Achi news desk-
For David Hale, the turning point was red rose tea.
Hale, a grocer in the Moncton area, says he watched over the past year as a box of 216 tea bags at Atlantic Superstore went from $9.99 to $13.99. A few months ago he walked into the store and said he had discovered a new price: $23.99.
“I said something was going on here,” Hale said in an interview.
After speaking with a store manager and not getting a satisfactory answer as to what was behind the high price, Hale said he left without buying the tea.
His son encouraged him to start shopping elsewhere, and Hale only returned to Atlantic Superstore for dog food — when it was on sale.
He stocked up on it in late April, ready to join other Canadians in boycotting all Loblaw locations, which includes the Atlantic Superstore, for the entire month of May (a box of 216 Red Rose tea bags for $13.99 on May 7, when CBC visited the Atlantic superstore in Moncton) .
The boycott began when Loblaw Companies reported revenue of $13.58 billion in the first quarter.
Other complaints about prices at the grocery giant circulated online include a $37 package of chicken breast, $9 butter and $30 for feta cheese.
The prices led to the creation of a Reddit community called “Loblaws is out of control,” and the boycott was born.
local buyer
Abandoning corporate grocery stores could leave consumers—especially in a rural province like New Brunswick—with few alternatives. Buying from smaller grocery stores or farmers markets are some options, but one farmer says New Brunswick doesn’t have enough producers to feed everyone.
Alyson Chisolm owns Windy Hill Organic Farm in Kent County, about 55 kilometers north of Moncton.
It grows produce for farmers’ markets and its cooperative agriculture program, which collects advance payments from consumers at the beginning of the growing season and in return provides baskets of fresh produce – spinach, tomatoes, zucchini, everything that grows on the land. Farm – every week until the end of the season.
“We see that fewer and fewer young people become farmers. We see many more young farmers or start-up farms fail,” she said.
Some Canadians are boycotting Loblaw stores during the month of May in response to high grocery prices, but farmers in New Brunswick say the entire food system needs to change.
New Brunswick’s field vegetable production will reach 7,406 metric tons in 2023, according to the Department of Agriculture.
This is an increase of 0.9 percent from 2022. Self-sufficiency in vegetable production also increased slightly, from 7.3 percent in 2018 to 9.1 percent in 2022. More recent data is not yet available.
Chisolm said there was a renewed interest in buying local during the pandemic, when supply chain issues exposed New Brunswick’s reliance on grocery stores — but when the restrictions ended and the supply chain stabilized, that interest waned.
While subscriptions to her weekly food boxes have remained steady, she said she believes it’s because other farms are struggling.
“I know quite a few farms that have downsized [community-shared agriculture] Pretty drastic numbers or out of agriculture,” she said. “It allowed me to keep my numbers.”
Rebecca Fraser-Hiasson, along with her partner Kevin Arsenault, founded Perma Terra Partaji, a cooperative farm in Rogersville.
She said her weekly food box numbers for this season are low so far, though not as bad as last year. This time four years ago, all her places were full – not only another sign of declining interest in buying local, she says, but also a sign that budgets are shrinking.
And not just for average New Brunswickers. If farmers really paid themselves for the work they do, Fraser-Hiasson said, the cost of their produce would be much higher.
There is also the housing problem. In Rogersville, she said the vacancy rate is low, another barrier for new farmers who have to invest thousands of dollars to get started.
“You can’t make $15,000 a year and buy a $300,000 house.”
it is not enough’
Suzanne Fournier, executive director of the New Brunswick National Farmers Union, said the 2018 figures show the net income for farmers was seven percent of every dollar they earned.
“It’s not enough to make a living. It’s not enough to keep your farm going.”
Fournier acknowledged that the county recently announced record cash receipts at the New Brunswick farm, but noted that most of that money is going toward bills and debt.
“The economy’s debt has grown at another exponential rate,” she said.
At the same time, so few companies dominate Canada’s grocery store system that farmers can’t raise their prices, Fournier said.
Chisolm made the same point, adding that this is why rebuilding the food system is so difficult.
“It’s not as simple as boycotting Loblaw, buying from the farmers market,” she said.
“You have to build something. What we really need to do is transition. Transition from supermarkets, transition to local food and allow farmers or farmers to help meet this need.”
“Otherwise, it’s going to crash and burn, and we don’t want that to happen.”
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