my 2 p worth.
when you quote to a big well known company, you quite often get told what THEY want to pay for your product, you don't tell them.
So, for the farmer in this case to be able to supply the product at the price he needs to pay less in order to get that product.
think about it, what does a cabbage cost to buy? lets say 50p
lets say wage of £6 p/h that means that just to pay the picker, that picker has to pick 12 cabbages / hour.
Now that is probably easy, but the 50p is what you and I pay for the cabbage, not what a big company pay for it, they probably pay 30p (if that) for it, which now means the picker has to pick 20 cabbages / hour.
thats 20 cabbages / hour every hour, and that is only to pay themselves, the farmer needs to pay for diesel up keep of trucks, new cabbage seeds, the planting and looking after those cabbages etc.
Idealy 40 cabbages an hour minimum would be good.
Now i am not saying i agree with the farmer paying £1 p/h but it may be he has to.
Also some big companies fine you if you do not supply what you said you would when you said you would supply it by (its written in the contract)
always remeber there are 2 sides to every story, and nver believe everything you read in the paper / see on tv.
Papers print stuff from their point of view, and they manipulate things by omiting some things to make the story "worthy of reading"
After all, if the headline is
"man buys packet of crisps" it wouldn't sell many papers would it?
But if it read "man buys packet of crisps with gold soverign" you would be naturally curious as to why the soverign, where did it come from etc etc.
gossip / headlines sell papers, the truth doesn't