British Food Journal Volume 79 Issue 3 1977

Abstract

One of the most serious problems facing the country today is maintaining dietary standards, especially in the vulnerable groups, in the face of rising food prices. If it were food prices alone, household budgetry could cope, but much as rising food prices take from the housewife's purse, rates, fuel, travel and the like seem to take more; for food, it is normally pence, but for the others, it is pounds! The Price Commission is often accused of being a watch‐dog which barks but rarely if ever bites and when it attempts to do this, like as not, Union power prevents any help to the housewife. There would be far less grumbling and complaining by consumers if they could see value for their money; they only see themselves constantly overcharged and, in fact, cheated all along the line. In past issues, BFJ has commented on the price vagaries in the greengrocery trade, especially the prices of fresh fruit and vegetables. Living in a part of the country given over to fruit farming and field vegetable crops, it is impossible to remain unaware of what goes on in this sector of the food trade. Unprecedented prosperity among the growers; and where fruit‐farming is combined with field crops, potatoes, cabbage, cauliflower and leafy brassicas, many of the more simple growers find the sums involved frightening. The wholesalers and middle‐men are something of unknown entities, but the prices in the shops are there for all to see. The findings of an investigation by the Commission into the trade, the profit margins between wholesale prices and greengrocers' selling prices, published in February last, were therefore not altogether surprising. The survey into prices and profits covered five basic vegetables and was ordered by the present Prices Secretary the previous November. Prices for September to November were monitored for the vegetables—cabbages, brussels sprouts, cauliflowers, carrots, turnips and swedes, the last priced together. Potatoes were already being monitored.

Citation

(1977), "British Food Journal Volume 79 Issue 3 1977", British Food Journal, Vol. 79 No. 3, pp. 73-108. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb011716