Selfsufficientish.com

I just had a shock when I bought our latest batch of poultry feed:

Organic layers pellets - £499.60 a tonne. Up 23.7 per cent in seven weeks (and there was a rise four weeks before that, too).

Organic mixed corn - £478.40 a tonne. Up 15 per cent in seven weeks.

And I've been warned to expect similar rises for rolled barley and sow rolls when I restock those next week.

But, customers don't want to pay more for eggs, chickens, weaners or pork.

This is not sustainable.

Full details on my blog.

Hi Stonehead.

I find it very disturbing that prices are constantly on the increase. I have made the descision not to buy meat even though I am not a vegetarian. All that publicity with the TV chickens are out, made me feel quite ill and I don't see how T***o can sell a chicken for £1.98, must be fed on water!

D&E told me their org pig nuts from Rosslyn had gone up by £57 a tonne. Not sure what to tho.

Re Broilers - Fed Sh!t, kept in Sh!t, taste like Sh!t.

Nope, not sustainable at all. >Insert rant about biofuels and the demand for cheap food here.<

At some point, I think the 'cheap' bubble will burst, and people will have to pay the real cost of food because doing it the industrial way will simply become uneconomic, thanks to rising feed and fuel prices (and running out of oil to power agricultural machinery and the distribution network, make plastic packaging, heat and light supermarkets, processing plants, factories etc). Market forces will make a local diet of predominantly fruit and veg with much less meat a more realistic choice.

In the long-term, people like you, Stonehead, will be the ones who can ride out the change, and I truly believe that one day your eggs and pork will be cheaper than T*sco! However, I worry sometimes that in the short term, some people will hear words like 'recession' and 'rising food prices' and turn away from sustainable food and back towards the industrial 'bargains', and rising costs and fewer customers will take their toll on some of the sustainable producers. Foolish, short-termist move, hastening the problem and not investing in the solution, but that's how I think it'll go.


(And I call myself an optimist. )

hamster wrote:In the long-term, people like you, Stonehead, will be the ones who can ride out the change, and I truly believe that one day your eggs and pork will be cheaper than T*sco!

The problem is that we can't subsidise the cost of producing the chickens, eggs, pigs and pork. If feed prices and energy prices rise, but the price consumers are prepared to pay doesn't, then we're stuffed.

We find it hard to sell good quality, pure-bred weaners at £55 each (should be £60 for the next batch but as we sold them before the last rise we're holding the price). I'm still working out the new price based on rises in feed and diesel costs, plus an expected spike in electricity prices from our supplier, but weaners would probably have to be priced at £70 each.

I can't see many people paying that. They want cheap pigs (and tell me they can get cross breeds for £10-20 from the local paper). I tell them to p*** off.

It's the same with pork. We're currently charging £100 a side (20kg plus), but it should be £105 now rising to £120 when the rises feed through.

However, we wouldn't sell any pork at that price. We lost more than half our customers when we went from £95 to £100 a side. They want free-range pork, but not if they have to pay for it.

And don't forget, we're not a business so we don't have a margin or labour costs in those prices. If we did, we'd add another 25-30% to both weaner and pork prices.

(I have to be very careful to not make a profit and to not pay myself a wage because if I do we go on to a business mortgage, pay business rates, and have to join the tax circus. So long as we stay subsistence and hobby on a break-even basis, we're all right.)

With the gulf between production costs and the price paid growing ever wider, the Other Half and I are watching the situation very closely. Add in soaring bureaucracy and its costs (eg £800 to get transport competency certificates for the two of us), and things get very tight indeed.

Stonehead wrote:but weaners would probably have to be priced at £70 each.

I paid £70 each from Elaine yesterday. She has charged me £65 for the last 3 years and was quite embarrassed to ask for £70. I actually think that's a good deal!

Its about time that Governments started to support folks like like Stony to encourage others to follow his and others, way of life, because the way that nature is being abused, many will have to learn that to survive they will have learn to change their lifestyle and Stony will be the example

George Monbiot on the subject..............http://www.monbiot.com/archives/1999/09 ... all-farms/

Prices are rising here, too. 25kg sacks of chicken feed went up €3 with the start of the new year. It's got me thinking about how I can grow my own feed.

I don't buy chicken food by the tonne but I did notice that my usual 25kg organic layers pellets had increased in price by 1/3!!!

That's not chicken feed!!

At the risk of sounding niave can you not grow some or all of their food yourself?

Latest organic layers pellets were £11.25 per 25kg bag, and £11.20 for organic mixed corn.

Ours are on the way up too, but with us they tell us it's the drought.

Nev

Gosh stonehead, wish you were nearer - £65 for 1/4 free range organic pig last time I looked (for OH not me I'm veggie).

There's an article in the March/April Resurgence about is relevant wheat prices called 'Feeding People or cars?'

Quote " The US Department of Agriculture estimated that of the extra 20 million tons of wheat grown globally in 2006, 14 millions tons will go to 'feeding' American cars, with just 6 million tons left for thw world's hungry people"

Add this to the demand from China for a western diet and the price of wheat and other foodstuffs is going through the roof!

I bought more chicken and rabbit feed today. The price has gone up again, to €15.99 for a 25 kg sack, 60% more than a year ago.