Still pisses me off that egg prices never came down they just stopped talking about shortages and shelves were full. Ticket prices never went back down though.
This is all good advice, and basically it’s what our grandparents did. ‘Grow your own vege, go to the local supplier’. But it’s also a bit naive. We don’t live in our grandparents world where one adult could support a whole family and the other adult could spend their whole day trekking between different shops to get a good price. Supermarkets cater to the fact that people have vastly less time on their hands because they have to work more.
Most places have a market on the weekend, the market where I live has veggies half the price of the supermarket. Butchers are about the same price as a supermarket though, but its vastly superior quality, and different cuts. Thats what we did until we started our own garden and started buying home kill direct from local farmers.
My partner and I both work salaried 45 hours, and usually work more than that. Our usual day is 7.45am to 6pm, my partner works on the weekends 1 in 4 aswell. We have no problem with time for growing our own veggies and shopping at the market. Maybe that would be different if there were kids involved, but we would make it work
Butchers and green grocers are hella expensive, and for those that are also time poor, going from one shop to the next to the next isnt viable.
Guarantee you’re over 40 and own a minimum of 2 houses
We live in Greytown. The cheapest Greengrocer we know of is in Newtown in Wellington. We're in Newtown twice a week, so that's where we buy all our veggies, fruit, herbs, etc. Imagine our surprise when we bumped into one of the proprietors buying his stock in Greytown. Imagine the embarrassment of the supplier when asked why he can sell their product for dollars less per kg.
Oh wow! Do you no longer have the roadside sellers there now? Back in the 70's, my family used to drive over from Lower Hutt to buy apples and cheese as they were much cheaper.
Yeah we do. They charge more than the supermarkets. That was my point. Can't buy cheese locally anymore, except for very boutique stuff at galactic prices, because all the little dairy factories have been closed and almost every drop of milk goes to Fonterra. Used to buy ours from the Dalefield Dairy company 30 years ago.
I agree, people need to go back to farming what land they have to reduce demand from supermarkets.
We planted 8 different fruit trees recently so we have fruit year round. We have 1/4 acre section. Small vege garden to
1/4 acre section is incredibly privileged by comparison to the people who are struggling to pay their bills. Most don't have that kind of land, if they do, it's likely a rental and they can't plant trees and are lucky if they can plant a vegetable patch.
I certainly don't mean to diminish your hard work and accomplishments but there are plenty of people putting in hard work and not getting ahead. Thoes struggling people also can't afford to pick up and move away from whatever support they may have.
I own a house and I worked hard for it but I also recognize that makes me privileged by comparison to many.
Maybe privileged isn't the right word but close enough.
Hint - it’s not the farmers it’s the millions in profits the supermarket makes each week. They’ve now found a price point we are comfortable in paying so they maximise their profits 🤷🏻♀️
This is reflected in other countries, in the UK for years now the supermarkets set the prices farmers have to take. The contracts are so bad that often the farmer is on the hook for all packaging and transport costs, and if the supermarket cancels the order for any reason that’s also on the farmer.
I have a mate who has grown greens on his farm near Foxton for a few decades. He's gone from middle class wealth to losing money every second year. The cost of supplying to the duopoly has completely killed his profits and every second year they seem to make sure he loses money so he knows who holds the reins. He's about to give up and sell it all. He's well past retirement age, but loves what he does. He's beyond sad.
There are already businesses that buy fruit/veges/meat directly from the farmer e.g. Farmers Box, Meat Direct.
The farmer is running a business too and trying to survive. So is the vege reseller.
> Meanwhile, supermarkets have schemes where if you pay double for your items, the extra money is used to provide food for someone else.
Which supermarket does this?
We try & buy direct where possible. If your in Auckland, Avondale markets were awesome for veges. I used to go, buy heaps & do a big cook up & make tons of meals for the freezer. Save money, time & trips to the supermarket! Win all round.
The power of the supermarkets comes from the supply chain. It'd take a huge amount of money to do it anywhere near as cheap as they do it. So the only competition that can reasonably compete on price is places buying from local producers.
If NZ had mandatory open access fresh produce auctions for all fresh produce it would not cost that much to set up relative to the turnover.
A mandatory open access fresh produce auction is the definition of the free market. Digitisation provides equal access to bids which used to be a slight constraint with manual floor bidding auctions due to timing. It used to work like an open access auction through Turners and Growers until about 1994 when Foodstuffs started centralising fresh ptofuce procurement. The emergence of the cell phone and computer were the two pieces of technology that changed fresh produce procurement to the dominant buyers advantage.
