Carrots and Potatoes

The exercise I am about to write about was the main inspiration for this site.  After a comment on a friends upload on Facebook, I got thinking about “is it really more expensive to buy from a farmers market than a supermarket?”.

The comment wasn’t directly saying that, but the gist of it was “it’s alright to be picky if you have money.  Try shopping when your'e on benefits”.  This is not the first time I have seen such comments, the BBC Have your say is always full of these sorts of comments.  People assume because there is a small amount produced by a smaller farm that it must be more expensive.  (There are those people who are just food snobs and love nothing more than to show off at how they can afford to shop at these markets.)  HYS can be amusing at times, with these extreem views from either side.

So back to the point, which was, I honestly didn’t know if buying veg from the market was more expensive than at supermarket and wanted to find out.

My first attempt proved very interesting.

Farmers Market :

1kg of carrots £1;

Three potatoes, two very large, one medium £1.33.

Sainsbury’s :

750g So Organic (as the growing process I assume is similar to the market stall e.g. not covered in pesticides) £1;

 Pack of four medium sized “Baking potatoes” £1.

This means you get 25p more carrot at a farmers market for the same price as a supermarket.  But I paid 33p more for one less potato at the market.  So had I bought four potatoes *two very large, two medium*, I could have paid up to £1.77 (based on 44p per potato),  77p more than Sainsbury’s.

Now if you take away the difference between 77p saving from Sainsbury’s and 25p saving from the farmers market you will find that it is 52p cheaper at Sainsbury’s.

Supermarket cheaper than farmer’s market shocker!  Well only 52p, not enough to cover anything really, that’s 52p in a charity bucket or behind the sofa. 

The potato comparison wasn’t the really like for like size or number wise, but close enough.

Final round up, first round to the supermarket – just, the main thing is there isn’t much in it at all.  I wonder what you would have thought the price difference would have been.  Did you think it would have been cheaper at the market?  Did you think the supermarket savings would have been larger?

Let me know :)

Next time I will do a much better comparison, size, quantity and quality.  It will be a three way comparison, supermarket, farmers market, green grocer.  I will start small and work my way up to a full veg shop.

I will do meat comparisons too in time.




<script type="text/javascript">

  var _gaq = _gaq || [];
  _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-40383525-1']);
  _gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'comparethemeatnveg.blogspot.com']);
  _gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);
  _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

  (function() {
    var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
    ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
    var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
  })();

</script>