Farmers unimpressed by price cuts on food items
Frustrated farmers have reacted to news of the opening gambit in a possible supermarket price war warning the food chain can't survive "relentless pressure".
Aldi announced cuts across a range of products including meat and poultry this morning. The supermarket chain says a typical trolley of the most popular goods will be reduced from €121 to €106 with lunch items such as crumbed lean ham and sliced chicken and turkey; Irish lean beef burgers; and free-range chicken fillets among the products reduced.
IFA President Tim Cullinane says that even the idea that primary producers can afford to take a lower price “flies in the face of higher input costs”.
“The food chain cannot survive if relentless pressure is piled on those who produce the food,” he added. “It costs money to deliver quality food to supermarket shelves. This has to be recognised by giving a fair margin to those who put in the work and investment on the ground. Pretending that it can be done for less is not serving anybody.”
Brendan Soden, Vice-Chairman of the IFA Poultry Committee and egg producer in Co Cavan cautioned that while supermarkets are welcome to reduce the price for customers, farmers will not allow their margins to be decreased in the process.
“The price to the farmer must stay the same,” he continued. “For farmers and producers, costs have not gone down; on the chicken side of things, for example, the cost of gas to run the sheds hasn’t reduced so if the supermarkets try to decrease farmers’ margins that will be unacceptable.”
Food Regulator
Meanwhile ICMSA president, Denis Drennan says the reductions presents the Food Regulatory Office, established last year, with its first real test. Mr. Drennan said that the onus is firmly on the newly established Food Price Regulatory Office, An Rialálaí Agraibhia, to verify “absolutely” that any reductions in price introduced by supermarkets "are funded out of their own margin" and not passed back to farmer primary-producers.
“This agency, An Rialálaí Agraibhia, was established last July with much fanfare. We have heard little of it since. This is their first chance to show the farmers – and the utterly dominant supermarkets – that they actually intend doing the job they were set up to do.
“Transparency is one of its key roles and it needs to provide clear information on who is carrying the cost of these reductions. This is the acid test; they are either going to show that they are committed and take their job seriously, or they join the herd of ever-increasing herd of quangos and state agencies who exists to no discernible purpose,” said Mr Drennan.