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Editorial: Connectedness and Community in the Food Chain | ||
| Number 44 | |||
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Following the FMD epidemic the UK government set up several Commissions of wise women and men to study and make recommendations upon different aspects of the FMD epidemic. The first of these Commissions, set up in August 2001, presented its report to the Government in January 2002. The report is entitled "Farming and Food: A Sustainable Future" and it comes from the Policy Commission on the Future of Farming and Food. The Chairman of the Commission is Sir Donald Curry and the report is briefly referred to as "The Curry Report". The report is short, as these things go. It is direct and unequivocal in its view that the present system of farming is unsustainable. Change is absolutely necessary. The Chairman summed up the situation in UK agriculture with the following succinct statement:
"2001 was a terrible year for farming, but the disaster of Foot and Mouth Disease was just the latest blow to hit the industry. Radical measures are needed to cut through this deeper malaise. Tinkering at the edges will not turn the industry around".
What needs changing?
Turning around a great industry is like turning around a large ship travelling
at full speed. It takes time, courage, vision and co-operation by the whole
crew. Simply going in the opposite direction is not an answer. Life cannot go
back to the past. Nevertheless the Curry Report says that the future is unsustainable
if we continue on the current course. This word "unsustainable" has
been in farming and environmental parlance for only about twenty years. We think
we know what it means. It is commonly taken to refer to the abuse, over-use
and depletion of natural resources and of the environment. However, the Curry
Report makes it clear that there are much wider and deeper aspects to the terrible
state of UK farming. They consider that continuing on the present course will
result in unsustainability in many areas of life as well as damage to the natural
resource base of farming. The present system is unsustainable economically in
the long run and will have increasing repercussions on health, safety and quality
of life.
Intensification
The diagnosis of what is wrong may broadly be stated as the single-minded pursuit
of intensification which is commonly thought to have contributed to the rapid
spread of FMD throughout the UK. The spread of BSE has also been attributed
to the system of intensification. Those concerned with other aspects of livestock
production such as animal welfare, human health and the organoleptic quality
of food also consider that new problems in those areas are due to continuous
intensification.
The Curry Report points out that intensification is a system rather than one specific piece of technology. That is why it will be very difficult to change. But the Curry Report is unyielding in its conclusion that change from the present system in the food chain is essential. We need to remember that the ten members of this Policy Commission come from all the components of the food chain: production, food processing, retailing and supermarkets, finance, environment and industries serving farming and the food chain. And they are top people from those areas. We cannot accuse them of having a narrow agenda or lacking experience.
Connectedness
What type of solution does the Curry Report advocate? What manner of change
do they want to see? In brief it is Connectedness. They are saying, in effect,
that the food chain is not a chain. It is a series of components which do not
adequately understand the rest of the chain, are focused upon their specific
interests and decision-making in each component is highly motivated by efficiency
within that sector.
So, are we all wrong to speak of a Food Chain? Is it a figment of our imagination and idealism? A Chain brings images of unity of action and purpose by many different links. Is this a wrong image? Well, partly Yes and partly No. The Food Chain as we know it IS efficient in economic terms as measured by the unit cost of food, in the short-term use of natural resources and in the interests of the owners of the components in the middle of the Food Chain - the processors, transporters, industries supplying all the supporting resources such as packaging and advertizing and of course the outlets, especially the supermarkets which are characterized by competition for consumer attention and against each other. Farmers are marginalized in the Food Chain, partly because their economic and technical performance is monitored by the buyers of farm produce who define the quality and quantity of farm products. The percentage of the price paid by the consumer which goes to the farmer has been declining for years and is now minimal. The only sustainable way for producers to survive is to increase the scale of their production units which, in turn, leads to more intensification. Small farmers leave and this has a major impact upon rural development, unemployment in rural areas and quality of life in the countryside.
Reconnection in the Food Chain
The thrust of the Curry Report is lack of Connectedness in the Food Chain. So
in essence they are stating that it does not function like a unified chain.