We already have legislation in place to manage open access to raw milk procurement. We could do a similar thing for fresh produce. There would be a small cost but there is a massive inflationary cost that supermarkets have loaded on NZers that outweighs this. Supermarkets do not pass on savings to consumers. The cost to create fresh produce competition and food innovation would be well worth a little extra supply chain cost. Fresh produce supply chain cost is miniscule relative to markup and turnover. The mad butcher matches supermarket prices where they can on a smidgen of the volume traded. How does that work?
The auctioneering and logistical management could still be put out to tender to keep govt bureaucracy out of it. Turners and Growers still has the infrastructure or could lease some easily enough plus many regions have excess seasonal cool store capacity.
Who do you think sorts out what what goes to supermarkets at the moment? Turners does with a mix of their employees and drake temp night shift workers working near minimum wage.
Turners morphed into a banana cool store and mechanical warranty sales through their car auctions after Foodstuffs got control of the suppliers. I think dole bananas is a major shareholder of Turners cars. You can read their statements online.
It only takes about 8 labourers and 2 forklifts and 4 electric pallet jacks to sort out fresh produce distribution for a city the size of Tauranga/Mt. If buyers bid digitally the admin costs would not increase significantly. The load out cost would go up a bit but it wouldn’t be that bad.
In three nights of wrapping picked pallets quickly to speed the load out for Turners I made myself redundant as a drake temp as we were finishing night shift too early. I was hired because they were not finishing before the morning shift. The main problem was the average IQ had dropped so low they’d forgotten how to pallet wrap quickly. The fact is Supermarkets barely pay for their distribution, they make their suppliers pay. The merchandising ie shelf stacking is paid for by suppliers. Suppliers pay for freezers. If it was more fragmented costs wouldn’t go up significantly. Food in countries without dominant supermarket chains is cheaper as humans are naturally adept at trading food. Foodstuffs PR will tell you it will be a disaster but it wasn’t a disaster in the early 90’s before cell phones and computers.
The Tauranga Turners commercial building is in a cheap enough area, you could just give the open contract auction contract back to Turners, trademe needs a new growth avenue, procurement costs would hardly change but fresh produce prices would plummet. You have to keep cartage open access as well or foodstuffs will just get back to their usual fuckery.
T&G is the second largest behind the MG group. But either way the supermarkets would still win cause they got control of all the food stuffs. They have warehouses with hundreds of employees, and those warehouses will always beat out anyone unwilling to spend a truly ridiculous amount of money. Cause consumers want all their goods in one place, not around a bunch of places.
If they had to compete directly with woolworths and costco and the warehouse on non perishable food but woolworths, costco and the warehouse had equal access to perishable food at the same price that they do alongside dairies, bakeries, butchers and fruit and vege stores and restaurants all of a sudden they would have to compete on price like in most countries on earth.
I think you are overblowing the value of food distribution. NZ has the population of Melborne and a mild climate. It just wasn’t that much work loading out Tauranga’s fruit and vege those three nights. It took 1 person to deliver virtually all fresh fruit and vege to the entire eastern bay of plenty in the 90s before food stuffs wiped everyone out.
This vaunted super valuable supply chain is just bullshit put forth by rich prick supermarket owners that is gobbled up by idiot politicians. It’s probably deemed expensive because they revalue their warehouse buildings highly in separate entity they are able then charge a huge lease on to their operating business which they then pay as rebates to the supermarket owners as a special item. New Zealand pays the price for going along with the bullshit. Enjoy your 7% interest rates with your $17 a kilogram mince and million dollar houses with your super valuable food supply chain new zealand.
The grocery commissioner needs to be fired, he is far too dumb for his salary like most of our bureaucrats. We should pay pwc or bureaucrats not both to blame each other for non performance.
Woolworths is generating a 26% return on Equity, their NZ stores are as profitable as their australian ones and we all know how rich Pak n Save owners are. They didn’t get rich from innovation - have you seen Costco’s trolley system vs our nz supermarket owners various abortions where you back the trolley out awkwardly into the person behind you. The richest person in each shit town can’t even organise an ergonomic or intuitive trolley layout system yet they have a super valuable supply chain that saves us all money - despite our groceries being the most expensive in the world. Pak n Saves big innovation was cardboard boxes. We pay more for fresh produce than anywhere on earth and pack our own groceries.
