By Andrew Watts, Food Chain editor
In the nine months since I became responsible for the Food Chain page in Farmers Weekly I have taken great pleasure in boring those around me with what are dull, yet peculiarly interesting changes in supermarket prices for food.
I can often be heard saying that, yet again, Asda is the cheapest supermarket, of the three surveyed, (Asda, Tesco and Sainsbury's) to shop at for our weekly basket of goods and that Sainsbury's is, nearly always, the dearest. (Although Sainsbury's efforts over the past year to realign its prices with those of Tesco have begun to see it compete ever stronger as so is no longer always the case.)
The more observant of you will also have noticed how supermarkets manipulate prices steadily upwards over a four to six week period only to drop the price the next week under a so-called "promotion".
But one item in particular really grates me; I wonder why we even bother to list it - bacon. Never, during my watch, has the price of eight rashes of unsmoked back bacon waved from its rock-steady price of £7.08 - it's exactly the same at all three supermarkets, week in, week out.
The prices of other products fluctuate depending on the season - mostly those of vegetables, beef, chicken and lamb. Even the rock-bottom price of milk has changed (albeit only after years of pressure and only then by a measly 1.5pence), as has that of Cheddar and Stilton, but never, ever, bacon.
Some might think this is a good thing, "ahh, firm prices enable producers to plan with confidence", i hear you say, but once you consider inflation, even at a headline rate of 2.5%, it's a fall in value in real terms.
This got me thinking. At the beginning of February this year I reported on the latest Total Income From Farming figures for UK agriculture (see News, 2 Feb). The news was generally positive, but I recalled the pig sector did less well.
"While those with cereals and potatoes faired favourably, milk, poultry and pig producers did less well with any productivity gains wiped out by higher input costs, notably feed, and falling or stagnating farm-gate prices," I wrote.
My article continued: "Stagnating pig prices and higher feed costs mean pig producers look set to endure a 16% fall in NFI compared to 2005/06."
Tough times indeed, but when is it ever any different.