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Oh my, what great looking packaging. A beautiful cat licking his lips and succulent prime cuts of meat… so yum.
Are you wondering it that succulent meat is a true representation of the meat in Farmers Market cat food?
You’ll find Farmers Market in the supermarkets. I know Woolworths and some IGAs stock it, and I think some Coles do too.
Apparently it’s “Real Food From Nature” according to the Farmers Market website. I don’t think that statement comes with any real meaning or assurances, but anyway, wouldn’t the alternative be “Unnatural Fake Food”?
Let’s take a look… is Farmers Market cat food really as good as it seems?
Farmers Market cat food review
What the marketing says
Cute cat and succulent meat aside, we find Farmers Market cat food only has a few big statements on the bag – “high protein kibble”, “freeze-dried lamb”, and “Real Chicken and Vegetables with Freeze Dried Lamb”.
By “Real Chicken” they mean they’re not using what the industry refers to as “Meal” which is a pre-cooked powdered form of meat.
That’s about it on the front of the bag.
For this review we’ll look at the chicken formula, but all recipes are fairly same same but different.
What the ingredients really say
What gets my goat is when pet food companies do their best to hide the ingredients in some elusive corner of their website. With Farmers Market it seems they haven’t bothered to include them at all, and to really get my goat even the packaging photos are taken at funny angles which don’t show the ingredients:
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Instead I had to type them in manually with my fingers from an image I found on the Woolworth’s website. I hate extra work, don’t you?
Farmer’s Market Cat Food Ingredients: Chicken Meat, Poultry Meal, Peas, Lentils, Vegetable Meal, Vegetable Starch, Beef and/or Lamb Meals, Animal Tallow, Turkey Meal, Animal Digests, Beet Pulp, Freeze Dried Lamb, Sweet Potato, Pea Protein, Fish Oil, Salt, Potassium Chloride, Choline Chloride, Methionine, Taurine, Chicory Root, Inulin, Vitamins and Minerals, Natural Antioxidants.
The first thing you see on the ingredients list is chicken, which immediately gives you the impression you’re feeding your carnivorous cat a meaty kibble.
BUT!
It’s possible the first 6 or 7 are in relatively equal amounts, and 4 of those aren’t meat.
Rearranged, the ingredients could possibly start with peas, lentils, vegetable meal, and vegetable starch. It’s possible the “main ingredients” are around 60% vegetables to 40% meat, give or take, which paints a totally different picture.
Cats eat to satiate, so if necessary will chomp through stuff they don’t really want as long as there’s some animal ingredients in it.
It’s not surprising Farmers Market cat food touts “high protein kibble” on the front of the bag, as peas and lentils contain a lot of protein. You can argue protein is better than carbs from grains, but our cats don’t metabolise protein from vegetables like they do with meat proteins.
What cats eat vegetables?
Try filling your cat’s bowl with some fresh chicken, a few peas, and a couple of lentils. What will he eat, and what will he totally ignore as if you’ve stuck pebbles in his bowl?
Anyway, what vegetables? Why the ambiguity? Why split “vegetable meal” and “vegetable starch” into two ingredients rather than just “vegetables”?
To answer those questions, “vegetables” as a single ingredient would probably have to be listed first. Would you buy a cat food with “Chicken….” as the first ingredient or “Vegetables…”?
Anyway, enough about vegetables. Nobody likes talking about vegetables.
Just keep this in mind – usually when a cat food has vague ingredients it means they don’t want to be transparent with you, or they don’t want you to know.
Moving on…
I said about vague ingredients a few paragraphs ago, but there are more – animal tallow, animal digest, vitamins & minerals, and natural antioxidants.
Ironically the first two likely come from meat rendering which is the same process as creating meat meal (the meat powder I mentioned earlier). That would mean they’ve made a big deal about using “real” meat, yet use other products from meat rendering in the cat food 🤷
Most good brands of cat food list vitamins and minerals individually in detail. When we see it listed in such a vague way we can assume what’s called a vitamin “pack” or “premix”, almost always sourced from overseas, usually from the cheapest supplier.
Natural antioxidants?
What exactly are they? How are they “natural”? And why aren’t they telling us what they are?
A summary of Farmers Market cat food – should you feed it to your cat?
My guess if you’ve jumped ship already. I wouldn’t want to read a review that waffles on so much about vegetables.
I know I’ve been fairly negative about Farmers Market cat food. Sadly many Australian cats are fed worse, so if this is what you’ve been feeding your cat then you can take that as a positive.
At least it’s not packed full of cereal grains.
