The Sainsbury’s-Asda merger is a perfect illustration of the accelerating race to the bottom in the grocery retail sector. It was a bombshell, and unless the rules – on competition, planning, environment and worker and consumer protection – are greatly enhanced and effectively applied, a significant part of society is likely to be badly hurt by this ‘mega merger’.

Combined with Liam Fox’s new UK trade deals, it could mean our shelves being flooded with obesity-fuelling Twinkies and more farmers going bust after Brexit. To avoid such an outcome, the government must decide whether it actually wants to nurture affordable and high quality food, good jobs and healthier waistlines.

To recap: Sainsbury’s is likely to become Britain’s biggest supermarket after agreeing a deal with Asda’s owner, Walmart, to buy it out. Walmart will then own 42% of the new mammoth, which will then control around a third of the UK grocery market share. Tesco has around 27%. The two companies involved have ‘suggested’ that food prices could fall by up to 10% on some popular items if the deal is approved, and they have also pledged not to close stores or lay off store staff. That sits in the realm of the unbelievable. Somebody, somewhere will always have to pay.

The way in which the news of this buy out was greeted was notable. In an urgent Parliamentary debate, Business Minister Andrew Griffiths more or less gave it the government’s blessing, saying that many high street names have been lost in recent years and that it is just “two businesses trying to get ahead of the curve and future-proof themselves in a very challenging market”. In response to one MP’s concerns about loss of stores in his constituency, the minister responded by saying that “the honourable member is spoiled for choice”. Spoilt! At least some MPs are concerned and on the case.

Other commentators felt this was all but inevitable in the face of new competition from Aldi and Lidl, as well as Amazon’s entry into grocery retail with its buy out of Wholefoods (and Amazon itself was seen recently circling around Waitrose). Yet there was also a resigned sigh about our pitiable competition law – the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority won’t have the teeth to stop such a blatant breach of what should be the cornerstone of our competition regulations. The Tesco-Booker buy out already proved that.

But maybe planning regulations can keep retail diversity in the high street, or make sure the supermarkets contribute to communities? Forget it.

The catastrophic impact which this deal could have on whole swathes of society is being ignored, including 330,000 workers and thousands of farmers facing even fewer powerful buyers and more squeezed prices. Then there are the millions of customers who will have less choice over what and where to buy, and who will walk along ever more ghostly high streets.

The supermarkets claim that they can slash prices without cutting jobs. Let’s be clear: that cut will have to come from somewhere, namely the farmers and growers and others in the supermarket supply chain. Supplier care should be top of mind. We need to have a diverse supplier network – from UK food producers to global fashion suppliers – paid enough to be able to pay workers well and to grow the raw materials safely and sustainably, with high standards of safety and human and animal welfare.

The New Economics Foundation have done some preliminary, and probably highly conservative, calculations of supply chain jobs losses. They found that a 5% cut in the price paid to these suppliers could lead to a loss of more than1,200 jobs in the UK, while a 10% cut could lead to a loss of up to 2,500 jobs. The knock-on costs in the communities where these suppliers buy their services or send their children to school are as yet unknown. The report out today from the UK’s labour enforcement agencies on worker abuse and slavery shows that we are already going backwards in terms of worker protection. Supermarket supply chains are one of the problems.

The Sainsbury’s-Asda merger just reinforces the urgent need to address the acute lack of fairness in grocery supply chains. Yes, we have an adjudicator overseeing the top grocery retailers to check they don’t breach the Groceries Code of Practice. It’s good, but it covers only direct suppliers, not those – such as farmers – who supply food via intermediaries. It was very disappointing that this was not rectified by the government in 2018, which they could easily have done, to protect farmers against unfair trading practices and the uncertainties associated with Brexit. Even so, the Groceries Code of Practice does not tackle prices and costs transparency. Less and less of the value we consumers pay in the shops is reaching those who need it. That needs to change.

Many food suppliers are already struggling to make a profit, and are facing uncertainties ahead with Brexit. New international trade deals that may undercut their costs and compromise standards. Do we really want more meat scandals, slavery, miserable animals and environmental harm in our food system?

