My buying practices have improved but your article lays it out simply and clearly, making me realize there's much more to be done. Thanks Chris.

The day of the family farm has just about run its race. The future may be managed farms instead of family owned. Listed on the stock exchange and run from Tower 42 in melbourne.

I note the author has a vested financial interest in undermining industrial farming. It's interesting that he/she seems more concerned about the welfare of the industrially-farmed animals that the availability of high-quality foodstuffs for those who cannot afford to pay the premium demanded by the less-efficient "organic" farmers and that no solution is offered to the problem of producing sufficient quantities to satisfy demand if industrial farming was to be superceded.

As for why we demand cheap food: it's hard-wired. For hunter-gatherers, the largest source of food at the least effort is a basic requirement. It allows members to spend more time on other things and to enhance survivability of their offspring. Agriculture arose because of this drive.

Our ancestors were all hunter-gatherers until agriculture developed about 10,000 years ago. Anybody who was more concerned with the "rights" of their prey animals or the way in which their food plants were grown than they were in getting as much as possible into their belly while it was available didn't survive for long.

It's only the fact that we have a very wealthy society supported by cheap energy that allows people like the author to spend the time criticising it.

Excellent article; and to add to your comments on the effects on farmers and the ways in which they find it necessary to "streamline" or "economise" in their production techniques, is something that consumers need to be made aware of. People like to "hate" animal welfare groups, but they do attempt to raise the issues behind factory farming.

The other side, which the author does not raise, is that the predatory pricing goes in both directions. Check the pricing trends of the goods in the middle section of the supermarkets, particularly Woolworths and Coles. In order to sustain lower margins in the produce areas of the store, they raise the prices of goods within the general goods sections.

Then there is the effects of the home brands and "Select" home brands which swamp the shelves and put the squeeze on regular suppliers. Just ask the workers put off from Edgells and Heinz canneries.

Australia has around 70% of supermarket sales at either Woolworths and Coles. Do you need to ask why I stick to my local IGA?

Well off, smug and opinionated, telling the rest of us how to live.

Spend your money how you like, but leave me to spend mine as I choose. It's none of your business, or that of the government's.

One needs to understand a little about the Australian food supply
chain to realise that the author is wrong in many of his assumptions.

What the farmer is paid, is often only a small percentage of the
final retail price and its about the whole supply chain.

The management at Coles have in fact worked wonders at making that
whole chain far more efficient and should be praised for that.
Coles has not dropped the price that they pay for milk to the processor.
In fact in WA they even increased it. Most milk is
in fact used for manufacture of cheese, milk powder etc and exported.
Those prices have a far bigger bearing on what milk processors decide
to pay farmers. So blaming Coles is a complete furphy.

Many of the products that our supermarkets do sell, are made by just
a handful of global multinationals. Nestle, Unilever, Kraft,Kellogs, etc.
What Coles found was that these multinationals were charging far more
more their products wholesale in Australia, then elsewhere. In the
end, consumers wore the price for the extra fat profits made in
Australia. So Coles set about to change that.

These are public companies, so we can scrutinise their figures.

Coles work on a net margin of 3-4c in the dollar, after all costs.
They rightly point out that the multinationals profits are far higher
then that, so there is every good reason to create home brands etc.

Why should I be upset if Coles are holding the multinationals to
account and are creating a more efficient supply chain?

But of course its easy, as the author has done, to shoot the messenger

Yabby,

I think the point about Chris’s ideology is that s/he bemoans everything you applaud about Coles, Woolies et al.

Supply chain efficiency, low margins, cheap and abundant food, competition etc are the exact opposite of the organic movement’s ideology of low production, high costs, the priority of producers’ interests over consumers or those who add value along the chain, and purchasing decision based on moral vanity.

After all, the opposite of “stack it high, sell it cheap” is “produce very little and sell it dear”. For our own good, of course

'start buying the meat, milk and produce we know is grown humanely, sustainably and bought at a fair price from a local retailer. '

That's the crux of the problem. How could you possibly believe anyone who claims how their meat and milk and eggs are attained.

Even if you had a society of inner-city living middle and upper-class people who can easily afford to purchase at higher prices on environmental and moral grounds, you have to have some proof that the claims of the producers are accurate. Nobody wants to be made a mug. That means regulation, and auditing, and independent governmnet authorities that would even more vastly increase the cost of food and taxes.

This extra money spent on food and regulating the food and import industries (How do you check up on overseas imports?) would take money away from other areas of the economy and/or public services. I suppose we could switch from our normal jobs to this new food regulation industry.

But I'd rather not really. I put people before animals, and that ethos has always served me well. I figure if a shark comes up to me in the ocean, I am unlikely to persuade him not to eat me on humanitarian and environmental grounds.

'produce very little and sell it dear'

Sounds like a good model!

The problem stems from people life styles which have increased their commitments I've the past decade or so.

20 years ago, only the needed had a mobile phone, now, you would be luck to find a handful of people who don't have oe and, every one you see comes wit a monthly bill.

You see retail spending comes soley from disposable income, so once the must pay bills are paid, people shop with what's left.

Also, food is o e of the last options where people can save money.

As all must pay expenses increase, as they hav, the food budget gets squeezed, the result being shoppers are now bargain hunters, something that plays directly into the hands of the big two.

The next phase, if nothing changes, will be the collapse of many shopping centers, as the majority of small retailers are on the verg of collapse, as they simply can not compete any more.

The article takes perceptions of ‘unfair’, notably payments to dairy farmers, and mixes in the author’s self interest.

1. Evidence is there is no nutritional benefit from organic food.
2. There are 7 standards from certifiers defining organic; no one is in a position to specify what organic means.
3. Integrity is not assured and buyers know this.
4. UK low end supermarket, TESCO, abandoned its green labelling as customers saw it as a thin attempt to raise prices artificially.

No one can picture what an organic means in practice. Images of chickens scratching in green grass and laying where they will make good sentiment but will neither meet supply nor provide profit – and without profit farms fail.

Future events will be determined by food security. Ennis’ barrow and populist sentiment won’t change that.

Departments of Agriculture once developed practices and took what practices were available to producers, assessed them and gave independent advice and demonstrations of what worked. Commercial players making a dollar will always sell preferred products. Departments provided advice that showed there was always other ways to “skin the cat”.

Across Australia Departments have been systematically closed. NSW’s Primary Industries has maintained some sense of service, but with a DG in place of the super department and a new DDG within that area being both ‘ball breakers’ the demise of this last vestige of public policy interest in Agriculture is certain, it will be reduced to providing policy advice to the Minister and poorly executed regulatory activity.

I hold Coles and Woolworths to be stand over merchants to be despised. But given both use power to get what they want I recognise producers are unwilling and incapable to do what is required to gain power over both companies and make them squeal. We live in a country which is a collection of individuals seeking self gratification; not a society based on co-operation to mutual benefit.

Great article, absolutely agree with what you have said. The benefits of buying local organic food is two-fold, it promotes the development of sustainable farms and it is so much healthier for you to eat organically grown food.
I think the mindset of many is that they would rather eat a pile of bad food than a small amount of good quality, nutritious food.
Its good to see that young kids are being educated on where their food comes from now-days and I think this will be part of a positive change in the future. Thanks, Sarah.