FFWD REW

As grocery bills go up farmer revenue goes down: study

Farmers want to see ‘the same increases the rest of the food chain is getting’

As your grocery bill swells the amount of food revenue that makes its way back to farmers is going down according to a study by the Wild Rose Agricultural Producers of Alberta and similar groups in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

“It’s a concern to us” says Humphrey Banack the Alberta group’s president. The prairie farmer groups bought a week’s worth of groceries for a family of four and found that while grocery costs went up by $6 since last year the farmer received 86 cents less. Distributors and processors meanwhile received almost $7 more. “There are costs that have increased to the guys in the middle — labour costs fuel costs things like that” says Banack an Edmonton-area farmer. “We’d like to see the same increases the rest of the food chain is getting.”

While Banack admits the numbers in the study are estimates he says the idea isn’t to point fingers but to get people thinking more about where their food comes from. He urges consumers to make an effort to buy Canadian food because “then it benefits the Canadian agricultural community.”

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