Sainsbury’s and Asda say the merger will “create significant opportunities for suppliers to develop differentiated product ranges, become more streamlined and to grow their businesses as the combined business grows.” Some suggest the higher standards of one company could bring the other company up. I’m not convinced. I don’t have space here to detail the many systemic ways in which both companies fail to deliver on environmental, social and animal welfare promises. But two things need to happen:

1. Alternatives are desperately needed and should be actively nurtured. This means ensuring that new food enterprises can access capital, business support and advice, and that local planning and investment decisions favour diverse retail developments and support new community models like Community Supported Agriculture, food co-ops and Better Food Traders. It also means helping farmers to be better at marketing and finding new markets, including being able to access the overly complex public procurement systems for schools and hospitals, care homes and the armed forces. As the National Farmers Union (NFU) has suggested, the public purse can and should support local and sustainable suppliers.
2. Competition rules must be strengthened, and assessments should be based on the public interest not just on choice and price. Any merger should be judged against more than just short-term consumer interest, and should consider a wider range of issues including supplier welfare, workers and impact on local retail. The Competition and Markets Authority must do more than ask for a few stores not to be sold off and assess a wider breadth of impacts, but right now it is not able to do so. We need more analysis from BEIS and Defra, as well as parliamentary inquiries and action. Finally, we need to establish a regulator to complement the Groceries Code Adjudicator and support fair trading practices along the whole of groceries supply chains.

Without the twin approaches of nurturing diversity and curbing dominance, the race to the bottom will leave most of us poorer.

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“We need to eat more sugar,” said no dietician ever. So it may come as a surprise to learn that UK sugar beet refining was a nationalised industry until recently. State intervention in sugar supply has a long history. The Government encouraged sugar beet production as early as the trade blockades of the Napoleonic wars in the 19th century, then in the 1930s it nationalised all companies processing sugar. Sugar was that important. We could not get enough of the white stuff, so we decided to own it.

But setting aside our love of cakes and biscuits, the white stuff is not very critical for our survival. And it’s a product heavy with its history of colonial greed and slavery. Sugar, or ‘White Gold’, as British colonists called it, was the engine of the slave trade that brought millions of Africans to the Americas from the 16th-century onwards. As profit from the sugar trade was huge, European colonies quickly started to develop sugar cane plantations based on the readily available cheap slave labour. It’s a dark past and a good reason to choose fair trade sugar now, so that producers and workers are guaranteed better return for their efforts.

We de-nationalised UK beet production and refining in the 1970s, and now the sector is ultra-concentrated. It is dominated by just two sugar processing companies: Tate and Lyle (now part of American Sugar Refining) and British Sugar (now part of Associated British Foods).

These companies have vastly different attitudes to Brexit, and this is related entirely to their sugar sourcing. As Tate and Lyle imports its raw materials (sugar from cane form the global south) it favours liberalisation and a pivot away from the interference of Europe. When Tate and Lyle sponsored the Conservative Party conference in 2017, one could suspect they were subtly sweetening the Brexit pill and protecting their interests in future US-UK trade deals ahead. British Sugar, on the other hand, refines sugar mostly using beet from around 3,500 UK producers and EU producers to make its sugar. So it wants those farmers supported.

Making visits to the sugar processing factories seems to be a staple for Government ministers. The farmers and jobs associated with UK sugar (around 11,000) are not vast, so why is it so politically important? Locally it is a crucial employer, and as more sugar is made into bio-ethanol to put in cars, maybe that’s where the focus should be.

But calls to renationalise the sugar industry are misguided. Instead, putting less of it in our mouths should be the goal. UK policy now does, after much persuasion by Sustain and others, aim to reduce sugar consumption through a combination of measures such as education, local action, public sector food standards, product reformulation, junk food marketing restrictions and a sugary drinks tax. Though not enough, these will help tackle the huge social, health and economic costs of obesity, tooth decay, diabetes and other diseases related to high consumption of sugar and sugary foods.

And we are not alone. 26 countries have so far introduced sugary drinks taxes of some sort, the latest being the Philippines. The World Health Organisation is now advocating such approaches globally. The use of sugar taxes is not without its problems – it will take much more than taxes to counter huge marketing budgets and decades of sugary food culture. The threat of trade disputes is also very real as the US – with notoriously sugary foods and drinks, giant portion sizes, and aggressive resistance to marketing restrictions – wants to access our market.

Nevertheless, the huge social and economic harm caused by too much sugar in our diets is not going away and will thrust its ugly, painful way into governments’ agendas. That means that as well as diversifying here, overseas countries highly dependent on sugar – with old colonial ties to the UK – should be supported in diversifying where they can. Continued access to least developed countries and Afro Caribbean Pacific (ACP) countries is needed in the short term, however, given the vital revenues this crop provides.

As Defra have just announced a new consultation on future farm policy, it is also worth considering the environmental and wildlife impacts of sugar production. Sugar cane plantations are hugely thirsty, are responsible for significant habitat destruction and harm the soil. Domestic beet production is very localised, but where grown it is a mixed blessing. The upside includes providing a habitat for some key wildlife species – providing an important nesting habitat for lapwing and stone curlews and feeding site for pink footed goose, for example. Ensuring these are protected in any transition will be vital, and there could even be a marketing link (Lapwing-friendly sugar?). The downside includes significant use of chemicals, including bee harming neonicotinoid insecticides, as a seed dressing in the whole crop. New farm policy should deliver support for that transition for public health and well as environmental goals.