I’m not a fan of the manufacturer behind Farmers Market. They make many “Australian” brands and home brands, and my email inbox tends to be full of reports from pet owners whose pets have been sick shortly after eating their pet food brands. Also, it seems everyone who complains to the company gets a response saying something along the lines of “We are sorry to hear….” and “…this is the first issue we’ve heard…”.
I don’t feed my cat any cat foods from that manufacturer, and don’t like to recommend them either. I’m sure you wouldn’t either when you’ve heard about so many sick Australian pets.
Nevertheless, these cat food reviews are rated mostly on ingredients and composition, and there are worse cat food brands than this. So I’ll give Farmers Market cat food a very generous 6, but check out the better rated cat foods below:
Related: Best rated cat foods in Australia.
The seal on these bags allows ants to get in, its basically like velcro so I doubt it even seals to keep the product fresh. My cat likes it but eats the freeze dried bits and leaves the rest 🙂
It seems everyone always promotes the most expensive brands. I bought this today for my Birman and he woofed it down.
Wow what a surprise this website again trashes a cheap supermarket brand but recommends the hundred dollar plus vet foods honestly it’s old just come out and say it you cop a check from the rich vet food companies to promote their crap and you’ll do anything you can to drive customers away from supermarkets
Just as with human food you get what you pay for…the better quality dog food is more expensive.
I’m constantly surprised that this is just not obvious to everyone!
Fillers and poorer quality ingredients lead to guess what? Cheaper products.
I’m also constantly surprised how we can accept doctors telling humans that over processed diets and products, that are usually cheaper, are bad for our health but we can’t accept this fact about pets.
There are ways to give your pets healthy whole foods on a budget. There is multiple advice on how to this on this website and through some very simple old fashioned research.
On the contrary, my reviews of vet endorsed pet foods manufactured by Mars and Colgate-Palmolive are rather negative based on the amount of non-carnivore ingredients for carnivorous animals.
My cats absolutely love this. Just needs to be in bigger bags !!
Well…. the proof is in the eating. My cat LOVES it. I bought this after Cat went off other ‘natural’ dried cat food brands. Farmer’s Market is practically inhaled by Cat so it’s a winner for us.
Yes all my cats just love this brand of Kibble.even my most fussiest of cats, so a plus for me
My two Burmese cats love this. One will eat anything, whilst the other is picky and has a sensitive gut. She hasn’t thrown up since I switched to this brand. She was on vet prescribed cat food (dry and wet) but she kept throwing up the wet food, and the dry kibbles are too big. I also supplement with cooked chicken tenderloin and organic beef mince.
100% the best indepth reviews on all nz and Australian cat food i have ever seen. You deserve to be paid for this work.
Thank you so much for the positive feedback Abby! If the reviews help benefit the health of our dogs and cats then that’s payment enough!!
I have a cat rescue and Farmer’s Market cat kibble is the only feed all my cats absolutely love. They just love it. So it’s a winner for me. Still I like to give my cats fresh chicken etc from the Butchers a also
I foolishly bought a bag of this stuff from my local supermarket, despite having studied your list of the best dry cat foods, because in a moment of weakness convenience won out over the delayed gratification of buying things online. I read this review after getting it home but before opening it, and, chagrined, I thought at least it’s better than the Hill’s junk food my cat is unfortunately addicted to. (For the record, I adopted her about 2 months ago, and only recently realised just how unsciency the Hill’s food is.)
Upon opening the bag, the first smell that hit me was very much “vegetables”, specifically peas. Sigh.
I have learned my lesson… I will look on this as an educational experience, and just one extra step to transitioning my cat to a healthy diet.
Thank you so much for all the work you do on this site, especially transcribing ingredients manually!
What a weird review. I can’t tell if it’s positive or negative.
My cat loves it the most! Put the Farmers Market side by side with other wellknown brands, my cat goes straight to it, can’t be turned away, he won’t touch the others when this is there. Given other brands first he would abandon those and come to this one as soon as you put it there!
My cats are exactly the same. They love Farmer’s Market more than any other kibble I’ve ever given them
“Made in Australia from at least 0% Australian ingredients.”
Copied and pasted from ingredient list on Woolies advertisement today. Still qualifies as Australian made.
Well that made me laugh!
My cat loves this dry food. It’s really one of the best around at a budget price. She was a stray that adopted me.
She also has fresh chicken pieces wet food and this dry kibble
My 2 cats adopted me, but are unbelievably fussy, they love love the small Tuna cans, just discovered this brand at the end of an unsuccessful mission. Will head back to the local Pak n save tomorrow!
Thank you so much for your reviews. I always come here first before buying any product for my dog or cats.
Thank you – positive feedback is always appreciated!