Red neck, red hat? Yesterday evening we had a great debate in "De Rode Hoed", a famous used to be church, now used as a debating center on the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam. Prof. Van der Ploeg talked about the terrible empires of food in the world, including us, basically trashing the farmers by controlling the full supply chain. And of course we objected. It is all very nice to say that we make enormous profits by exploiting farmers, but we still only make 4 cents on every Euro that we sell. Jan Douwe van der Ploeg's favorite model is, as he calls it, farmers agriculture. That is not a contradictio in termino, no, it just means that he talks about smaller farmers diversifying into businesses that make money. And that we applaud. For the rest, we are just a retailer making sure it is operating in a fair way with its suppliers and by buying and selling we make some money.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Red Hat
Red neck, red hat? Yesterday evening we had a great debate in "De Rode Hoed", a famous used to be church, now used as a debating center on the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam. Prof. Van der Ploeg talked about the terrible empires of food in the world, including us, basically trashing the farmers by controlling the full supply chain. And of course we objected. It is all very nice to say that we make enormous profits by exploiting farmers, but we still only make 4 cents on every Euro that we sell. Jan Douwe van der Ploeg's favorite model is, as he calls it, farmers agriculture. That is not a contradictio in termino, no, it just means that he talks about smaller farmers diversifying into businesses that make money. And that we applaud. For the rest, we are just a retailer making sure it is operating in a fair way with its suppliers and by buying and selling we make some money.
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http://www.foodlog.nl/cafe/bericht/rode_hoed_iii/
ReplyDeleteSo does the fact that Ahold is tryng to operate in a fair way with its suppliers means Ahold is looking at the sustainability consortium (http://www.sustainabilityconsortium.org) too?
ReplyDeleteFor the money making part I'm still surprised every time I walk into a Albert Heijn to see so many fridges without glass or other measure to maintain the cold within the fridge instead of in the shop. That's the low hanging fruit to get a higher margin, without loosing customers. The same goes for LED lights. In the hotel branch the extra costs of LED lights are earned back within a year, so that will hold true for parts of the Albert Heijn shops too.