Tackling some issues such as chemical use could be delivered through other methods including converting production to organic methods, but there is none in the UK and none currently anticipated. New production recently commenced in Northern Europe, so there is demand out there. The UK could be driving demand and supporting organic conversion and Integrated Pest Management methods. Higher costs and segregation of the processed material is a key constraint to the development of organic, as are the pest and weed pressures, so this would need public support in development. Farmers should be demanding more research and development on insect control in particular, as the European Union and Gove have indicated neonicotinoid use may well be banned.

The MPs on the Environment Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Committee are worried about our sugar farmers and the impact of new trade deals on their market after Brexit. They’ve initiated a rapid inquiry on “how the sugar industry will be affected by Brexit and the options for an optimal trade policy surrounding sugar following Brexit”. Nothing is said in the initial briefing about health or environmental goals.

Sustain’s submission stresses three areas they need to consider: (1) we need to eat less; (2) so we probably need to produce less; (3) and what we do produce and eat should harm less (less pesticides, fairly traded, worker conditions and so on).

The 2017 sugar quotas – an EU measure previously limiting how much each producer could grow – means all European beet producers can grow what they like for the first time in decades. The likely result: a surge in beet plantings and a drop in resulting prices. This will suit the refiners and end users but not the farmers, and probably not the farmed environment. It is also likely to undermine the health purposes of the sugary drinks tax. It is likely to mean more sugar is eaten.

Farmers don’t like being told what to do, and always know best. But they would be wise in looking around to see the policy as well as the market atmosphere. Producing higher value such as organic may be one approach. Getting out altogether may be the route for some. If that means the public providing support for the transition, so be it. You could argue public health is a public good – being based on so many collectively agreed socio-economic and political conditions – from planning policy to labelling law. Reducing production of a harmful product could fit that category.

If reducing production here means we import more to fulfil some needs of the sugar industry maybe that should be a market for producers in countries still highly dependent on sugar for socio-economic reasons. Ideally, those producers should benefit from processing and selling the refined product – gaining the added value and jobs involved. This depends on ending tariff escalation, which may be one way Brexit can be used for a social advantage. Those wanting cheap raw materials won’t be happy, but trade policy must be guided by poverty reduction, sustainable development and health as well as climate and resource use protection.

This should be seen as not the end of the sugar rush, but the beginning of better sugar and healthier diets. Our waistlines and the bees demand it.

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For a sector that rarely gets mentioned unless dead or diseased animals are piling up, food has had a lively political year. New Bills have been passed, and chlorine-washed chicken has been discussed at a Party Conference. The appointment of Michael Gove to the head of DEFRA put fire into the belly of the conservation lobby. We all got a little bit excited.

But the excitement remains tinged with frustration at the lack of a coherent joined-up plan, and so much confusion about just how the government intends to resolve its differences on standards in trade deals. Do we get chlorine-washed chicken or not? US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross thinks we must, but Gove says no. It’s almost as if the Doris Day song playing in our ears: “Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps…”

With a transition deal with the EU now likely, it seems possible that we will stay in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) for that period. So the promised new Agriculture and Fisheries Bills, and Gove’s vision of ecological farming and new marine policies are possibly four years away. Or maybe not?

However, we can make use of the opportunities that do arise. The big animal sentience bunfight has already delivered rewards – a new Bill – and indicated both a shift in Conservative strategy and the impact of people power. But the solutions don’t yet get at the heart of the problem. This, as ever, means following the money and power.

Four food Brexit issues will hit the stands in 2018. They illustrate why politics, finance and food are being increasingly entangled, and why a new vision, policies and partnerships are needed.

What’s going to happen to food prices?

Top of the confusion pile is the impact of Brexit on food prices and availability. The number of food banks is growing and there have been warnings of potential food price increases from industry such as the chairman of Sainsbury’s and, the British Retail Consortium and KPMG. While we still await government impact assessments, one scenario from the farming industry estimates that these additional costs could add 8% to food costs from the EU.

Politicians use this as an excuse to say we need free trade deals with the rest of the world where food (labour) and production is cheaper so we can import what we need. But let’s not spread the misery of cheap food – poor animal welfare, food hygiene, working conditions and environmental degradation – elsewhere. Pro free-traders such as Jacob Rees-Mogg MP also argue that we’ll get cheaper food through low or no tariffs on global produce after Brexit. But it’s a flawed idea. Any potential savings would be cancelled out by a weak pound, currency fluctuations and increased food costs from European countries where we get 30% of our food from. Longer term, our resilience will be poorly served by drawing more land, water and resources from across the globe in the form of cheap raw materials for the food industry.

