Its origins lie in a simple question posed seven years ago when there was a surge in the number of farmers killing themselves because of falling prices and rising costs: would consumers be prepared to pay a few more centimes a packet if they knew the extra money would go towards ensuring a living wage for struggling dairy producers?
The answer turned out to be a resounding “yes” — so much so that C’est qui le patron? now sells not just milk, but more than 20 other food products from chocolate bars to canned sardines, frozen pizzas and apple compote.
The co-operative’s annual turnover has passed €100 million (£87 million) — not bad given that it has no shops or production facilities of its own, no advertising budget and a staff of only just over two dozen.
The French food market is perhaps €200 billion a year.
Premium brands exist in many markets……often niche but premium brands.
“The answer turned out to be a resounding “yes” — so much so that C’est qui le patron? now sells not just milk, but more than 20 other food products from chocolate bars to canned sardines, frozen pizzas and apple compote.”
Ten pound pommes?
And yet Lidl, Aldi and other budget stores thrive in France. If les citoyens are so keen to pay a ‘few centimes more’, why are there laws to prevent stores having sales more than once a year and only at a prescribed time, not allowed to sell BOGOF on foods, stores not allowed to sell OTC drugs in order to keep pharmacy income up? France has plenty of rules to ensure consumers do pay a few €uro more and have no choice.
https://www.thecut.com/2016/12/there-are-at-least-59-types-of-obesity-doctors-say.html
Next thing you know they’ll be caching up with the number of genders.
Apologies.
I meant to post this on the “guardian woman talks b*llocks about processed food” thread.
A friend has received a communication from what sounds like an official body: The Food, Farming and Countryside Commission. I volunteered to google it: it seems that the marxist march through the institutions is even quicker if you invent your own institutions; tax-dodging “charity” institutions, of course. Thus:
We were set up to explore practical and radical solutions to the climate, nature, health and economic crises of our time. Through evidence, research, telling stories of change and much more, we seek to involve and communicate with citizens, and advocate for new ideas and new solutions.
P.S. There’s another of those bloody yankee redundant prepositions again.
That one drives me wild as well. Even more maddening is “multiple” as an adjective to replace “several”, “many”, “a few”, “lots of”, “a handful”, “a profusion”. I’d go to Switzerland and be put in an urn only we don’t have a suitable mantelpiece here and left-footers don’t do that in any case.
“A a price is a signal wrapped up in an incentive.” —Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok
Farmers killing themselves is the market’s way of telling us we have too many farmers.
The cure for low prices is low prices. Low prices work by driving out the marginal producer. If you subsidize the marginal producer, then the glut worsens and prices fall further by the amount of the subsidy.
When you push against the market, the market pushes back.
Why is the mainstream media praising dairy producers rather than demanding the government close them down because of nitrogen and carbon?
It appears the cloggies have solved the problem of farmers topping themselves – stop 3,000 of them being farmers by compulsory purchase of their farms and mandating they can’t start another one in the EU.
“Low prices work by driving out the marginal producer. If you subsidize the marginal producer, then the glut worsens and prices fall further by the amount of the subsidy.”
Careful, you might point out that farm subsidies actually subsidise consumers, not farmers…………..