppliers and the workers.

If most people (I don’t mean extremely poor) I mean average people are faced with a wall of chicken, most will chose the £5 one. Not the £12 one.

It’s not* even

I know, food is so cheap - all these people must be going to food banks for the fun of it.
All these people who will have to choose between buying food or heating this winter, I expect that's not a concern for you OP is it?

@IAmTheLovechildOfYvesAndIsabel

I know, food is so cheap - all these people must be going to food banks for the fun of it. All these people who will have to choose between buying food or heating this winter, I expect that's not a concern for you OP is it?

With all due respect, and I'm only posing the question, which is, would some people be better off if they looked at what other expenses are they funding, e.g. Sky , fags, booze ect as these different expenses have to be looked at to see where people can make improvements

Theres absolutely no respect in that comment, Hawkins. Your assumptions that the poor are poor because they smoke fags is really showing your ignorance and lack of understanding. Educate yourself before you speak on things you dont know shit about.

Food is cheap because we massively subsides the production of it with subsides funded by the tax we pay.