26 September, 2011
“Sustainable food” has, apparently, come of age thanks to the increasingly “sophisticated and nuanced approach” of consumers.
Or so Tensie Whelan, president of Rainforest Alliance, would have us believe.
Writing for the Huffington Post, Whelan says:
In one generation, millions of us have gone from obliviousness to daily awareness of our connection to the land and farms that feed us. CSA subscribers and farmers’ market regulars today not only understand how to share in the benefits of farming, but as severe weather events like the Texas drought or Hurricane Irene become more frequent and impact yields, they are learning to appreciate the need to share in the risks as well.
But the sustainable food movement today is by no means limited to CSAs and farmer’s markets — elective niches for those who can afford it. It is global and diverse, cutting across social and income strata, as sustainably grown foods penetrate the global food system, and increasingly show up in mainstream consumer brands and outlets at mainstream prices, from Kraft coffees to Chiquita bananas to Lipton teas to Mars chocolates.
Today, global food companies and brands once synonymous with unsustainable industrial agriculture are converting their supply chains (the thousands of farms worldwide that grow the produce they process into consumer products) to sustainable production. Signs of this transformation are everywhere.
Rot.
In our experience, the majority of consumers have not become more sophisticated and nuanced.
Oh, they’ll say they want sustainability, small-scale local food production, high animal welfare and all the other things that proclaim “I’m a consumer with a conscience” but, when push comes to shove, whatever’s cheapest gets their money.
Take our Pedigree Pork from Berkshire pigs. We work to organic principles, keep our animals outdoors, maintain high welfare standards and deliberately avoid intensive farming practices.However, our costs are much higher than if we had a large-scale, intensive pig farm with more efficient breeds, more efficient livestock and land management, and lower overheads.
Our last batch of pork cost £6.80/kg to produce. Most potential customers who contact us want to pay £4-£4.50/kg, which is the price of supermarket value ranges, ie pork from intensive farms in countries with lower wages, lower welfare standards and less environmental protection
Yes, consumers demand free-range pork. Yes, they demand local production. Yes, they demand high welfare. Yes, they demand more respect for the environment and wildlife. Yes, they demand sustainability.
But only if it’s cheap.If it’s not cheap, they don’t want it.
As an Italian work colleague of mine used to say, they “want the full bottle of wine and the drunk wife”.
Interestingly, when I read further into Whelan’s article, I found she acknowledged this point, albeit indirectly:
Study after study shows that given availability and similar price points, about a third of consumers prefer sustainably grown products to non-sustainable ones. (My emphasis.)
And:
In the UK, a new survey found that 58% of shoppers are more environmentally conscious today than just five years ago, and that 73% say that given affordable choices, they will choose products that are environmentally friendly. (Again, my emphasis.)
What I failed to find in her article was any attempt to reconcile the higher monetary production costs of sustainable food with consumer demand for price points the same as (or in our experience less than) with the lower monetary costs of intensively produced, less sustainable food.
Perhaps I’m being cynical, but I suspect the omission is down to one simple fact: it’s not possible to reconcile the two to any great degree.
We can have cheap food.
We can have more sustainable food.
We can fudge the edges somewhat by accepting a slight lessening of the efficiency of the largest industrial farms or by accepting a lessening of the sustainability of smaller, “sustainable” farms.
But I very much doubt we can have food that’s both sustainable and cheap at the same time, but that could just be me. After all, with my face firmly pressed in the muck, I’m unlikely to have the perspective of those with their heads in the clouds.
Related articles
- Paula Daniels: Our Pre-Occupied Food Industry: Can America Become a ‘Good Food’ Nation? (huffingtonpost.com)
- There really is only one kind of sustainability (blogs.stuzog.com)
- £93.70 to kill a pig (stoneheadcroft.com)
Meat used to be a bit of a treat; for special occasions etc. Now we eat it, sometimes more than once a day. Expectations have changed with the disguising of meat ie the fast food industry.
I’m hopeful about the happenings with the slow food movement, & the Crofters Federation highlighting the importance of indigenous food ( and breeds) but no, it isn’t gonna be cheap unless governments intervene.
Sorry – don’t mean to hi-jack, forgot to add: http://www.nourishscotland.org.uk/
Many people I’ve come across are still in the “I don’t care where it comes from as long as it’s on my plate” ideals. Don’t know whether to pity them for their stupidity or not. For some reason eggs are a sticking point though. While they’ll eat mass produced junk all day their happy to shell out $4 for our local eggs. We compromise by stretching our meat meals thin and only getting a few pounds of local ground beef a month and having our own chicken the rest of the time.
