Supermarket Prices Affecting Farmers

Mon, 26 Feb 2007
 
Get the latest prices, codes, vouchers & deals fortnightly.
The major UK supermarkets have been accused of forcing members of the National Farmers' Union out of business .

President of the union, Peter Kendall, claimed at the union's annual conference that a squeeze on prices is seeing three dairy farmers going out of business every day.

An inquiry has been made into the grocery industry by the Competition Commission, which has been examining the supply chain and land banks belonging to the big ‘four’ UK supermarkets.

Mr Kendall is expected to tell delegates at a meeting in Birmingham how farmers are being treated unfairly, and receive too little income.

He will urge the major food retailers to keep their promises that were made regarding paying ‘fair prices’ .

"Big retailers are treating green issues as window dressing," said Mr Kendall while speaking on BBC Radio Five Live.

"We're hearing lots of great news from the retailers about wanting to have green supply chains, make their production sustainable etc, but what I'm saying to them is that the dairy sector in particular is on the verge of meltdown," he added.

"And we see ever-increasing large margins for the supermarkets, and farmers are getting a smaller and smaller part of the cake, and they are leaving in their droves, three a day are leaving the diary sector as this moment in time ."

Supermarkets in Britain have long argued that they treat all suppliers equally and fairly.

Link to this page

Copy and Paste the following HTML into your page.