The cost of a single normal size cucumber is really starting to annoy me. I refuse to buy a cucumber for 89p, but 89p is the price everywhere. What is the point of having supermarket chains that sell the same goods at the same price? That is not competition.
Our Aldi price is €0.55 = 46p this week.
I’m jealous
The whole price range is 24p - 83p this week.
It’s an illusion - three companies are basically major shareholders of all large companies! Blackrock, Vanguard, and State Street:
Three companies or is it one man? 
The growing influence of these companies world-wide, in Europe, and also in Germany, is undisputed and fairly well-documented by that frequently quoted Harvard Business Manager study and others. Price-fixing and abusing that power in many ways is expected. One thing is striking, though. On a micro-level basis there still is competition as that above-mentioned price range for cucumber (and other foods) shows. Consumers are aware of the differences and take advantage of them.
However, when it comes to the distribution and abundance of power one wonders where it is really concentrated if one takes into account that those very equity companies plus banks like JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and the Bank of America have left the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative in preemptive obedience after Republicans had called the initiative woke capital, and did so in good time prior to Trump’s inauguration? The consequences of this move are likely to be more dramatic for consumers than a real or perceived lack of retail competition.
Azz if these big organisations were interested in the price of cucumbers, Dachs would not be able to buy this refreshing gourd for half the price it is in the UK.
These are UK supermarkets fixing prices across all the big players at a micro level. These days they probably have an AI package.
The other side of the coin is Brexit. We no longer seem to be able to source the low prices of EU produce. How much of the 89p is now a tariff?
So yes the big players are the big players, but the price of cucumbers is down to a) supply chain fluctuations and b) some sort of price fixing cartel developing as a result of tech developments and it’s anti-competitive at a micro level.
I like my cucumbers pickle in sweet vinegar with lots of dill added.
They say fermented foods are good, but they don’t agree with me. Definitely tasty in a sandwich though. It’s probably a cheaper way to eat cucumbers these days.
Try to keep as cool as a …
No doubt, Annie, this is a very unfortunate situation that you’re faced with. As upsetting as this is for you (“No cucumber salad today”, if I may plagiarise the Herman’s Hermits 
) it would be interesting to know if other produce was affected by some kind of price fixing and if the same phenomenon can be seen in other regions and sectors of the economy, too? In other words, how generalisable is the key assertion that we’re seeing the end of competition at a micro level as a result of a massive intervention by the big players and what would be the implications of that? Is it really conceivable that one of the key features and main pillars of our economic system might get lost?
As you seem to imply, the cucumber case is likely to have been arranged at the meso level by the supermarket chains themselves rather than by the big players. A case in point would be cartel-like price agreements by petrol stations as we see them over here quite often.