And it is fair to say food that banks are generally not a function of food prices. They were around and swelling well before Brexit and reflect a problem of low incomes, in-work poverty, precarity and inadequate linking of welfare support to the cost of living. It’s likely that after March 2019, Brexit will be blamed for any food price rises and we need income safeguards for those affected. But any reaction that looks like a ‘cheap food’ policy could cost all of us dear in terms of job losses, food standards, NHS spending, and competitiveness in high calibre international food markets.

Will robots take over or will crops be rotting in the fields?

A fully mechanised food system is some years off, but the government made it clear they want a tech revolution in their new Industrial Strategy. This may help solve the worker ‘issue’; tech and robots will do the hard work us lazy British won’t, and cheap migrant labour may no longer be available. Under the Rees-Mogg model we’ll just import what we need, so no new workers will be needed. Simples.  

How much better would it be to make UK farming attractive for workers and entrepreneurs? It may seem like a pipe dream, but I meet such dreamers often and all they lack is land and support to deliver highly productive farming. From the rise of food pop-ups, new food growing initiatives and the keen interest of the younger generation in food provenance and sustainability, it is clear there is an opportunity here.

But again we need to follow the money. Making the supply chain pay its way (for a start extending and increasing the role of the Groceries Code Adjudicator) is vital, so that producers get a fair share of the pie. So too is stopping tax dodging which sucjs money out of the food system, and ending the massive executive pay gap. These are political decisions without which we can’t make the food system work fairly or sustainably.

What will happen to farm subsidies?

The long-anticipated Food and Farming 25 Year Plan bit the dust in 2017, and the promise of a 25-Year Environment Plan limps on. We are told we will get a new Agriculture Act in late 2018, but that may now be on hold. A new UK Agriculture Bill may have limited power outside of transition EU rules to govern public money or environmental standards for some years to come.

We are drowning in evidence that we could do farm and rural policy better (not just via payments for public goods but capital grants, training, advice, and even new private partnerships for environmental services) which would be better for farmers, their workers, their animals, the environment and for our health. Gove says he gets it, and DEFRA is full of bright new staff getting out and about on farms, listening to us and our members’ ideas. That’s all good and could mean something significant. It must stem the loss of farm businesses. But will it link up with Gove’s announcement of a possible new environmental body and hints of a new Environment Act?  Given that 70% of our land is farmed and farming contributes to air and water pollution, climate change and so on, we really need to see coherence between these two legislative outcomes.

A final word on farming in 2018: we need an extended groceries code adjudicator. The broad network of organisations calling for this could not be more diverse, yet they have worked together to make a clear case that such an extension is vital to end unfair trading practices and help support a wide range of farming businesses in the uncertain years ahead. Give this to Mr Gove.

Food standards: More than just chlorine-washed chicken

Trade deals that sacrifice food safety, animal welfare, reduction of farm antibiotic use, provenance and environmental standards (such as pesticides or nitrates) for the sake of a trade deal on finance or car parts will be toxic. Such messages helped to stop the much loathed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) in its tracks; and never doubt the strength of the big food lobby. Liam Fox MP has flip-flopped on this, showing what a charged debate it is already, and we’ve not even started negotiating any trade deals even if Wilbur Ross thinks we have. MPs need to have oversight of any trade deals and we should look to strengthen food safety machinery, not weaken it. As Sustain said in its evidence to the MPs Environment, Food and Rural Affairs committee Inquiry which showed the difference in salmonella between UK and US eggs; we’ve been losing capacity to check what’s in our food packets for years. We must do better, not simply import tonnes of new unknown junk and contaminated food. In the long term, it will just cost us all far more.

A coherent vision on food could ensure trade policies, farm support and wider measures deliver an affordable food supply that is fair to people, food providers, animals and the environment. And it needs to be well policed.

Do tell your MP what you think on these four hot potatoes, and sign up to Sustain monthly updates here.

The post The politics of food: What to look out for in 2018 appeared first on New thinking for the British economy.

You may have seen dairy farmers frantically promoting their product over summer with the #proudofdairy hashtag. Since the first picture of a dairy maid on her stool was used to reflect the purity of the pastoral idyll, the industry has worked hard to get you to enjoy #thewhitestuff.