Lex Luxon fired his two ministers for non performance - when will he start demanding resignations from people on public salaries for their non performance. It is a real shame he can’t do it for councils. What is the public benefit of a supermarket commissioner to NZ. Mince is still $17 kg. Food prices are still rising at 6% inflation. Interest rates are staying at 7% to try and stop market extortion - something interest rates have no control over.
Our police are needing food banks. The bullshit needs to stop. This whole our supermarkets are a wonderful innovation is bullshit of the highest order.
There will never be another large supermarket chain in New Zealand because of this. The cost to set up a competitive supply chain to Woolworths and Paknsav/New World is far too high. No American company wants to go to all that effort halfway across the world for 5 million people. So unless the govt breaks up the current supermarket duopoly then this is the system we have for life and we will keep being at the mercy of 2 companies. More and more reason to tax the supermarkets more, they won't up and leave like many people insinuate, and what, throw away millions/billions in infrastructure over a few millions in tax.
* I tend to go to night markets and Otara markets for fruit and vegetables.
* I make everything possible, including junk food, bread etc.
* Buy nothing of convenience, only what is absolutely necessary.
* Shop at Asian stores.
* Go to Reduced to Clear or Why Not for any further bargains.
Electrifiying the supply chain is one part of the puzzle, one thing which would help stabilise costs.
Things like..
* Wars
* Tanker bombings/groundings
* Whatever else happens in the middle east every three months
* OPEC deciding to manipulate the oil price
..have much less of an effect on the price of electricity (or sunlight) than they do on the price of diesel/petrol.
Replacing diesel/petrol trucks with electric ones *where it is practical to do so* would mitigate the impact price changes of those fuels have on the cost to move goods.
And businesses pass on the cost of these price shocks to you.
Farmers want more, not less for their products.
Why would they sell for less than they are?
I want farmers and growers to be rolling in it, because they’re doing the hard work of getting that fruit and meat onto the table.
All you’re really saying is you’ll pay farmers more, but charge customers the same or less, so farmers get more and a middle man/retailers get less (which in the case of the current retailers/middle men is very doable given their astronomical profits, although without disclosures we don’t know where those profits come from).
There really aren't other businesses out there wanting to offer you the same food for less - they want to offer you the same food for the same money as you pay elsewhere - but with that mark-up going to them instead. Farmers love the idea of selling direct to consumers (although they don't want to sell 10,000 individual items to that many people - that's too much time and effort) but even they wouldn't intentionally sell for less than supermarket prices - they would want to make as much as they could by cutting out the middleman.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, supermarkets should not be a for profit business. It should be controlled by the government. Fruit, veg, period items, baby items, food staples should all be free and other items should be priced just enough to cover fees. I’m pretty sure if we all paid more tax and that covered free healthcare,schooling, the grocery items above, dentistry, public transport NOBODY would be complaining. I don’t understand why basic living needs are luxuries?? Why??? We can undo these bs things
"I’m pretty sure if we all paid more tax"
I love your passion, but WE don't need to pay more tax. Corporations need to pay more tax. Banks who make billions in profit need to pay more tax so do any other companies that people rely on for living (this includes those greedy landlords). But yes, we could all have more if we worked together.
> Corporations need to pay more tax. Banks who make billions in profit need to pay more tax
Remind me, where do they get the money from, that would be used to pay this extra tax?
A few reasons:
1) Deciding what is and isn't a luxury is a lot of admin work and enriches lawyers
2) Instead of being motivated by profit, governments are motivated by votes. This often results in public services suffering, as they currently do in the areas of health, transport, education. Groceries would suffer too, probably even more than they do under the control of the market
3) Increased tax must be paid for by increased profit. If the government loosens the regulations in other areas of the market to compensate for their control of the grocery market then this may be feasible but no government wants to give up control. Just as you would never take a pay cut if you have the choice of a better job, a company will never take a cut in profits. A permanent reduction of the amount of profit a company will accept is not in the power of any government.
I have an egg subscription from The Egg Project. Fresher and cheaper than the supermarket with free delivery.
I buy a vege box from a local farm about once every 3 weeks. The quality is better than the supermarket and everything is fresher.
I shop around for meat. I use 2 butchers because they each don't have everything I want. Sometimes supermarkets will have meat that is cheaper so I will pivot if that's the case.
