05/11/2025
The Farming Forum
October 30 at 12:40 PM
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The cost to society of Tesco 3 Billion profit.
The Labour Party and yet you are about to tax the Public ?
Let’s rewind to a simpler time, 1985. You’re on the high street, the butcher’s selling proper sausages, the greengrocer’s got apples you could see your face in and the baker’s turning out loaves that smell like heaven. Fast-forward to now, and it’s tumbleweed, charity shops, and the occasional v**e cloud. Who’s the villain? The supermarket giants, that’s who.
In 1980, independent shops handled 58%of UK grocery sales. Today? A measly 5% The big four Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons hoover up 67%of the market.
Between 2000 and 2020, 30,000 independent food shops shut their doors. The Centre for Retail Research clocked 1,800 butchers, bakers, and greengrocers vanishing in just five years (2016–2021). No wonder the high street looks like a ghost town.
How did they do it ? Easy. They built mega-stores on the edge of town with car parks bigger than your average village. Free parking, endless aisles, and prices that made independents weep. In 1998 Competition Commission report found the big boys could undercut locals by 15–20% on everyday staples. Farmers got squeezed too, milk prices paid to them dropped from 28p a litre in 1995 to 18p in 2005, while the supermarkets still charged shoppers a tidy sum not to mention all of the other goods farmers supply. Farmers have been systematically squeezed relative to retail over the past 15 years: retail food prices rose (especially through 2020–2024) while farmgate returns were often flatter or volatile, so the gap between what consumers pay and what farmers get widened for many staples. 
But it’s not just the high street that’s taken a hit. Oh no, supermarkets have been dishing out a side order of health havoc with their ultra-processed foods (UPFs) think chicken nuggets that are more breadcrumb than bird, cereals sweeter than pudding, and ready meals that last longer than a nuclear winter.
UPFs now make up 57% of the UK diet the highest in Europe. For kids aged 4–10 64% of their calories come from this stuff. Result? The NHS is creaking. Heart disease admissions climbed from 245,000 in 2000/01 to 312,000 in 2022/23. Type 2 diabetes diagnoses? Tripled from 1.4 million to 4.3 million That’s £6.5 billion a year on heart disease and £10.9 billion on diabetes – nearly a fifth of the NHS budget.
And the kiddies’ teeth? Brace yourself. In 2022/23, 43,771 children aged 5–9 had multiple teeth yanked out under general anaesthetic – the highest ever, up 17% since 2016/17. Why? Sugar overload. Kids are scoffing 50g of free sugars a day, double the 25g limit. A bowl of supermarket cereal can pack 11g of sugar; a carton of flavoured milk, 20g. No wonder 23.4% of five-year-olds have decay, averaging 3.4rotten teeth each.
Supermarkets have tried a bit of window dressing cutting sugar in cereals by 13% since 2015 – but UPF sales still rose. And those checkout sweets? Still there, winking at toddlers in 78% of stores.
So, next time you’re wheeling a trolley the size of a small tank through the aisles, think about how we got here and how these retailing giants have changed our lives.
We would be very interested to hear your views.
