Food in a Failed Market - A one day conference on the Corporate Control of the Food Chain.

On Wednesday, 30th April, Grassroots Action on Food and Farming (a daughter-project of Corporate Watch), in conjunction with the Small and Family Farmers Association, hosted a conference at the Reading International Solidarity Centre (RISC).

The event was designed to bring together those organisations and individuals who have identified the concentration of market power held by multinational corporations and retailers as a major barrier to achieving a sustainable food and farming system.

Agribusiness and retailer concentration is having a profound effect on the global food system. This concentration and consolidation of power right through from farm to plate harms both consumers and producers alike. Corporate control of the food system also damages the environment; jeopardises food security and food sovereignty in developing countries; destroys the livelihoods of small producers in the UK and developing countries and exploits farm workers.

We were lucky enough to have some of the leading academics, activists and farmers in the UK and worldwide (including Spain, Italy, Poland, Germany, Indonesia, Argentina and UNCTAD) focused on challenging corporate power in the food chain amongst the invited participants. Many of the groups represented had not previously been in contact or worked together.

The morning was an overview of the issues we are talking about: with presentations from Darrin Qualman from the Canadian NFU talking very clearly about what corporate monopolies means to farmers in Canada; Bill Vorley from the International Institute for Environment and Development giving an overview of UK supermarket power; Alistair Smith from Banana Link giving a pithy overview of how UK supermarkets have forced farmers and packers to accept less and less share of the profit margin and Terry Marsden, from the University of Cardiff talking about the supermarket construction of the term 'quality' and how this affects plantation growers in Brazil. The morning session was closed by Dr Mary Hendrickson, from the University of Missouri, who has done groundbreaking research into the corporate control of the food chain in the US, highlighting that companies often work together in 'clusters'.

After a fair trade, locally sourced and mainly organic lunch (we are so right on!), we broke into small focused groups to discuss what we can do about it - groups focused on research gaps and sharing existing information better; competition law; grassroots campaigning; consumer mobilisation and exposing corporate lobbying of international agreements.

The day was extremely useful in terms of networking and in coming up with a common theme: the urgent need to work on competition law both in the UK and EU, as it does not focus strongly enough on how suppliers and farmers are affected by monopolies - it must be made clear that supermarkets make their excessive profits not from their consumers, but by exploiting their suppliers. Other more 'direct' ways of getting our message across were also discussed.

This conference was organised as part of the Agribusiness Accountability Initiative (AAI), a North American initiative set up last November in Chicago, which aims to bring together organisations and individuals who are working on a range of responses to the problems outlined above.

A full conference report will be posted on Grassroots Action on Food and Farming website very soon!

Meanwhile, this list of things you can do about the corporate control of food appeared in a supplement on 'Food: The way we eat now' in last Saturday's Guardian (10th May):

20 ways to change the food system
Saturday May 10, 2003

1 Buy from your local independent shops, including grocers, butchers, bakers, newsagents, and pharmacies whenever you can. Smile at the shopkeeper.
2 Read the labels on your food. If you don't recognise the ingredients, put the products back on the shelf. As a useful rule of thumb, the more heavily processed a food, the poorer the nutrition is likely to be.
3 Buy fish and seafood certified with the blue Marine Stewardship Council logo, which means that it comes from a sustainable, well-managed fishery.
4 Put a chart of what's in season in this country on your fridge. Buy seasonal, locally produced food whenever you can. Stop routinely buying food which is out of season.
5 Join a box delivery scheme or a food co-op. Buy organic if you can. Shopping this way ensures more of the profits go back to the producers.
6 Look out for food miles and choose produce which clocks up the fewest.
7 Make the effort to scrutinise local planning applications, particularly if they involve changes in shops and supermarkets.
8 Say no to plastic bags. Where there is a choice, go for produce that uses the least packaging.
9 Write to the Independent Television Commission demanding tougher controls on food advertising on TV aimed at children.
10 Pressure your local council, school governors, hospital trusts and your employer to buy local, seasonal and organic food when awarding catering contracts for their canteens. Write to your MP demanding a change in the way public institutions buy their food.
11 Buy fairtrade products whenever you can.
12 Be brave and ask about what's going into your takeaway. Has the chicken been injected with water, is the chip oil fresh?
13 Cook a meal with a child.
14 Help your school implement a healthy eating policy. Refuse to allow private companies to market to your children through school.
15 Do your bit to break up the concentration of corporate power in the food industry. Write to your MEP asking them to push for the code of conduct on transnationals, which aims to make big business more accountable.
16 Write to your MP asking them to lobby for competition policy to be changed to take account of the public interest as it does in France.
17 Support organisations pressuring government and supermarkets for change, such as Oxfam, the Food Commission, Friends of the Earth, the Consumers' Association, Sustain. Send them money if you can.(Grassroots Action on Food and Farming/Corporate Watch too!)
18 Slow down. Wash your own salad, and improve the quality of your life.
19 Remember the power of the boycott.
20 Use the directory of good food published in part three, with the Guardian on Saturday May 24, to find out about hundreds of other ways to join a rebellion.