Dairy farming is hard graft but lately farmers have been getting such low prices they have had to get bigger and more intensive, or get out. The dairy industry beyond the farm gate (the processing, catering and retail end) has largely not covered the cost of decent milk production. This represents widespread market failure. And the picture is the same in many other farm sectors – from bacon to cereals – as DEFRA farm income data show.

The imbalance of power is such that farmers, their workers, land and animals stay on a low price treadmill, whilst the big food companies reap big profit margins despite the race for market share which means they will make their prices look the lowest. Amazon’s entry onto the high street kicks the supermarket wars up a notch, and EU subsidies keep the farm sector alive – although that’s up for a major overhaul.

Who wins the price war is anyone’s guess, but any increased sales as a result of that #proudofdairy promotion could just result in more sales of cheap cheddar and milk which is used as a loss leader to lure customers into a superstore or online. Dairy farmers may just about survive on the same fluctuating but chronically low prices they always seem to suffer from.

Further industrialisation to cut farm costs – using zero grazing and high yield breeds – is an obvious response but the consumer backlash against cruel systems is a serious risk and the plant ‘milk’ market is strengthening in response. The animal welfare implications and pollution risks are high if farmers can’t afford adequate husbandry or fit effective slurry control. The future for those farmers still grazing their cows on expensive land, trying to compete with more intensive farmers, does not look good unless they are organic or otherwise have differentiated their market.

Poor cows, poor rivers, and poor farmers. In the last 10 years we lost 40% of our UK dairy farms. That’s 4,100 small businesses gone, as the farmland gets amalgamated mostly into larger farms. The picture is similar in many other farm sectors and uncertainty over post-Brexit farm policy means we could lose thousands more.

The generic milk promotions are probably useful, and will give farmers a feel good moment to counter the vegan lobby. Yet there may be better value in a brilliant campaign to better regulate the supply chain so they pay decently and act fairly. How about refusing to sell for one day – a #Onedaywithoutus? Or once again using tractors to blockade the distribution centre roads? Too aggressive?

Well aggressive has nothing on the big retailer buyers. Abusive behaviour by buyers beyond the farm gate, often harming vulnerable, relatively tiny suppliers, can push viable businesses into bankruptcy. Some may think its fine to lose farm businesses. After all, that’s the nature of growth – get big or get out. But losing capacity and businesses has huge implications for food employment up and down stream as well as our food supply. Alongside a loss of farm diversity, Brexit means we are facing severe blockages in the supply  of foods even from across the channel. Frictionless supply chains are looking further away than ever. What will we eat?

Ironically, it was NGOs like the Women’s Institutes and Friends of the Earth, not the National Farmers Union, who started to demand better regulation on this back in the early 2000s. They successfully demanded a better legally binding code to stop supermarkets abusing suppliers and an ombudsman to oversee it. They even went to court to force it to happen. A decade later and that Ombudsman – The Grocery Code Adjudicator (GCA) – has been reviewed and found to be doing a reasonable job, but it has too narrow an impact. It shines a light on, embarrasses and even fines bad practices by companies like Tesco who bully farmers in all sorts of way like delaying or cutting payments or demanding fees for positioning produce on shelves.

But this does not regulate most of the companies actually buying from farmers here or overseas, as it covers just the top retailers. Nor does it have much impact on those prices. At a time of Brexit and other and uncertainty for the farming industry, tackling abuse in the supply chain must be a high priority to ensure that farms can survive and we can feed ourselves.

Equally there is talk of the need to get new farmers and entrepreneurs into farming, and they need the protection of a well-regulated marketplace. The new regulatory code that is needed would be relatively simple to create as the Act which formed the GCA allowed for new responsibilities, and a new Code need not be vastly different than the existing one.  The additional costs for a bigger GCA could be met through a relatively small industry levy and there is no evidence this would translate into higher consumer prices.

On prices, however, we may have been hoping for some joy from a new European consultation on  making food chain fairer and stopping unfair trading practices. If they boost transparency in pricing that may help. EU farmer bodies point out that as they only receive 8% of the price of a loaf of bread and so “want the Commission to act to improve farmers share by bolstering their position and tackling unfair practices”. An EU wide mechanism is possible, but whether it will deliver for UK farmers, given the huge vested interests of the retailer lobby and the prospect of Brexit, and whether dairy and other farmers benefit, depends on our future relationship with the EU.

The only other option for UK farmers is to try and reach customers more directly and avoid those sucking out profit in between. Those that are doing this seem to be reaping the rewards of a loyal customer.

As a nation we should be protecting and enhancing our diverse food supply system as well as ensuring we can still source, fairly, from overseas. Extending the GCA’s remit to include indirect suppliers to supermarkets would lead to fairer, more competitive and more sustainable groceries supply.

