Free Market Fun

There was a programme about food on Channel 4 yesterday called FOOD. Their roving reporter visited a Kenyan bean farmer, who seemed to be doing OK, and told us solemnly that out of the £1.99 we pay for a packet of Kenyan green beans in the supermarket, the farmer - after being ruthlessly exploited by the monopolistic UK supermakets, the evil airlines with their carbon footprints etc - gets about 16p, or about 8% of the purchase price.

We can look at that figure in two ways:

1. Out of £1 spent in the supermarket on UK farm produce, how much does the farmer get? At Sainsbury's, a kilo of potatoes costs about £1.50, and the UK average ex-farm price of 1,000 kilos of potatoes is £161, so the UK farmer receives about 9% of the supermarket price.

2. If you donate £1 to 'charity', how much does your intended recipient get? The charity knock off half for fund raising and admin; another half goes on bribes to officials and ends up in Swiss bank accounts; half of what's left is wasted on overpaying for projects; and those projects are often white elephants, so let's knock off another half again and assume that the intended recipient gets a tangible benefit worth 6.25% of the sum you gave.

So I'll continue buying the Kenyan green beans, thank you very much. I get the tasty out-of-season beans and the farmer and his workers get more money than if I'd given the £1.99 to a 'charity'.