Our food system isn’t working. Obesity is spreading globally
and diet-related illnesses are the biggest killers in most higher-income
countries. Harsh agricultural methods degrade our lands and both cause climate
change and suffer from its consequences. The UK food system uses roughly eight calories
of energy to produce every one calorie of energy from food. The UK food system
employs approximately 11% of the UK labour force, but most of them are in the
least paid jobs, with salaries of less than half the UK average. We all eat
food. But how much does each of us know about what our whole food system really
looks like and how it’s changing?
Advocates of the UK's food system will point to the sheer
volume of products available as evidence that choice exists and that consumers
can vote through spending. But most of these products are owned by the ten or
so behemoths (Pepsico, Kraft, Nestle etc.) that dominate the supermarket
shelves. The "choice" between different brands is what these
multinationals are heralding here—the choice between Doritos and Cheetos,
Robinsons and Rubicon—but real alternatives just don't exist.
"We're fed the story of empowered consumers shaping the
markets for the better, that through their purchasing power, product selection,
and preference for environmentally friendly goods they can shape the
world," says Stephen Devlin, an environmental economist at the NewEconomics Foundation (NEF) "The reality is it's just not that convenient,
especially when it comes to food. If anything they're probably the disempowered
half of the producer-consumer relationship."
The annual number of people given emergency parcels from
food banks last year was almost a million.
"People are struggling to afford food, but that's a
reason to change the system, not perpetuate it," says Devlin. "The
whole point of the system was to make food cheap and it did that pretty well
for quite a long time, with food prices falling pretty consistently in the
decades after the war. But if your objective is to eradicate hunger, constantly
trying to reduce the price of food won't work. We've basically proven that with
the food system we have."
The issue isn't really expensive food, the issue is poverty.
The obsession with rock-bottom prices has failed to eradicate hunger in the UK,
or the rest of the world. If anything it's contributing to the problem by
proliferating dangerous practices—the use of fertilizers, fossil fuels, battery
farming, wage poverty—and jeopardizing the environment. The modern agricultural
methods utilized are unprecedented in the natural history of the world; the
widespread use of fertilizers and pesticides, the sheer stress soil goes through
in churning out such phenomenal yields, and the huge carbon emissions built up
across the supply chain are all contributing to climate change. So much of what
we eat will travel an intercontinental web of laboratories, farms, factories,
and supermarkets before hitting our plates.
"Climate change and the food system are totally
intertwined. It's almost a unanimous opinion amongst commentators and analysts
that the way we produce food is hugely detrimental to the environment." explained
Devlin. “But that's not all it is. It's just failing on so many other levels as
well. Diet related illnesses are ruining us at the moment—obesity, heart
disease, diabetes, various cancers—so much of it is about how we eat and that's
determined by the food system. The health impact is completely
unsustainable."
Nor do the potential risks of genetically modified crops,
increased exposure to fraud and disease, and wages for producers suppressed by
a chain of middlemen get factored in too much. The "sophisticated"
system thrives on consumer ignorance, with many people having a warped
perception of how food is produced. Labels rarely offer more detail than the standard
traffic lights and percentages on the packets, let alone factory conditions and
wider environmental impact. More than one in three 16- to 23-year-olds didn't
know bacon came from pigs, according to a survey.
Resistance to change is strengthened by the highly
concentrated agricultural land ownership (0.25% of the population own all 17
million hectares.)
"We can categorically classify it as unsustainable. I'm
a big believer in the idea that the power lies with communities, at the
grassroots," says Devlin. "That's ultimately where most of the change
comes from in order for it to be sustainable and democratic. The problem is the
current system puts up a lot of boundaries to that kind of community action…”
A successful food system is one that delivers well being,
social justice and environmental stewardship yet within capitalism the
distribution of working hours – with most people either overworked or underemployed
– forces households to seek time-efficiencies, opting for fast food and ready
meals, forces many to compromise on the quality and healthfulness of what they
eat and so propping up companies that provide these products.
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