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The new DEFRA Secretary Michael Gove MP will be staring at a blank page when it comes to replacing the old European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) with a new system of support for UK farmers. The Treasury will be gazing hungrily at the fat budget (over £3 billion) that farming currently accounts for. Which way will Gove swing?

As one of the most complex, costly, and widely disliked common EU policies, Brexit presents a once in a lifetime opportunity to end some of the absurdities and harm of the CAP – a system which has failed to support farms effectively, failed to stem the huge loss of farm diversity and failed to protect wildlife and services such as flood mitigation.

But what will Gove replace it with? I explored some of the key issues in an earlier blog. Maintaining and improving standards in areas such as environment and animal welfare will matter massively. The National Farmers Union (NFU) “believes it would be wrong for imported food to be produced to different standards than those adhered to by British.”  They have also recently surveyed their members and it appears their confidence has taken a severe knock.

Improving our food security so our farmers can feed us healthily, affordably and sustainably really matters. The lamentable level of domestic fruit production – just 1 in 10 pieces of fruit eaten here is grown here – is just one example. But this should change.

Governments across the globe have adopted widely different systems to subsidise and promote farmers, from New Zealand’s complete removal of all financial support for farming in 1984, to the Swiss model that is one of the costliest in the world. Gove should understand that  neither extreme looks suitable for a future UK system. We need a clever, affordable, workable system that is suitable for a wide range of farms and landscapes, but which also looks after the health of the four nations. Each nation needs to design its own scheme, suitable for its industry, environment and population.

Sustain – an alliance of 94 organisations with a combined public membership of several million – believes that a focus on high volume, low standard production is not the answer. Leaving farmers with no public support (which currently represents a significant part of many farmers’ income) could create a highly polarised system with a small number of huge, intensive specialised farms and some high nature farmland protected by charitable grants. One can imagine the death of small and family farms.

Farming is undoubtedly a business, but it is also so much more. Sustain’s new proposals, consulted on with our alliance and others, recognise that farming can also provide much wider public outcomes and benefits including thriving rural communities, valued farm workers, safe food, good nutrition, a protected and nurtured environment and high animal welfare. Any new deal should help farms achieve this.

The Sustain alliance, which contains a broad range of organisations concerned with food and farming, has proposed a practical way forward and a basis for debate once the election dust has settled. The Government will need to find common ground between the industry, the Treasury, our future relationship with the EU, and those groups championing the rural economy, conservation, public health and development.

The alliance recommend that the next Government should retain taxpayer support for farmers after Brexit, but replace the old two pillar EU system with a new four-part deal for farming based on:

1. Payments for public goods – shifting payments from large landowners and biofuel production to supporting resilient farming, nature and animals, creating more rural jobs and growing our own healthy 5-a-day fruit and vegetables, in a new Land Management Scheme;
2. Support for demonstrably sustainable business needs such as marketing hubs or micro-processing units, farmer innovation, facilitation funds for setting up cooperatives via capital grants, loans, and business advice;
3. A new publicly funded programme of low cost advice and support for a farmer-to-farmer advisory network; and
4. Wider policy measures to ensure farmers can thrive such as extending the Grocery Code Adjudicator’s powers to ensure fair trading practices from supermarkets and their suppliers, keeping high standards including worker standards and organic legal rules, and requiring an increase in the purchase of local and sustainable food for public-sector organisations such as schools and hospitals.

A key but potentially contentious proposal is that payments to farmers and land managers should be front loaded, with Government tapering or capping payments to use taxpayers’ support wisely and ensure the diverse mix of farm businesses can thrive, not just the largest.

The alliance also suggests we need special support for fruit and vegetable production as there is a real chance for import substitution and getting more of our ‘five-a-day’ grown sustainably in the UK. Supporting new entrants into farming and encouraging agroforestry – a great carbon fix and wildlife haven – should also get special attention in any new allocation of funds.

Underpinning this policy structure should be a core set of principles within a clear strategy, which is something that we are severely lacking right now. Key to this will be effective targeting of financial and other support and basing allocation on the principle of public benefits (widely defined) for public investment. The Sustain alliance emphasises that all policy must be underpinned by effective regulatory and enforcement systems based on the precautionary principle in order to protect people, the rural economy, environment and livestock.

The final principles refer to trade deals, the responsibility of Gove’s colleague Liam Fox MP, which must not undermine the delivery of this vision in each of the UK’s devolved administrations and should enable other countries to deliver their own food sovereignty.