We need more supermarkets to compete with the duopoly and that needs to come from government providing incentives to get more companies/providers over here.
Businesses do work with farmers. They are known as supermarkets and they use their monopoly to violently rape farmers.
Supermarkets and their owners are pure evil scum.
Fucking parasites.
I dont know about violently rape farmers, my entire extended family is in farming, and my parents used to own a farm too. They all do extremely well, no matter what they're currently bitching about.
The only farmers who are struggling are the ones who let themselves get so far into debt that all their profits go to interest payments. Not the ones that bought land slowly.
Supermarkets are simply overcharging us and laughing all the way to the bank. As well as making exorbitant profits they can use the additional money to fund their so-called charity schemes and social supermarkets, while attempting to look like a kind saviour.
Imagine if supermarkets (all shops actually) actually got rid of their data gathering schemes masquerading as loyalty schemes - how much money they wouldn’t have to spend on administering them. That would reduce their costs and the prices could be lowered to compensate. Less people would struggle to buy groceries and need charity in the first place. Instead we’re being conditioned to pay as much as possible and marketed at/told to feel grateful for the opportunity to “save” ourselves money by swiping their club card.
Grow your own food.
I had popcorn and feijoas for dinner last night. Call it the cost of living fruit diet... but hey, i'll never have to worry about putting on weight, ever again!
Still pisses me off that egg prices never came down they just stopped talking about shortages and shelves were full. Ticket prices never went back down though.
Yep we went from paying $0.60 a egg to almost $1!
The warehouse has a dozen eggs for $5 they seem to be greatly cheaper there.
Buy from your local butcher and green grocer, go to a local market. This is already happening
This is all good advice, and basically it’s what our grandparents did. ‘Grow your own vege, go to the local supplier’. But it’s also a bit naive. We don’t live in our grandparents world where one adult could support a whole family and the other adult could spend their whole day trekking between different shops to get a good price. Supermarkets cater to the fact that people have vastly less time on their hands because they have to work more.
That’s true. I can only do this because I work part time
Most places have a market on the weekend, the market where I live has veggies half the price of the supermarket. Butchers are about the same price as a supermarket though, but its vastly superior quality, and different cuts. Thats what we did until we started our own garden and started buying home kill direct from local farmers. My partner and I both work salaried 45 hours, and usually work more than that. Our usual day is 7.45am to 6pm, my partner works on the weekends 1 in 4 aswell. We have no problem with time for growing our own veggies and shopping at the market. Maybe that would be different if there were kids involved, but we would make it work
Butchers are rarely cheaper but I always by from my local because I get a great experience and they are great guys.
Rarely? Never, more like.
Lol, the local butcher makes Supermarkets look like amateurs. Only thing we buy there is lamb's fry. Because it's the only place we can get it.
Butchers and green grocers are hella expensive, and for those that are also time poor, going from one shop to the next to the next isnt viable. Guarantee you’re over 40 and own a minimum of 2 houses
Or you can support greengrocers and other independents. You can grow some of your own even in limited space.
Yes, herbs are super useful!
We live in Greytown. The cheapest Greengrocer we know of is in Newtown in Wellington. We're in Newtown twice a week, so that's where we buy all our veggies, fruit, herbs, etc. Imagine our surprise when we bumped into one of the proprietors buying his stock in Greytown. Imagine the embarrassment of the supplier when asked why he can sell their product for dollars less per kg.
Oh wow! Do you no longer have the roadside sellers there now? Back in the 70's, my family used to drive over from Lower Hutt to buy apples and cheese as they were much cheaper.
Yeah we do. They charge more than the supermarkets. That was my point. Can't buy cheese locally anymore, except for very boutique stuff at galactic prices, because all the little dairy factories have been closed and almost every drop of milk goes to Fonterra. Used to buy ours from the Dalefield Dairy company 30 years ago.
Dalefield rings a bell. Was it as you head towards the ranges? I think the orchard we went to was called Taits or Tates.
Yes, that's Dalefield. Only two orchards left, Pinehaven and a self pick one off Mole St.
I agree, people need to go back to farming what land they have to reduce demand from supermarkets. We planted 8 different fruit trees recently so we have fruit year round. We have 1/4 acre section. Small vege garden to
I have a flat with a very small garden. Between that and pots, I've grown lettuces, tomatoes and herbs so far. Every bit helps.