P.S.Article on mobile slaughter facilities in Mother Earth News. Don’t give up, it took a lot of hard work but as soon as it passed several farmers jumped on the opportunity to start up businesses and have been doing well at it. We country folk need all the avenues for income we can get.
We encounter some of those, too. However, most of the potential customers who come to us do so because we match their aspirations—small, local producer, rare breed pigs and poultry, free range, high welfare, no cages for hens, no farrowing crates for sows, organic principles, minimal use of chemicals, and so on. The problem is that their expectations of prices are completely out of touch with reality.
For example, we don’t use farrowing crates, not even for a few days either side of farrowing. As a result, more piglets die and the costs have to be shared across fewer animals come sale time, pushing prices higher. Despite that, most customers expect the price to be low. We could lower prices if more piglets survived but to do that would mean using crates.
Of course, if we used crates on the quiet, had more piglets survive and delivered lower prices as a result, customers would be very happy so long as they didn’t know any different. It’s no wonder conmen thrive.
Stoney I prefer to pay a little, extra for food that I wish to consume, while I notice that many shoppers are looking for the cheapest cuts of meat and the cheapest veges. I find no fault with that way of buying; it is simply their way of shopping.
I use a particular butcher shop, why you may ask, well it has better quality meat and may well be a bit more expensive that the big supermarket chains goods. But its products are very tasty indeed.
If you want a better product you pay for it. An example was an tool I wanted for my use; there was a cheap model at $45.00 or a better quality item at $62.00. I took the dearer item as I look for quality in whatever I use. It lasts longer and gives a better result and satisfaction to me.
The demand is there for “sustainable” food. The majority of people who contact us or stop at the gate want high quality, local produce. They definitely want free-range, high welfare, pedigree pork. They definitely want free-range eggs from a Scottish poultry breed. But they rarely want to pay the costs involved in producing food to those benchmarks. I wonder if they’d go to a Volkswagen dealer to demand a Golf for the price of a Tata Nano—and when the dealer says it can’t be done, scream at him “well, I’m the customer and you have to give me what I want!”
It’s definitely a dilemma. The reason factory farming arose to begin with is that the unit cost of production was cheaper. To some extent sustainable agriculture depends on a market segment willing to support it with their cash.
Exactly.
A degree of intensive production is needed to feed the Earth’s vast population and keep prices to a level where the poorest have some chance of a decent diet. Equally, overly intensive production brings with it major problems of its own. If people want to reduce those problems—and many say they do—then they have to put their money where their mouths are and spend a higher proportion of their income on less intensively produced food. But that would mean spending less on things like entertainment and trinkets, which seems to be unthinkable. A typical conversation with people like that involved them moaning about paying £160 for six months’ meat while proudly flaunting their new iPhone 4 that cost “only £420″ that they “just had to get even though the old one was just six months old”.
Anyway, that’s my cup of tea finished. The sun is shining and I have more to do outside.
This is a struggle for us as well, as in Germany sustainable = expensive, and I’m talking about the ‘go out and dig it up yourself’ farm some distance from here which we’d happily eat from, if we only needed to eat three times a week.
I guess I’m trying to point out that just because we’re stuck in the sstem doesn’t mean we don’t have a conscience.
We don’t have a smart phone (or any mobile) an Ipod or a car, and I’m writing this on a computer someone donated to our work. Our idea of luxury is getting my wife some fair trade chocolate as a treat once a month, or perhaps going out for a meal once or twice a year.
And yes, we’re here because we chose this way of life, and to be fair we were not thinking about sustainable farming when we made the decision.
We’re trying to make changes. Our best solution so far is to get an allotment which we’re woking to make productive from next year and which will hopefully be home to some chickens.
That said, I see the point abouteating too much meat, especially factory farmed red meat. I’ll have a look at our consumption levels there.
Oh I like that final paragraph…almost poetic!
Sadly, with ever-more pressure on family budgets, sustainable, ethical food isn’t likely to be a big part of most people’s diets. Particularly in the cities, when there’s a supermarket nearby offering cheaper goods, piled high and artificially lit to look better.When the recession started to bite, our own routine buying of expensive cuts of meat from the butcher’s shop were among the first thing to go. I know I’m buying cheap, factory farmed meat, and it’s full of goodness-knows-what, but until the economy recovers, I’m stuck with it.