Future farm policy is going to be a long and detailed discussion. Sustain’s proposed four part deal is a good starting point, and many more ideas will no doubt be put forward. Public involvement in this debate is notoriously difficult but essential – not only as citizens affected by the farmed environment, but also as consumers eating the food and taxpayers who are providing the financial support. Getting the policies right matters not only for the farming sector, but for health and wellbeing across the UK.

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Sainsbury’s just gave African fair trade farmers a real kick in the teeth. The supermarket has devised its own ‘fairly traded’ accreditation system, snubbing the well established independent Fairtrade Foundation scheme. But I’m not buying it (although I did buy their fair trade tea).

As the 200,000 African tea farmers and workers put in their letter rejecting the new Sainsbury’s scheme, “Our destiny must be kept in our hands”. Top of the list of concerns was the fact that farmers would lose control of the money they had earned to spend on community and local projects. Instead, they would have to apply to a board in London to access the money they had rightfully earned, with no guarantee they would receive it. It all sounds rather colonial.

Underlying this is the desire of UK retailers to retain control over the money that is made from food production. This is a great shame, as the whole point of Fairtrade was to make sure a reasonable amount of final spending on food reaches the farmers and workers overseas.

A similar motivation lies behind the rapid rise of the ‘gig’ economy in the food retail and service sectors. By placing all the precarity and risk associated with the ‘just in time’ system onto the worker, supermarkets can keep as much of the profit as possible. But there is another way.

Genuinely affordable, kind and healthy food initiatives – local box schemes, farmers’ markets, internet retail, coops, community cafés and Community Supported Agriculture – are on the rise. Loyalty to supermarkets, on the other hand, is not.  These initiatives are a crucial lifeline for farmers as they provide an opportunity to sell directly to customers instead of a few, rapacious supermarket buyers.

A new network called the Better Food Traders (BFT) network was formed in 2016 to support genuinely sustainable alternatives, challenge the dominance of the supermarkets and help farmers get a fairer route to market. Better Food Traders aims to be “changing the way food works so it’s fair, sustainable and better for all our futures”, and it has ambitions to grow.

The concept is radical and, by design, not uniform or easily branded. It currently has 12 food traders on its books, ranging from community supported agriculture schemes, fruit and veg pick up schemes, an organic Farmers’ Market and urban patchwork farms.  Before you cry “elitist”, many of these initiatives take Healthy Start Vouchers, and paying suppliers fairly and workers a living wage are core principles.  And before you say “too small”, remember that the ethical food entrepreneur behind the new network runs an award-winning values-led social enterprise called Growing Communities that has more than £1 million of turnover in fresh, healthy and sustainable food business.

Supporting BFT is one logical way to build a new vision for a diverse, fairer food system. It allows customers to reward good producers by buying their food and developing a much closer relationship with them. Shorter supply chains mean better communication and less chance of confusion or even contamination and loss of food quality.

In a way it is the opposite of the gig economy, which has been described as “a labour market characterised by the prevalence of short-term contracts or freelance work, as opposed to permanent jobs”. For some workers, the precarity of the gig economy is not an issue. Some people like the flexibility and degree of control over their working hours. Technological advances have provided the digital tools that enable the industry to shift output at a moment’s notice. But it can clearly mean worker abuse, bogus self-employment, fewer rights in areas such as sick pay, holiday pay, pension contributions and maternity/paternity pay, and widespread exploitation of the welfare state. And if work does not pay, poverty ensues. In 2016, 7.4 million people, including 2.6 million children, were living in poverty despite living in working households.

Things like decent pay, sick pay, protection from unfair dismissal, holidays and parental leave are not only hard won rights that have been struggled for over the past 100 years. For many, these rights mean the difference between decent work and a constant battle to feed your family, keep a roof over your head and maintain mental and physical health. If the worst parts of the ‘gig’ economy are allowed to succeed, other providers will be unable to compete and may ultimately disappear.

For the African farmers, losing control over their finances can have a similar impact on their ability to live decent lives and support local schools and other projects. Worse, the impact of unfair trading on African farmer incomes lacks the kind of visibility and voice that leads to change. This is why independent schemes such as the Fairtrade Mark and Better Food Traders are so important in making the issues and solutions visible and valued.

We need something better which is healthier and fairer, supports decent livelihoods and protects the valuable farmed environment.

These UK food schemes may seem a long way from African tea farmers, although most do incorporate Fairtrade items in their product range in solidarity. But this is about taking back some control over our food and making sure that the money we spend enables people to live a decent life. Strengthening the Groceries Code Adjudicator to stop unfair risks and costs being passed down to suppliers – at home and overseas – and cutting excessive high pay in the food sector would also help.

