Post by account_disabled on Feb 27, 2024 5:14:46 GMT
Intensive poultry farm in north Herefordshire, farmer Jo Hilditch walks through one of her 22 chicken coops, picking up fluttering birds and looking for signs of illness and injury. The 20,000 plump five- to six-week-old chickens occupying the shed will soon be transported to a series of nearby facilities by the farm's processor, Avara, where they will be stunned, slaughtered, cleaned, packaged and then delivered to the shelves. supermarkets. It's a well-oiled process, with one critical flaw: Hilditch, a fourth-generation farmer, says she doesn't get paid enough to do anything more than survive. The same message resonates in a sector that operates on ultra-low margins. The price of chicken, producers argue, is simply too low to keep up with an aggressive increase in input costs. A medium chicken from Tesco that feeds up to 6 people costs for example. At discounter Lidl, a similarly sized product costs £3.79. “Profits, even historically when things were going well, have not been fantastic,” says Hilditch, whose farm produces 5.5 million chickens a year but generates a turnover of £9 million. "I find it extraordinary that you can buy a chicken for the same price as a coffee with milk.
The Hilditch poultry farm is a microcosm of many of the pressures currently facing British businesses, not just in the food industry, but across much of the manufacturing industry. For much of the post-war period, poultry Jordan Mobile Number List farming was one of the fastest growing and productive sectors in UK agriculture. Meat consumption tripled between 1960 and 1980, and the average consumer today consumes 35 kg of protein per year. However, in recent years it has faced a series of different upheavals that, together, have led the sector into crisis: from Covid-19 and its economic fallout to Brexit and the war in Ukraine. More than most other products, the industry's problems encapsulate not only the fragility of the UK's food systems but also the problems affecting the wider economy: inflation, labor shortages and rising wages. You are viewing a snapshot of an interactive chart. This is most likely because you are not logged in or JavaScript is disabled in your browser. As a result, poultry farms and processing plants have closed or reduced operations. Production of broilers, those raised exclusively for meat production on an industrial scale, fell percent in July compared to 12 months ago, according to official statistics. Exports have almost halved, from 375,000 tonnes in 2020 to tonnes last year.
Food producers, including dairy and horticulture, are begging retailers to increase the price of staple foods. They hope this will allow them to make a profit and help increase productivity. “The last two years have really been a perfect storm,” says Hilditch. "Chicken is too cheap and we can't reinvest it." However, as people face the worst cost-of-living crisis in living memory, the prospect of asking consumers to pay more for food is difficult to swallow. However, doing nothing can be even harder to swallow. Younger, cheaper, faster Meat wasn't always so affordable. Before intensive farming spread to the UK from the United States in the 1950s, poultry was considered a luxury that families ate no more than once a week. It was Anthony Fisher, founder of the free-market think tank Institute of Economic Affairs, who transformed a cottage industry into one of Britain's fastest-growing sectors. In 1964, Fisher's company, Buxted Chickens, processed more than 500,000 birds each week in three plants.
The Hilditch poultry farm is a microcosm of many of the pressures currently facing British businesses, not just in the food industry, but across much of the manufacturing industry. For much of the post-war period, poultry Jordan Mobile Number List farming was one of the fastest growing and productive sectors in UK agriculture. Meat consumption tripled between 1960 and 1980, and the average consumer today consumes 35 kg of protein per year. However, in recent years it has faced a series of different upheavals that, together, have led the sector into crisis: from Covid-19 and its economic fallout to Brexit and the war in Ukraine. More than most other products, the industry's problems encapsulate not only the fragility of the UK's food systems but also the problems affecting the wider economy: inflation, labor shortages and rising wages. You are viewing a snapshot of an interactive chart. This is most likely because you are not logged in or JavaScript is disabled in your browser. As a result, poultry farms and processing plants have closed or reduced operations. Production of broilers, those raised exclusively for meat production on an industrial scale, fell percent in July compared to 12 months ago, according to official statistics. Exports have almost halved, from 375,000 tonnes in 2020 to tonnes last year.
Food producers, including dairy and horticulture, are begging retailers to increase the price of staple foods. They hope this will allow them to make a profit and help increase productivity. “The last two years have really been a perfect storm,” says Hilditch. "Chicken is too cheap and we can't reinvest it." However, as people face the worst cost-of-living crisis in living memory, the prospect of asking consumers to pay more for food is difficult to swallow. However, doing nothing can be even harder to swallow. Younger, cheaper, faster Meat wasn't always so affordable. Before intensive farming spread to the UK from the United States in the 1950s, poultry was considered a luxury that families ate no more than once a week. It was Anthony Fisher, founder of the free-market think tank Institute of Economic Affairs, who transformed a cottage industry into one of Britain's fastest-growing sectors. In 1964, Fisher's company, Buxted Chickens, processed more than 500,000 birds each week in three plants.