This’ll annoy The Greenies: India needs supermarkets
IT’S a general theme here in the UK that supermarkets just ruin everything. You know the drill, you should buy your food from the local butcher and baker, patronise the high street, damn those clone towns and the industrial farming that supplies the out of town big box stores.
Except, there’s actually some point to these supermarket things with their logistics chains:
It hoped foreign supermarkets like Tesco and Walmart would come in and revolutionise India’s backward agricultural sector. Forty per cent of all Indian produce rots on clunky bullock carts and rough baked roads before reaching the market. When they arrive, farmers get a tiny fraction on the retail price as as they pass through at least five agents, each taking their cut. Of the eighty rupees per kilo they were selling for last week, the farmer’s share was just eight.
India needs new smooth roads, cold-chain storage and modern transport logistics to replace sweaty bullock carts, and direct sales from farmer to retailer to stabilise prices, increase farm incomes and reduce food inflation – one of the country’s most politically sensitive issues.
Maybe the supermarkets aren’t all that great: but not having them is much worse.
Posted: 4th, September 2013 | In: Money, The Consumer Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
