Organic revisited

You know it’s a sad day when your child looks at you and asks “Daddy, is this organic?” Or so Dylan Moran would have us believe. Is “ethical food” really the apotheosis of all shopping wisdom? Do Fairtrade and organic products really replace the ballot box as the most powerful mechanism for voting with one’s shopping trolley? And can we really be sure that using Fairtrade sugar in our Fairtrade coffee benefits anyone in the developing world?

The idea behind “ethical” food (mainly organic, Fairtrade and local produce) is certainly attractive: want to help poor wine producers? Buy “Wildly Wicked White” – if that’s not too extravagant for formal swaps – to bash those French vineyards. It may taste of pomace, but surely that’s not the point. You’re more of an anti-corporate-evil-capitalist-pig inclination?

Buy Fairtrade bananas instead of Chiquita. Or get them from the local market and cast aside all doubts that they may not be grown in the UK. At least that helps third world producers. Right?

The ethical food lobby argues that by buying ‘ethical’ food, people are expressing their views every time they shop and thereby influencing suppliers’ behaviour. What better way to send one’s regards to companies and governments who refuse to accept the necessity of change? Sadly, it’s not that simple. There are good reasons to doubt the validity of many claims made by the ethical lobby. Changing the world may require the dull processes of politics after all.

What would happen if organic food (grown without using pesticides etc.) became properly mainstream, exceeding the £300m or so mark sold in the UK annually? Besides losing all attractiveness to the ADC-regular, port-sipping elite in this place – and more troublingly for the world at large – growing only organic food would lead to

deforestation on a massive scale: crop yields have increased threefold since the 1950s thanks to the “green revolution” – introducing more pesticides – while the total area of farmland has only increased by 10%. You can imagine where the Amazon rainforest will end up thanks to organic farming: in our living rooms, as cheap furniture.

Naturally, post-modern types have long left behind the ADC and their brown paper bags full of Fairtrade Brentford FC footballs from Pakistan in favour of local produce. Surely this will reduce the amount of “food miles”, and, by extension, carbon emissions. Unfortunately, that’s far from clear: More people driving to markets which are further away than the local supermarket will in fact result in more emissions. Add to that the fact that growing flowers in Kenya and flying them across the world is 80% less energy-intensive than growing them in Dutch greenhouses and little remains of the ever-so-persuasive arguments in favour of local produce.

How can we credibly assert to be encouraging free trade when the Fairtrade system – by paying producers more money than their products worth – is a subsidy in disguise? Paying a premium for Fairtrade products discourages producers to explore alternative crops, keeping them in the poverty trap. Worse, it encourages new producers to enter the market, resulting in a further fall of prices. Non-Fairtrade producers will be hit hardest because they then only receive the (even lower) market price. Having sacrificed life and limb in a Fairtrade coffee tasting, one can see the practical consequences: the artificial subsidies provide no incentive to improve quality, much to the palate’s regret.

Presumably, the fact that the “buy local” lobby’s aims conflict with those of the Fairtrade bunch by discouraging first-world consumers from buying third-world products matters little to them. After all, the new local food movement has really just put the brown paper bag over the old protectionist Gollum. Helping poor-country producers through Fairtrade initiatives and simultaneously

discouraging buying distant produce is simply not possible. But, maybe it just depends on perspective and Britain really is a developing country worthy of Fairtrade subsidies.

There is no doubt that the intentions of the ethical food movement – protecting the environment, shifting the economic balance in favour of poor producers and helping development – are incredibly laudable. What’s problematic is the means by which they are pursued. So what can we do? Concentrating on things that are less fun than shopping but more effective would be a good start: reinvigorating world trade negotiations, introducing a carbon tax and abolishing the EU common agricultural policy should be the most important issues for governments to tackle. A carbon tax will add the cost of carbon emissions to prices and provide the best indicator whether it is better for the environment (rather than farmer’s pockets) to buy local produce or Valentine’s roses from Kenya.

The popularity of the ethical food movement

is evidence of a desire for change, and it is only so long that politicians can resist before hijacking a popular idea. At the end of the day, what will Tony, Dave and Gordon care more about: what you eat or for whom you vote?

Alex Graetsch


Posted on Sunday 4 March 2007