Farmers and supermarket chains reject the establishment of a ceiling on basic food prices proposed by the Second Vice President and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz. the president of COAG in the Region, José Miguel Marín, believes that the chains would continue to maintain their profit margins at the cost of paying suppliers less. “There would be a pressure we couldn’t take and, in the end, they would stop cultivating the products that had a cap, “said Marín. He recalled that European regulations prevent price fixing and pointed out that there is no consensus within the Government either. The supermarket chains assure that they affect the increase in their costs when they have no choice, because “consumers will buy elsewhere if prices rise”.
Yolanda Díaz advocates reaching an agreement with large distribution and with consumers to ‘cap’ the prices of basic foods in order to curb the increase in the price of the shopping basket. However, the Minister of Agriculture, louis planeshas responded that the proposal is not viable in a free market economy, because the legislation does not allow it.
José Miguel Marín defends that “everyone has to obtain a benefit” and assumes that “links in the food chain have to charge their costs and receive a reasonable profit“However, he wonders how it is possible that products like watermelon, which are paid to farmers at 25 cents in normal years, “cost two euros in the supermarket 30 kilometers away. No one explains it.”
He also gives as an example the peach case Cieza, who in the field is paying a little more than 80 cents, while in the big chains it exceeds three euros.
The president of COAG considers that the only alternative to prevent consumers from having to pay an exorbitant amount for the products that the farmer charges practically at cost price “is the Food Chain Law, which prohibits working at a loss.”
José Miguel Marín warns that if a cap were established on food prices, “chains would try to maintain their profit margins” at the expense of their suppliers. “There would be a pressure that we could not bear.”. In his opinion, if the income of the farmers were further reduced by the lack of profitability, “they would stop cultivating”, for which he believes that “we should think better about what we can do”.
For his part, the general director of the Association of Supermarkets of the Region (Asumur), Javier Ruano, assures that distribution chains make efforts to delay the passing on of costs to their products, “because there is great competition and consumers will buy elsewhere if they see prices rise.” The representative of the employer’s association proposes to lower the taxation of food and “postpone the application of the tax on plastic”, which will come into force next year.
Ruano maintains that “In Spain, the five large supermarket chains have 50% of the market”, while the rest is distributed among a large number of companies. “There is a lot of competition and that forces us to try to contain prices,” he assured, while “in the Nordic countries the concentration of the distribution market in the large chains reaches 80%. Spain is the country in which there is more competition between companies,” he says.
Attributes the increase in the prices of the linear to the intermediaries and the increase in the costs of electricity and gas consumed by cold stores and logistics, “which represent 40% of the cost”. He adds that packaging, plastics and other materials have also become more expensive, in addition to raw materials.
Nor are small merchants in favor of capping prices. The president of the Merchants Association of the Santa Florentina Market, José García, affirms that applying this measure in the food market would be “highly complicated”, given that the prices of all products (vegetables, fruits, meat and fish) “vary a lot on a daily basis, both upwards and downwards”. Fluctuation that “depends on many factors, such as the quantity and quality of the product, which changes depending on the season,” so “setting a price cap on what foods would lead some merchants to incur losses,” he specified. .