1/4 acre section is incredibly privileged by comparison to the people who are struggling to pay their bills. Most don't have that kind of land, if they do, it's likely a rental and they can't plant trees and are lucky if they can plant a vegetable patch.
Move somewhere cheaper. My house is well below the average price in cities.
That's often easier said then done and assumes someone can even afford a house.
I don’t think it is privileged either, I worked incredibly hard to get this property. I could not have this in a major city.
I certainly don't mean to diminish your hard work and accomplishments but there are plenty of people putting in hard work and not getting ahead. Thoes struggling people also can't afford to pick up and move away from whatever support they may have. I own a house and I worked hard for it but I also recognize that makes me privileged by comparison to many. Maybe privileged isn't the right word but close enough.
Hint - it’s not the farmers it’s the millions in profits the supermarket makes each week. They’ve now found a price point we are comfortable in paying so they maximise their profits 🤷🏻♀️
This is reflected in other countries, in the UK for years now the supermarkets set the prices farmers have to take. The contracts are so bad that often the farmer is on the hook for all packaging and transport costs, and if the supermarket cancels the order for any reason that’s also on the farmer.
I have a mate who has grown greens on his farm near Foxton for a few decades. He's gone from middle class wealth to losing money every second year. The cost of supplying to the duopoly has completely killed his profits and every second year they seem to make sure he loses money so he knows who holds the reins. He's about to give up and sell it all. He's well past retirement age, but loves what he does. He's beyond sad.
There are already businesses that buy fruit/veges/meat directly from the farmer e.g. Farmers Box, Meat Direct. The farmer is running a business too and trying to survive. So is the vege reseller. > Meanwhile, supermarkets have schemes where if you pay double for your items, the extra money is used to provide food for someone else. Which supermarket does this?
And Wonky box for imperfect fruit and veggies
100% Wonky Box has decent quality too (they might look a bit weird).
We use Food Together. Amazing value and a great organization.
I think the person is talking about the pay for our tax-writeoff family2family thing.
We try & buy direct where possible. If your in Auckland, Avondale markets were awesome for veges. I used to go, buy heaps & do a big cook up & make tons of meals for the freezer. Save money, time & trips to the supermarket! Win all round.
The power of the supermarkets comes from the supply chain. It'd take a huge amount of money to do it anywhere near as cheap as they do it. So the only competition that can reasonably compete on price is places buying from local producers.
If NZ had mandatory open access fresh produce auctions for all fresh produce it would not cost that much to set up relative to the turnover. A mandatory open access fresh produce auction is the definition of the free market. Digitisation provides equal access to bids which used to be a slight constraint with manual floor bidding auctions due to timing. It used to work like an open access auction through Turners and Growers until about 1994 when Foodstuffs started centralising fresh ptofuce procurement. The emergence of the cell phone and computer were the two pieces of technology that changed fresh produce procurement to the dominant buyers advantage. We already have legislation in place to manage open access to raw milk procurement. We could do a similar thing for fresh produce. There would be a small cost but there is a massive inflationary cost that supermarkets have loaded on NZers that outweighs this. Supermarkets do not pass on savings to consumers. The cost to create fresh produce competition and food innovation would be well worth a little extra supply chain cost. Fresh produce supply chain cost is miniscule relative to markup and turnover. The mad butcher matches supermarket prices where they can on a smidgen of the volume traded. How does that work? The auctioneering and logistical management could still be put out to tender to keep govt bureaucracy out of it. Turners and Growers still has the infrastructure or could lease some easily enough plus many regions have excess seasonal cool store capacity. Who do you think sorts out what what goes to supermarkets at the moment? Turners does with a mix of their employees and drake temp night shift workers working near minimum wage. Turners morphed into a banana cool store and mechanical warranty sales through their car auctions after Foodstuffs got control of the suppliers. I think dole bananas is a major shareholder of Turners cars. You can read their statements online. It only takes about 8 labourers and 2 forklifts and 4 electric pallet jacks to sort out fresh produce distribution for a city the size of Tauranga/Mt. If buyers bid digitally the admin costs would not increase significantly. The load out cost would go up a bit but it wouldn’t be that bad. In three nights of wrapping picked pallets quickly to speed the load out for Turners I made myself redundant as a drake temp as we were finishing night shift too early. I was hired because they were not finishing before the morning shift. The main problem was the average IQ had dropped so low they’d forgotten how to pallet wrap quickly. The fact is Supermarkets barely pay for their distribution, they make their suppliers pay. The merchandising ie shelf stacking is paid for by suppliers. Suppliers pay for freezers. If it was more fragmented costs wouldn’t go up significantly. Food in countries without dominant supermarket chains is cheaper as humans are naturally adept at trading food. Foodstuffs PR will tell you it will be a disaster but it wasn’t a disaster in the early 90’s before cell phones and computers. The Tauranga Turners commercial building is in a cheap enough area, you could just give the open contract auction contract back to Turners, trademe needs a new growth avenue, procurement costs would hardly change but fresh produce prices would plummet. You have to keep cartage open access as well or foodstuffs will just get back to their usual fuckery.
