Food retailing practices that drive me absolutely buggy

Steve Brown, Boom Boom lives in a very remote area with no roads, the Lower North Shore of Québec (past the last town with a road). I've lived in the far north of Québec and fully understand the need for tinned vegetables etc in such areas.

6079, I do sprout mung beans and all, but need greens in the winter or I get ill.

They're for tiny, odd shaped cuts ;)

Anyway, I just came home from doing a bit of mega supermarket shopping and there are a number of things I hate.

Yes...one of my five cent bags broke...but fortunately not till I got home.

I hate the narrow checkout aisles and I hate being put on production line "speed up" stress at the checkout counter.  It used to be that bosses on industrial production floors put workers on speed up...that was bad enough.    Now mega supermarket chains put their customers on speed up.

Remember when supermarkets used to employ folks to bag your groceries for you?   Now most supermarkets don't have enough staff, there are big line ups and because of this there's all this stress at the checkout counter to bag your stuff yourself before the next persons stuff rolls down the conveyor belt.

And the checkout counters are so bloody narrow because there's all this impulse buy crap for sale at the counter...including all the stupid forest wasting tabloids..."Aliens sing Frank Sinatra songs on my roof every night!".  "X Hollywood star spotted sleeping with so and so's mother's, brother-in-law's, cousin's love child".  "Cure Cancer by Easting Pringles".

In Europe things are very different.   The checkout counters have lots of space.   The folks working the cash register have work stations where they can sit as they roll your stuff across the scanner.   They sell their stupid tabloids in...get this...the newspaper and magazine section!  Many of them still bag your stuff.

The other thing that pisses me off is that the management assholes at my local Real Canadian Superstore (at least it's unionized) kicked the informal taxi stand out of their parking lot.   If you were overloaded with stuff it used to be no sweat...there would always be a few cabs in the parking lot.   Now I have to call one and freeze my ass off in the winter waiting.   It's a stupid suburban mentality. Don't have a car? Then fuck you.   So today I had to wait in the rain for a cab.

Geez. Am I ever glad I don't live in the city!

Thanks for that.

If I divided up the number of hours I work by the amount I recieved for that labour I'd never leave the couch.

We get that all the time.  We raise organic chicken (and beef).  Our costs are approximately about a third more than conventional.  Maybe a smidge more.   I tell people all the time that I can raise cheaper chicken for them- just don't ask me to eat it.  The average person knows next to nothing about how food is really grown and the work it takes to do it.  Let alone how to really cook food from the source, like a roast or a whole chicken.  The questions I get from adults about how to cook these things astounds me sometimes.

I also love some of  the comments we get- here are my two favourites.

You must be glad to have all that spare time now that it is (spring, summer, fall, winter- I get them all).  Uh no- in the spring I am cleaning up from housing livestock all winter and getting equipment ready for planting, preparing for and then housing our chickens, and repairing fences so our cattle don't show up on your lawn unannounced.  In the summer I am cutting, baling and storing hay and then harvesting grain crops- then 2nd cut hay- then more hay if I am lucky.  Come fall I am plowing and getting things ready for housing livestock through the winter.  And winter ah winter.  Every day I go outside (twice-sometimes 3 times or more) and freeze my ass off, or this year get rained on as I feed the livestock, clean up the barnyard and pens and look after cattle if they get sick or are ready to give birth- and for those with farming experience this is for you fixing all the things the cattle break and stick their heads into.  That's my year, so no I'm not looking forward to a bunch of spare time thanks as I also have to work off the farm because you can't raise a family on what a farm makes.

My other favourite is the time I overheard this guy at one of our farmers markets (oh I left out all those hours above) tell his buddy about this fabulous, honking huge flat screen TV he had purchased for just over a $1000 while walking around with his expensive specialty coffee.  He then came to look at our certified organic, free range, graded eggs we had for sale for $4 a dozen.  (enough eggs to make a couple of meals for a person).  He then explained to me that we were asking far too much for eggs.   I laughed and just turned around and went to the other end of our booth's table.

