June 2022

Tractors all parked up for Jubilee day

We kick June off with the Queens Jubilee, and what a show that was. We thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it, what a magnificent spectacle Trooping of The Colour was.

In the light of what is happening in the shops, we had better stick with food prices for the next few minutes. In the 1950’s just after the war, the average consumer spent approximately 30% of their net disposable income on food, it sounds a lot, food was expensive because there was not a lot of it. Add to this, nothing was wasted, nothing at all compared with today when we are told that 30% of all the food that farms produce goes to waste, for all sorts of reasons, too big, too small, not the right shape or colour and stupid best before dates, for our fussy customers.Today in the UK,we spend just under 10% of our net disposable income on food. In Italy they spend 17% of net disposable income on food and all our other neighbouring European countries spend between 10% and 17%. Food in Britain has been incredibly cheap in recent years, basically, because supermarkets and food service have suppressed prices.  But this is now changing, product is now short, for a number of reasons, and this is not going to change for quite a while and as an example, Tesco and Sainsbury have been shamed into having to pay 4-5 pence per litre more for Milk from July 1st, and they had better get used to it.  As for consumers, we are all going to be spending more than 10% of our net disposable income on food and some products are not even going to be available.