The messages being passed along the chain are solely of a commercial and transient
nature. Little other information or awareness is passed forward or back.
The central theme of the Curry Report is Reconnection:
Reconnecting farmers with their market and the rest of the food chain;
Reconnecting the food chain with a healthy and attractive countryside;
Reconnecting consumers with what they eat and where it has come from.
The BSE epidemic provides an example of the lack of Connectedness. It is evident that the decision to feed bovine Meat and Bone Meal (MBM) to bovines was a disconnected decision. That decision, as we now know, turned BSE into an epidemic and thus provided a platform for it to pass into the human population as variant Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease (vCJD). That decision was made by animal scientists working closely with the processing and feed industries but in isolation from the commonly held values of consumers and the public community. This is the type of Disconnectedness which must be dismantled. Dialogue is essential.
Meaningful Connectedness means Community of Life
The need for Connectedness may well be different in industries where the products
flowing on to the market at the end of the Chain are optional extras in life.
Food is a basic need. Everyone has to eat. In some senses food may be viewed
as a public good. Also many natural resources used to produce food are part
of the common heritage of society.
The lack of Connectedness diagnosed by the Curry Report reflects the need for recognition of Community in the Food Chain. This does not imply replacing sound business practice with some other social system. It implies recognition that each link in the food chain and the whole of society gain or lose together. Events like FMD and BSE negatively affect all sectors in the food chain. The costs of something going wrong, like FMD or BSE, can quickly offset years of economic benefits gained by inappropriate actions such as feeding bovine MBM to bovines. There is need to co-operate in better identification of food resources and products in the food chain. Despite the efficiency of the food chain in reducing the unit costs of food, people want to know the source and nature of what they eat. Anonymity is not acceptable. Business organizations in the food chain also should recognizes that they are only a part of a civil society whose values include successful economics but are not limited to those values. Mechanisms need to be found by which decision-makers in the food chain are able to listen to thoughtful and representative voices in the community and then to incorporate these values into the decision-making practices and processes of the food chain.
Some efforts are now being made to bring better communication along the food chain. For example, the epidemics of BSE and FMD have caused governments and the EU to place great emphasis upon traceability of animals and animal food products. This has been spear-headed by the veterinary health services who are concerned about animal and animal product movements. But unless the concept of Community is also brought into the food chain, there is a strong likelihood that traceability could become another weapon used against the farmer whose animals were found to be in some measure unacceptable further down the food chain. It is not difficult to understand why many UK farmers have reacted negatively to recent intimations that the government may require every farmer to be licensed. Licences mean more rules and regulations and more costs to all farmers as well as the benefits of identifying poor quality farmers.
Building Community in a Capitalist Society
Building Community is always a difficult task in human society. Whether it be
in a family, business, government, church, research institute or nation, Community
means a spirit of unity but not uniformity. There is a constant danger of uniformity
when supervision comes from outside. History shows the best stimulus for building
Community is shared and common danger. In Community the different contributions
of individuals and institutions in society are harnessed together in an agreed
goal. It may be that our prosperous society has to experience even more tragic
problems from the Food Chain before efforts are made to build Connectedness
in the form of Community. It is particularly difficult to build Community in
society dominated by market economy capitalism. But there are signs that market
economy capitalism itself is not a sustainable system in the Food Chain without
some modifications which build more Community.
The Challenge for Animal Scientists
The challenge of the Curry Report is now open for debate and for action. How
do we respond? We as animal scientists are also part of the Food Chain. Like
each component we need to ask ourselves a basic question:
How can animal scientists contribute to a more connected food chain and a more sustainable community of life?
John Hodges
Editor
Note: The Report "Farming and Food: A Sustainable Future" by the UK Policy Commission on the Future of Farming and Agriculture is available from the Cabinet Office, Room LG12, Admiralty Arch, The Mall, London SW1A 2WH, UK or from the website http://www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/farming.
Next: 53rd EAAP Annual Meeting, Cairo, 2002