So while the thread is about the evils of retailers sometimes us smaller retailers/farmers have some things that drive us buggy about buyers.

Yeah, tell me about it. I have had a customer walk in and ask me if I could put her in touch with our suppliers so she could get stuff for the same price I do (though it doesn't actually work that way).

That same person phoned me one day and asked if she could buy an item off my shelf and return it later because she had ordered it online from a big chain and it hadn't arrived yet, and she needed it for a test the next day. Of course, she said, I knew I could trust her to return it when the copy she paid for arrived. 

What amazed me is that she did not realize what she was saying. She could have just said nothing - bought it and returned it a few days later and I would have been none the wiser.

And the supply ship is usually on schedule but all winter it's pretty 'iffy' as to when it gets here, because it won't move in a strong wind. It's supposed to be here every Thursday at noon, but last week did not get here until Friday night after the stores were closed meaning the fresh stuff remained in steel containers a wwhile longer. Result: wilted lettuce, along with really overripe tomatoes, grapes, and peppers. *sigh* Most of the food we receive here on the coast is excess inventory from the grocery stores in Sept-Iles. The orders are taken from the grocery store to the ship warehouse on Monday - after it has sat in teh grocery store for God knows how long - and in theory we are supposed to get this stuff a few days later. So much for freshness, eh? But I don't complain - much.

Last summer I gave up the veggie garden because there were just too many weeds - couldn't keep up with them.

BA, I'm familiar with farming - I used to cover on my brother's farm when he wanted a break in the summers back when I lived in Ontario - grew alfalfa, and kept chickens for eggs. A dirty job sometimes, and he and I had bad allergies on top of it all. He and his wife had to keep their government jobs in order to survive on the farm.

After I left Ottawa I lived in northern Ontario for 15 years - Thunder Bay, then near North Bay, and lastly up near Hearst on Hwy 11 north. The further north I lived, the worse the blackflies got! I've now lived on Quebec's isolated Lower North Shore just below Labrador 17 years. I like living in these tiny communities, cut off from modern conveniences to a degree - no road access to the rest of Canada, for instance (a new road has just been built to Natashquan from here, but there's no bridge over the Natasquan River yet - maybe next year?). And getting firewood - too expensive to heat by electricity, and sometimes the Hydro goes off for a few days. (I have a small backup generator I use to keep the wood furnace fan going, as well as the freezer and fridge)

And, yeah, canned food is a necessary staple here, as are frozen foods - especially from mid-January to mid-April when there's no supply ship. Most canned food I think has a one year shelf life, although if you look at expiry dates some more, some less. I get pissed off when I see price tages covering up expiry dates - obviously the store doesn't want to throw something away and take a loss when it reaches the expiry date when they can just cover up the expiry date altogether.

If you don't see any difference SJ, I do - not just in terms of labour practices but also farming practices. Sure a lot of organic and so-called healthy products are gimmicks. 

That is why you need to read the labels, do some research, and check out what you are buying. 

And am I likely to buy fairer trade items from a big retailer rather than a small one, or direct from the producer? Probably not. But I think it is great that those items are on the shelves and available to people who wouldn't ordinarily go out of their way to make those choices. Seems to me that is one way that change happens. 

Or we could go back to eating klik, white bread captain crunch and cheese wiz, which was about the extent of the choices in the store when I was a kid.

In Winnipeg this isn't a simple choice. There is no store, large or small, currently selling free range eggs that are locally produced. Safeway sells "organic" eggs - whatever this means - called Goldegg, I think, but they are shipped from Ontario or Quebec. For eggs to be designated free range, here at least, they must be organic,* but I don't know if the reverse is true. Quality of life for the animal is more important to me than if they were fed organic grain.

