Why do I try to avoid the duopololy?

Did you know $40 out of every $100 spent in Australia goes to the duopoly? It's crazy! 

Woolworths and Wesfarmers (Coles) not only own the two biggest supermarkets, they also own a tonne of bottle shops, petrol stations, electronics shops and office supply shops  - all masquerading under a myriad of names to give you the idea that there is competition and variety. Not so. Not to mention now they are branching into gambling and insurance. The 'Little Red Quote' campaign makes me want to put a little red hole in my head. But I digress. 

The point is, with such a huge dominant market share, these two industry giants have a huge hold over what we can buy and what choices we have. They have immense power to squeeze out, buy out, and undermine small businesses and can totally devastate the economic viability of producers. Every time we get a cheaper product off the shelf at the duopoly, it will probably be at the expense of the people who produced it. The effect on Australian farmers is two fold - they either remain independent and have to compete with unsustainably low prices of the retail giants, or they have to submit and supply to them. In this case they will no doubt get squeezed and squeezed for price until they are making next to no profit, laying off workers, razing unprofitable orchards, and producing lesser quality product for the sake of margins and efficiency. As a shopper at the duopololy, you will get wonderfully cheap prices, but you get less and less choice and quality. 

Within the supermarkets it is getting increasingly difficult to find products that are not home brand. Cleverly, they are often dressed up in different disguises to give you the sense of choice and diversity. Home brand used to mean the one with plain packaging on the bottom shelf at the cheapest price. Nowadays there is the discount range, the midrange, the made-to-look-fancy range and also the cunning made-to-look-independent organic range. Macro Wholefoods, with it's earthy logos and colour scheme, it's matt finish packaging, and it's focus on health is STILL OWNED BY THE DUOPOLY!!

I'm sick of it. And I want choice. 

The objective of avoiding the duopoly is to:

• support smaller producers and local producers

• support economic diversity in the market place 

• support family businesses

• support community

• support Australian farmers

• encourage diversity, options, choice and ensure these things for the future

• support growing food at home and sharing and swapping with friends and neighbours

The method:

Shop at famers markets - some favourites:

• Fairfield Farmers Market

• Coburg Farmers market 

• Abbotsford Convent

• Ceres Organic Market

• Preston Market

Shop at independent supermarkets and grocers - some favourites:

• Cozzella Bros - 111 Dundas St, Preston

• Psorakos - 2/8 Clarendon St  Thornbury

• Bivianos

• Other independent supermarket options: IGA, FoodWorks

• Berties Butcher

• Belmore Butcher 

• Richmond Oysters 

Shop at independent bottle shops- some favourites:

• Carwyn Cellars 

• Duncan's 

• The Cleanskin place on Station St, Fairfield that appears to have no name - Opposite Bivianos

Grow food at home

• Swap food with family and friends. 

Non-food

• Shop at local, independent nurseries and hardware shops. This is a shame because I used to love going to Bunnings. But I LOVE going to Bulleen Art and Garden for plants and they are big advocates for sustainability, permaculture, food security and urban ecoculture. 

Some dilemmas:

I will talk about dilemmas and contradictions in upcoming posts.  

Each goal has many dilemmas. A few that come up in this topic are:

• To get around to all these places often means I need to travel further, and to more places, and often need to use my car. This results a bigger carbon footprint than if i just walk up to the Woolies at the end of the street. 

• Shopping at smaller places or at butchers, fishmongers, grocers, and delicatessens rather than a whopping big supermarket means you seldom get everything in the one place. This means a lot of running around which can be plain exhausting and very time consuming. Both Hoof and I have chronic health issues and energy is a very very precious resource to us. This is why we aim to shop independently 80% of the time and allow ourselves 20% spend at the duopoly. The Woolies at the end of the road is awfully convenient when we are having bad stretches of health. 

• Supporting diversity does not go hand in hand with supporting Australian famers. I do not aim to exclusively shop local or Australian made. There are benefits of import including a wider range of goods. There can be environmental benefits too. Sometimes even if products are flown between countries it does not make their carbon footprint higher, so it may have greater negative environmental impact to buy it locally (which goes against the 'Think Global, Shop Local' maxim). More on that later. Also, only buying Australian products can undermine the economic systems of some of the poorest countries in the world which can result in depriving some of the poorest people in the world a viable income. 

Some reading

Taking on the supermarket giants

Grocery duopoly takes $40 of every $100 spent in Australia

Until next time. 

Pup.