Two years into growing our own fruit and vegetables, we can start making some year-on-year comparisons. With the price of petrol shooting up, greenhouses being more expensive to heat this year and shortages affecting many products, I had expected that we would have seen a significant hike in the value of our harvest over the last 12 months.
But that’s not the case. The only direcly-comparable produce we have so far harvested are the French and runner beans, and three varieties of tomatoes, and while one crop has increased in price and another held its value, the other three cost less this year than they did in 2007.
| Crop | 2007 price | 2008 price | Difference |
| Runner Beans | £4.89 | £5.96 | + 21.8% |
| French Beans | £7.41 | £4.45 | - 39.9% |
| Gardeners’ Delight tomatoes | £5.96 | £4.92 | - 17.5% |
| Moneymaker tomatoes | £4.98 | £3.26 | - 34.5% |
| Golden sunrise tomatoes | £7.16 | £7.16 | +/- 0% |
All prices are per kilo and sourced from UK supermarkets. Full details of the prices used are shown in the 2007 and 2008 harvests.
I find that truly surprising, particularly when you consider that higher fuel prices should translate into higher food prices as it costs more to both harvest the crops and get them to the supermarket.
This makes very little difference to anyone working towards self-sufficiency because they enjoy the work and want a better handle on where their food is coming from, but for anyone doing it on a grander scale with the intention of selling their products, these decreases are only good news if they are the result of actual falls in the cost of production. Knowing what hard bargains the supermarkets drive, I’m not sure that will be the case.
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