I support a local egg producer who at least has free run eggs (not quite the same as free range) because then I know what I'm getting, and I'm supporting local business. I also don't fully trust the practices of an "organic" egg producer that is able to market its eggs nationally.

ETA: * I may have this wrong. I think to be designated "organic" the chickens are supposed to have some free range. But large producers of "organic" eggs likely don't offer their chickens much in the way of free range. "Free range" designation does not require hormone or additive-free feed. However, operations that market as free range tend to be small, market locally, and operate on green farming principles, so I still always prioritize local and free range over "organic".

Good point, BA.

So looking at the Goldegg site, for example, what is the difference in range they are pointing out between

Free Run eggs: "GoldEgg Free Run eggs are laid by hens housed in state of the art, cage free, weather sheltered barns.... Each hen is allowed to roam, feed, perch, scratch and lay their eggs in nest boxes."

and "Organic" eggs: "The hens roam freely within the hen house and have unlimited access to feed and water." ?

I guess I question operations whose humaneness is determined by product marketing rather than by an ethic of humane and sustainable food production. I mean, what does it say about an operation that thinks it's okay for some of their chickens to live in cages while other chickens have free roam, only because there are (uneducated) markets for both? How do we know really how these standards and designations play out in day-to-day operations?

Fair enough, BA. I'm just explaining why I buy local non-organic over non-local organic, especially from a national producer that doesn't seem to know that their "organic" chickens need to have some outside access as well.

I also notice they market "grain-fed" eggs, as distinct from both organic and free range. WTF. Shouldn't they be doing this anyway?

This is why I won't be buying from them.

By the way I meant we run flocks of 200-300 chickens at a time, not 200-300 flocks

Actually, free range does NOT usually include outside access.  It is generally used to denote that the birds are not kept in cages, not much beyond that can be infered. 

Only one egg production method does, and that is certified organic.  The problem is that a lot of small farmers, who produce a few dozen eggs a week and eaters, don't know what they are talking about when it comes to how we grow food, such as eggs, so they become dependent on buzz words.   It gets worse when you are dealing with re-sellers and the like who really might know, but understand the power of the buzz words.

When we sold eggs we were constantly asked if they were free range, knowing what the person usually meant even if they weren't asking the right question.  Yes I would patiently reply, our eggs are certified organic like the sign says so they must be given outside access, with a regulated amount of open space available around each bird.  People just don't know and they are so far removed from how their food is grown they just have no way of knowing unless they take a very keen interest- and even then it can be confusing.  (By the way you can't enforce those rules on chickens very easily as they have a mind of their own and tend to want to be right on top of each other, no matter how hot it is out, even on humid, sultry nights.  Almost especially on those kinds of days it seems.)

Well I for one appreciate your efforts and people like you.  You can only build a sustainable food system, environment and economy by opting out.  It makes a difference, if only to have people with real experience growing real food in the future.  Because I have to tell you it is no easy feat to grow enough food year after year, through all kinds of conditions, to feed a community.

dp

We deliver.  Many of our customers sort of bulk order to make that more economically feasible for us.  We have a long and very positive relationship with our customers.   You might be able to find access that way.  Try contacting the NFU in Manitoba, they may know someone one.  Or ask around, if you were able to get some friends together someone might be willing to come to you in a CSA type model.  You'll find the food is often cheaper and better that way too.

Thanks for the tips, BA and Smith W. It's hard to buy in volume when you're only a family of two. And pooling people isn't always as easy as it might seem conceptually. But I will try to improve my options.

I'm glad you were patient.  Because I don't think it's the fault of the consumer that huge agribusiness corps (along with every other type of corporation) throw millions or even billions of dollars of marketing at them to confuse them about terminology like that, and of course millions more at our politicians to lobby them for no regulation of such deceptive marketing.  The fact that the person is even asking for "free range" shows that they care about the subject, at least.

It's great that folks like you are willing to do your best to educate people.  It's a good thing you're doing!