Birmingham Friends of the Earth Newsletter February 2002/March 2002
Food and Farming Training Day
On December 8th, I attended FOE's Real Food training day. As you know, our group
are campaigning on local food issues at the moment, and the training day was
to give us ideas and background for successful campaigns.
Robin Maynard of the Ecologist started off by talking about the state of British
farming: there are only 180, 000 British farmers left, and Tony Blair wants that
cut to 40,000. Agriculture is being over-run by large-scale farmers trying to
compete on the global market, and small and family farms are suffering.
Then Peter Riley, FOE food campaigner, ran through why FOE regards campaigning
on local food as a central issue: it cuts down 'food miles' and puts control of
the food supply in the hands of consumers and producers. Further, it creates
jobs and keeps money in the local economy. FOE regard localisation as a crucial
to encouraging diversity and moving away from the large-scale monoculture 'green
desert'.
Finally, Sandra Bell discussed the issue of 'food poverty': 5,000 households per
constituency on average are unable to buy healthy, fresh food. Localising the
food supply through food schemes can solve this problem, and FOE wants to get
food poverty onto the political agenda this year.
For me, the most interesting part of the meeting was the open discussion with
four UK farmers who had been invited to tell us about their experience and the
particular problems they faced. All were in debt - sometimes for staggering amounts
of money - and were unanimous that the source of their problems was that their
prices are dictated by the supermarket cartel. So long as consumers remain addicted
to the misleading 'value and convenience' of supermarkets, we will stay in a situation
where the price of milk on the wholesale market is often less than production
costs.
Many farmers feel abandoned, and think that the National Farmers Union is in
thrall to Government, agribusiness and the large farmers. All in all, it was
a depressing insight into a troubled profession. However, although their sympathy
for us as a largely urban environmentalist group was mixed - they warned that
persuading farmers to trust us, as whale hugging meddlers, would be a major obstacle
- they were all clear that the Friends of the Earth food message would win us
friends among farmers.
The afternoon was given over to exploring tactics. We focused first on approaching
farmers, and the best ways to involve them: emphasising the advantages of direct
links with consumers, making common cause against supermarkets, even just offering
solidarity. Involving farmers is crucial to setting up working local food schemes,
whether for education or supply.
The second workshop was introduced by Vincent Stops, a member of the Socialist
Environmental Resource Association, SERA, and was about getting political constituencies
behind local food issues. Talking to local Labour parties, and pressurising councillors
and MPs, is an excellent way to get our food policies onto the agenda. As well
as garnering support for national policy changes - the 'food poverty' bill, organic
targets, support for localisation and so on - we also discussed possible council
initiatives: local policies, for local people. All in all, the day was a great
starter set for food campaigns: expect to see more of them in these pages!
If anyone is interested in helping with the local food campaign, please contact
myself or Karen. I'm particularly interested in hearing from people with connections
to their local political parties.
Jeremy Beacock
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