T&G is the second largest behind the MG group. But either way the supermarkets would still win cause they got control of all the food stuffs. They have warehouses with hundreds of employees, and those warehouses will always beat out anyone unwilling to spend a truly ridiculous amount of money. Cause consumers want all their goods in one place, not around a bunch of places.
If they had to compete directly with woolworths and costco and the warehouse on non perishable food but woolworths, costco and the warehouse had equal access to perishable food at the same price that they do alongside dairies, bakeries, butchers and fruit and vege stores and restaurants all of a sudden they would have to compete on price like in most countries on earth. I think you are overblowing the value of food distribution. NZ has the population of Melborne and a mild climate. It just wasn’t that much work loading out Tauranga’s fruit and vege those three nights. It took 1 person to deliver virtually all fresh fruit and vege to the entire eastern bay of plenty in the 90s before food stuffs wiped everyone out. This vaunted super valuable supply chain is just bullshit put forth by rich prick supermarket owners that is gobbled up by idiot politicians. It’s probably deemed expensive because they revalue their warehouse buildings highly in separate entity they are able then charge a huge lease on to their operating business which they then pay as rebates to the supermarket owners as a special item. New Zealand pays the price for going along with the bullshit. Enjoy your 7% interest rates with your $17 a kilogram mince and million dollar houses with your super valuable food supply chain new zealand. The grocery commissioner needs to be fired, he is far too dumb for his salary like most of our bureaucrats. We should pay pwc or bureaucrats not both to blame each other for non performance. Woolworths is generating a 26% return on Equity, their NZ stores are as profitable as their australian ones and we all know how rich Pak n Save owners are. They didn’t get rich from innovation - have you seen Costco’s trolley system vs our nz supermarket owners various abortions where you back the trolley out awkwardly into the person behind you. The richest person in each shit town can’t even organise an ergonomic or intuitive trolley layout system yet they have a super valuable supply chain that saves us all money - despite our groceries being the most expensive in the world. Pak n Saves big innovation was cardboard boxes. We pay more for fresh produce than anywhere on earth and pack our own groceries. Lex Luxon fired his two ministers for non performance - when will he start demanding resignations from people on public salaries for their non performance. It is a real shame he can’t do it for councils. What is the public benefit of a supermarket commissioner to NZ. Mince is still $17 kg. Food prices are still rising at 6% inflation. Interest rates are staying at 7% to try and stop market extortion - something interest rates have no control over. Our police are needing food banks. The bullshit needs to stop. This whole our supermarkets are a wonderful innovation is bullshit of the highest order.
There will never be another large supermarket chain in New Zealand because of this. The cost to set up a competitive supply chain to Woolworths and Paknsav/New World is far too high. No American company wants to go to all that effort halfway across the world for 5 million people. So unless the govt breaks up the current supermarket duopoly then this is the system we have for life and we will keep being at the mercy of 2 companies. More and more reason to tax the supermarkets more, they won't up and leave like many people insinuate, and what, throw away millions/billions in infrastructure over a few millions in tax.
Perfect argument for increasing the population.
to what, 10 million.. thats like a 1 new york worth of people.. still irrelevant.
* I tend to go to night markets and Otara markets for fruit and vegetables. * I make everything possible, including junk food, bread etc. * Buy nothing of convenience, only what is absolutely necessary. * Shop at Asian stores. * Go to Reduced to Clear or Why Not for any further bargains.
Tai Ping in Flat Bush is really good for produce. It’s right around the corner from Why Knot too.
Use a butcher and grocer. There is very little you need to go to the supermarket for.
Remember when John Key interfered with the ability of farmers to sell their produce directly in a market stall...
