In the news today Australian potato farmers are protesting against the shabby treatment they are receiving by frozen food giant McCain’s by blocking the entrance to McCain’s property and giving away their yield for free to anyone but McCain’s.
Apparently “The Canadian food giant decided to reduce the farmers pay to $26.50 per tonne, which means they will receive $273.50 per tonne”
News stories tend to leave the amount of information at that, focusing instead on capturing a snapshot of the one farmer that decides to draw attention by taking his clothes off than commenting on what this means.
What this means is that farmers are expected to take an 8.8% price cut for their efforts, remembering farmers here have dealt with drought and recent flooding.
Considering a kilogram of fresh brushed potatoes sends you back $2.98 here in a supermarket, offering the people that grew them 27c for the same kilogram seems, well a bit wrong. But that is for a kilogram of potatoes that have been brushed, moved around and dumped on a shelf. The frozen “super” fries McCain’s sell go for $3.79 per kilogram.
Everything’s tough? According to Wikipedia McCain’s revenue was up to a total of 6.5 BILLION Canadian Dollars in 2009
This story is not unlike others, this big company is playing hardball and it knows that they can get cheaper imports in if they are given no other option that doesn’t draw the picture on their balance sheets that they want to see.
Go potato farmers and fight for your rights!
ReplyDeleteThat is an awesome way to get them back!
ReplyDelete$3.79 per kg? What kind of posh potatos are these?
ReplyDeleteThe $3.79/kg represents frozen French fries price at the local supermarket.
ReplyDeleteIn my dream world freezers would be powered by renewable sources, transport would be fast and efficient and there would be minimal waste.
But this is the era in which money rules.
it's sad man. an unfortunate effect of the current world economy is that publicly traded companies must constantly increase profits to perpetuate their stock price. Why isn't making a billion dollars a year good enough? you have to make 1.1 billion, then 1.2 billion, etc. Our system in action. The same thing is happening with NFL owners wanting a bigger piece of the pie to 'grow the NFL.'
ReplyDeleteThe NFL doesn't need to grow! that's silly. Everyone in America already watches the super bowl and most of them like football. anyways, this comment will turn really long really fast so I'll stop here.
business is cut throat.
ReplyDeleteBig business always trying to bend the little people over the barrel!
ReplyDelete