The price of pork
16 09 2007The Other Half and I sat down tonight to watch our favourite “hate” programme - Crisis at Jimmy’s Farm.
Jimmy is an out-of-control man-child who pretends to run a rare-breeds farm and retail outlet while ducking responsibility, spending cash like there’s no tomorrow and blaming everyone else for his problems.
He’s also a dab hand at ignoring the plight of his animals until it’s almost too late or letting their suffering go on too long when it is too late. Jimmy’s relationship with his creditors is much the same, too.
But the OH and I finally found one point on which we could agree with Jimmy.
The moment came when he sat down with his bookkeeper, actually listened to her for a short time, and discovered that rare breed, free-range pork costs £5.47 a kilogram to produce.
I can only hope that a few people noticed that, because very, very few people accept the actual cost involved in producing high quality meat from free-range animals kept in good conditions or better.
Our own pork usually works out at around £5 a kilogram (based on two 20kg half sides selling for £100 each) - and that’s excluding labour as we are not a business.
We’re a largely self-sufficient croft with a sideline hobby of preserving a rare-breed pig - the Berkshire. That means we aim to supply ourselves with pork first, then cover the non-labour costs of our breeding programme.
If we were running a business, I’m fairly certain our production price per kilogram would be around the same as Jimmy’s.
Of course, the actual retail price of the pork would need to be even higher to generate a return to the business.
But how many people are actually prepared to put their money where their mouth is and pay the full price of free-range, ethically reared pork - or any other similar meat for that matter?
We cooked a 2kg leg of our own free-range, rare-breed pork for dinner tonight. If we’d bought that from a farm business with Jimmy’s cost of production plus a 15% margin it would have cost us £12.58 (£6.29 a kilogram).
A quick check on the Tesco website turned up a boneless leg of pork for £4.29 a kilogram or £8.58 for the equivalent amount to our leg - and that’s with the extra cost of boning it.
Many people will say they would pay the higher price of free-range pork, but in reality few actually do.
Indeed, people are already squealing as food prices push higher thanks to the fact that the ever rising cost of inputs can no longer be held back from the consumer.
What most people have completely failed to realise is that they’ve not only been living on debt in a financial sense, but also in a broader sense.
They’ve been living and eating well because farmers, the environment, the animals and ample natural resources like oil have all been carrying the cost for them.
Now, it looks increasingly like those debts are being called in because farmers, the environment, the animals and diminishing resources are all saying “enough”.
A bit like Jimmy and his creditors in fact.
MOst folk really do baulk at the idea - but I do put my money where my mouth is. I buy from an organic farmer at a local market. I have a certain amount of money that I spend on meat, if at all, and if I buy this meat I eat meat far less often, but that’s fine by me ;0)
I just came across a BBC News story in which the British Pig Association says that farmers are being paid £1.10 per kilogram for pigs that cost £1.44 per kilogram to produce.
People should be asking themselves what the environmental and animal welfare costs are of producing meat that cheaply and that intensively.
No, they don’t need to do that, they can taste it!!!!
We love top quality sausages and meat at http://www.sausagefans.com and, certainly with sausages, I think people are gradually realising that paying just a bit more means they get a whole lot more quality.
Our own research would suggest that people are paying more for their meat (gradually) and it’s not just us according to Meat Info mag other people have found the same (http://www.meatinfo.co.uk/articles/50282/Shoppers-say-yes-to-higher-pork-prices.aspx).
It’s an uphill struggle spreading the word and sharing the love. Perhaps the solution for those who cannot “afford” proper meat is to eat less of it. They could therefore eat meat of a better quality.
Hopefully Jimmy’s farm has done something to help the British public begin to realise they are on a hiding to nothing giving supermarkets their money. I really do hope that Jimmy refused to sell to the supermarkets and that it wasn’t just marketing spin.
If enough people tell enough people the facts of supermarket meat I think more people would be prepared to pay more for the good stuff.
Stephen aka Sausage King
I had a look at the article Shoppers Say Yes To Higher Pork Prices and can see an obvious limit to the hope that the great British consumer will pay a more sustainable price for pork (or any other food for that matter).
The research quoted in the article found “42% said they would be prepared to pay up to 10% more with a further 36% happy to pay up to 5%.
That’s another 43 pence per kilogram on the cost of the Tesco leg of lamb, bring it up to £4.72 per kilogram - still below the cost of production of extensive, outdoor reared rare-breed pork.
Or to put it another way, the price of pig feed has doubled and other inputs are also rising (the knock-on effects of oil price rises), but the British consumer still only wants to pay a proportion of the real cost of their meat.
Still, it is a start.