According to a recent study, farmers are making tiny profits on foodstuffs such as bread, cheese, carrots and fruit. This means that they are unable to invest in changing to more environmentally-friendly production systems.
Working with Portsmouth University and the University of London, food charity Sustain analysed five everyday foodstuffs and found that an average block of cheese or loaf of bread produces less than a penny for farmers.
Whereas, fruit producers do not fare much better, making just 3p from each kilo of apples.
Meanwhile, for a packet of four beefburgers sold in a supermarket, the processor makes 10 times as much profit as the beef farmer, who makes less than a penny per packet.
For a 480g pack of mild cheddar costing £2.50 in a supermarket, the dairy farmer’s costs are £1.48, and they make less than a penny in profit.
In its report entitled Unpicking Food Prices, the charity found that farmers make a tiny 0.03 per cent of the retail prices of the food sold in stores, whereas processors were found to be receiving 10 times that profit for some of the products investigated.
As a spokeswoman for Sustain pointed out, the results reveal a hugely problematic supply chain in terms of costs, complexity and extracting value, adding that although farmers carry a large proportion of the production risks, they are “tiny players in the face of huge food industry buyers”, who have all the bargaining power.
With such low margins, farmers and growers will struggle to achieve the Government’s environmental targets, as their lack of financial stability limits their capacity to change their current practices to more sustainable ones.
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