Soapbox - Be A Positive Consumer; Buy Well At Taywell
The people at Taywell are passionate about traditional farming and local produce. They want to inform customers, enabling them to make a positive impact and good buying decisions that will help the local economy and wider community.
Recent facts and figures - enabling people to draw their own conclusions:
- Last year consumers spent 9.7 per cent of their household income on food, 5.8 per cent on eating out and 4.8 per cent on alcohol. Of the total retail spend of £182bn in 2008 on food and drink, the UK farmers’ share was just 37 per cent; 20 years ago it was 59 per cent.
- In the ten years to 2007, our self sufficiency for food dropped from 67 per cent to 60 per cent and from 81 per cent to 72 per cent for indigenous foods that we can produce in this country.
- Britain imported £26.5bn of food in 2007 while exports fell to £11.3bn, leaving a £15.2bn food trade deficit.
- In 1970 there were 100,000 arable farmers; today there are just 10,000. There used to be (back in 1970) around 6,000 top fruit farmers; today, there are less than 200.
- Two dairy farms go out of business every week, while some supermarkets import milk from Holland.
- Supermarkets import 477,000 tons of apples, while stocking only 243,000 tons of British apples. Kent farmers are having to grub orchards because they contain apples delisted by supermarkets. A concerned government has just started a campaign to get the nation eating more British fruit and vegetables, with such initiatives as ‘Apple Day’.