Grassroots Action on Food and Farming (GAFF)
Campaigning against corporate control of agriculture

Why we exist

There are 155,000 farms left in the UK. It's predicted that over the next 5-10 years there will be around 8-15,000 people left farming the land. The majority of those leaving the land will be small and family farmers. The need to ensure a future for people living and working on the land has never been more critical. But under current economic conditions (and power relations), this is proving unsustainable. According to Deloitte and Touche, farm income from a 500acre farm has dropped from £80,000 in 1995/6 to £2,400 in 2001.

The global economy emphasises free trade and forces producers around the world into competition with each other. The emphasis is on profits for multinational corporations at the expense of local economies.

There is also a concentration of power in the processing and retailing of food, with the supermarkets wielding most of that power to the detriment of small farmers in particular. Supermarkets now control most of the retail sales in the UK, with the five major supermarkets controlling more than 70% of grocery sales. In turn they deal with less than 30 major food processors. In the UK dairy industry, for example, just 7 processors supply the 5 major supermarkets.

GAFF sees this imbalance in market power as being central to the current farming crisis. Faced with these pressures the need to build alliances is vital. Only by uniting and presenting a strong and clear voice of resistance to corporate agribusiness amongst environmental and anti-globalisation campaigners, farmers and grassroots activists can we hope to really tackle the root causes of the current crisis in food and farming and ensure sustainable food production.