Food critic’s attack on supermarket culture

Food business critic Jay Rayner was hired to take a tour of the Morrisons empire, talk off-the-record to farmers and deliver an uncensored summary of his conclusions at the first Morrisons Farming Conference, held at the Harrogate showground on Wednesday. The audience of 350 included senior executives of the supermarket chain.

Mr Rayner said Britain supplied 70 per cent of its own food in the early 1990s but the figure had dropped, possibly as low as 50 per cent, because supermarkets had forced farmers out of business.

Riots around the world over food shortages and prices in 2008 had put sustainability of supplies back on the agenda and the issue was still out there. It was arguable that the ‘Arab Spring’ had been driven by food shortages more than anything.

The Chinese were beginning to outbid the UK for some international commodities. He summed up: “Supermarkets need to pay farmers more now, so they can invest in self-sufficiency. That means we will all have to pay more but it will be relatively small compared with the alternative in the long run.”

To the enjoyment of 300 farmers in the hall, he told the Morrisons executives they were seen as “best of a bad bunch” – meaning of the top four food retailers, led by Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury. But smaller competitors M&S and Waitrose were seen as giving farmers a better deal.

Morrisons were not as strong on field-level farm advice and not as hot on the production standards of imported food as the other big players.

He had seen their flagship store at Kirkstall, Leeds, and found it “impressive”. But he thought spraying mist over the fresh vegetables was “exceptionally silly” – damaging to the produce and suggesting “a carbon footprint the size of Wyoming”.

Morrisons’ milk prices were at least 3p a litre too low, like most, and it was seen as keen on reports about milk production, which put the onus on the farmer, because reports were cheaper than paying the right price.

Cheese labelling did not make clear if UK-packed also meant UK-sourced.

Buying British had put Morrisons’ order for fresh British pork up from 5,000 tonnes to 22,000 tonnes a week, which was good. But most bacon was still coming from elsewhere because of the damage already done to the home pig industry.

There was some unease about Morrisons’ move into farming. Already, around Dumfries, farmers found themselves “bidding against their own customer” at livestock auctions. However, it was some satisfaction to them that the Morrisons farm only just broke even – which demonstrated how hard the job was.

Mr Rayner said: “I like Morrisons people. I think they are serious and I think they care and you don’t get a lot of rubbish from them.”

But he added: “One said to me that ‘we like to think of ourselves as a bit different’ and I said one decision means you are not – and that is objecting to a Groceries Code Adjudicator. Farmers are not crying out for one just to be difficult. Supermarket practices have done damage.

“Supermarkets have 80 per cent of the market. In return, we expect responsibility from them as custodians of the food supply and that means more than sponsoring fun runs.”

‘Give us credit for meat policy’

MORRISONS chief executive Dalton Philips told Mr Rayner: “You did a great job. We are having this conference to be better at what we do.”

He said he might have wished for a bit more credit for the things that did make Morrisons different – like their promise that all their fresh meat was all British.

Martyn Jones, corporate services director, said they had objected to some of the technical detail of the proposed groceries ombudsman’s role but “in principle, we don’t have a problem”.