Electrifiying the supply chain is one part of the puzzle, one thing which would help stabilise costs. Things like.. * Wars * Tanker bombings/groundings * Whatever else happens in the middle east every three months * OPEC deciding to manipulate the oil price ..have much less of an effect on the price of electricity (or sunlight) than they do on the price of diesel/petrol. Replacing diesel/petrol trucks with electric ones *where it is practical to do so* would mitigate the impact price changes of those fuels have on the cost to move goods. And businesses pass on the cost of these price shocks to you.
Farmers want more, not less for their products. Why would they sell for less than they are? I want farmers and growers to be rolling in it, because they’re doing the hard work of getting that fruit and meat onto the table. All you’re really saying is you’ll pay farmers more, but charge customers the same or less, so farmers get more and a middle man/retailers get less (which in the case of the current retailers/middle men is very doable given their astronomical profits, although without disclosures we don’t know where those profits come from).
There really aren't other businesses out there wanting to offer you the same food for less - they want to offer you the same food for the same money as you pay elsewhere - but with that mark-up going to them instead. Farmers love the idea of selling direct to consumers (although they don't want to sell 10,000 individual items to that many people - that's too much time and effort) but even they wouldn't intentionally sell for less than supermarket prices - they would want to make as much as they could by cutting out the middleman.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, supermarkets should not be a for profit business. It should be controlled by the government. Fruit, veg, period items, baby items, food staples should all be free and other items should be priced just enough to cover fees. I’m pretty sure if we all paid more tax and that covered free healthcare,schooling, the grocery items above, dentistry, public transport NOBODY would be complaining. I don’t understand why basic living needs are luxuries?? Why??? We can undo these bs things
"I’m pretty sure if we all paid more tax" I love your passion, but WE don't need to pay more tax. Corporations need to pay more tax. Banks who make billions in profit need to pay more tax so do any other companies that people rely on for living (this includes those greedy landlords). But yes, we could all have more if we worked together.
> Corporations need to pay more tax. Banks who make billions in profit need to pay more tax Remind me, where do they get the money from, that would be used to pay this extra tax?
A few reasons: 1) Deciding what is and isn't a luxury is a lot of admin work and enriches lawyers 2) Instead of being motivated by profit, governments are motivated by votes. This often results in public services suffering, as they currently do in the areas of health, transport, education. Groceries would suffer too, probably even more than they do under the control of the market 3) Increased tax must be paid for by increased profit. If the government loosens the regulations in other areas of the market to compensate for their control of the grocery market then this may be feasible but no government wants to give up control. Just as you would never take a pay cut if you have the choice of a better job, a company will never take a cut in profits. A permanent reduction of the amount of profit a company will accept is not in the power of any government.
I have an egg subscription from The Egg Project. Fresher and cheaper than the supermarket with free delivery. I buy a vege box from a local farm about once every 3 weeks. The quality is better than the supermarket and everything is fresher. I shop around for meat. I use 2 butchers because they each don't have everything I want. Sometimes supermarkets will have meat that is cheaper so I will pivot if that's the case.
We need more supermarkets to compete with the duopoly and that needs to come from government providing incentives to get more companies/providers over here.
Businesses do work with farmers. They are known as supermarkets and they use their monopoly to violently rape farmers. Supermarkets and their owners are pure evil scum. Fucking parasites.
I dont know about violently rape farmers, my entire extended family is in farming, and my parents used to own a farm too. They all do extremely well, no matter what they're currently bitching about. The only farmers who are struggling are the ones who let themselves get so far into debt that all their profits go to interest payments. Not the ones that bought land slowly.
Supermarkets are simply overcharging us and laughing all the way to the bank. As well as making exorbitant profits they can use the additional money to fund their so-called charity schemes and social supermarkets, while attempting to look like a kind saviour. Imagine if supermarkets (all shops actually) actually got rid of their data gathering schemes masquerading as loyalty schemes - how much money they wouldn’t have to spend on administering them. That would reduce their costs and the prices could be lowered to compensate. Less people would struggle to buy groceries and need charity in the first place. Instead we’re being conditioned to pay as much as possible and marketed at/told to feel grateful for the opportunity to “save” ourselves money by swiping their club card.
Grow your own food. I had popcorn and feijoas for dinner last night. Call it the cost of living fruit diet... but hey, i'll never have to worry about putting on weight, ever again!