Farmers complain as discount grocers lower prices again

Some 40 different foods – including vegetable oil, peanuts, corn flakes, cherries, and chocolate bars – will now be even more affordable, according to the retailers.

Other chains generally follow when discount market leader Aldi slashes its prices – which it did 12 times last year.

But farmers have complained repeatedly that their wares are worth more. Ahead of Green Week, the world’s largest agricultural trade show beginning on Thursday in Berlin, industry leaders called for a re-examination of the grocery price war.

“The price mess, selling foodstuffs at a loss, must have an end,” head of the BVE national food industry association Jürgen Abraham said on Wednesday.

Meanwhile Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner told daily Saarbrücker Zeitung that lower prices were not just damaging to farmers, but would also “sooner or later reduce the quality and therefore affect consumers.”