At the moment the schemes may be small and out of reach for some. But like Fairtrade they need customer support to succeed. Likewise, trade unions need support in their fight to stop the gig economy eroding hard won rights.  Joining their demands for strong and fair regulation of the ‘gig’ economy is vital. Anna Cura of Food Ethics Council has written recently on the importance of being citizens rather than consumers going “beyond engagement to involve people, and recognising the multiple roles citizens can have in the food system.”

Voting is infrequent, and referendums even more so. We therefore need to vote with every pound we spend. If that means shopping around and spending a bit more time thinking about the food we eat, then in the long run it will be worth it.

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Who is going to grow, pick, sort, and process my food in 2020? Alongside concerns about the lack of migrant labour after Brexit, there is much talk of the need for robots to replace workers, picking veg, on the sandwich line or serving the coffee. Will they replace the workers no longer welcome when we leave Europe or who are too expensive to pay in a liberalised, free trading UK? The flipside is that maybe we should all be eating less processed food and growing and cooking for ourselves…

But are these the right solutions to the right questions?

It is true that we are facing a looming staff problem in the food industry. Farmers talk of crops rotting in the fields when there are fewer seasonal and migrant workers to pick them; and the British Hospitality Association has warned of a 60,000 annual staff shortage facing the catering sector.

But why is it so difficult to find workers for the food system? Could it be they are not valued enough or given quality work and conditions? Maybe too little of the money we pay in the shop or café flows down to the worker. Alongside austerity measures, casual contracts and squeezed welfare system, low wages are becoming a crisis and the food system has some of the lowest.

“Low wages are becoming a crisis and the food system has some of the lowest”

Yet serious issues with worker standards and inequalities in the food chain were evident well before we voted to leave the European Union last year. Gang-master horror stories of abuse were becoming frequent. The Guardian newspaper’s exposé of appalling worker abuse in the egg supply chain – culminating in a £1 million fine to the gangmasters – is sadly just the tip of an abuse iceberg.

This applies particularly to migrant workers who can lack access to key information and capacity to organise, given the language and cultural barriers. Food manufacturing is the sector with the highest share of foreign-born labour in 2015, hence the huge risk from Brexit to our food supply and the reason why we need better worker conditions not a race to the bottom.

For farm workers, the loss of the Agricultural Wages Board (AWB) in England in 2013 was very bad news. The AWB ensured some 120,000 salaried workers were able to negotiate effectively for decent working conditions but that protection body has been lost. Further down the food chain, flexible working – the gig economy – is growing fast. The inevitable protests such as by Deliveroo workers at some of the resulting poor wages and contracts has woken the public up to the plight of those making or delivering our food. In the US, food workers formed the Fight for $15 campaign some years ago – demanding a decent financial return for hard work in the fast food industry. Their protest on Mayday this year may be the biggest yet.

We all rely on food workers, for decent food on our plates as well as the success of our economy. So we need to protect food workers through good policy (keeping EU labour regulations after Brexit) and well-staffed enforcement of strong worker regulations. Sadly too few enforcement officers means labour standards are inadequately enforced. It is calculated that there is one labour inspector per 100,000 members of the workforce – and recent data suggests that a business will get a labour enforcement check once every 250 years. That is not enforcement and serious concerns exist that the newly re-formed body overseeing many ‘invisible’ labour issues – the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA) – has too few staff and their powers will be inadequate to cover the remit it now has. Workers must also be able to organise to demand decent conditions themselves. Effective representation via unions is key to provide support, legal back-up and advice.

Recent data suggests that a business will get a labour enforcement check once every 250 years

Consumers too need to demand proof of fair working when they buy food in a shop or restaurant, choosing outlets with Living Wage Foundation accreditation where possible (paying more than the government’s national living wage, below the real cost of living). Lidl has become accredited guaranteeing to offer decent pay and it has apparently increased their recruitment. So it’s clearly not a barrier to profits. Will Tesco follow suit?

Underlying these solutions, far more attention needs to be given to where the value goes in food supply chains. In reality it has been leaked away for corporate profits to the detriment of workers as well as farmers and the environment. We need strong supply chain regulation and MPs must oppose any weakening of labour standards to smooth the way for new trade deals.

But let us not forget me and the robots. Technology and robotics may inevitably do more of the hard graft in fields and factories – possibly delivering low impact farming systems such as solar powered, precision farming techniques and field work with lower soil compaction for instance. I should probably be cooking more of my own food and eating less processed food and ready meals, saving time, money and bad calories. But where do the workers go when these changes happen?

Has anyone asked the workers? Back in the mid-seventies workers at an arms company – Lucas Aerospace – proposed an innovative plan to retain jobs through other, socially-useful use of the company’s technology and their own skills. Created in 1976, the idea was described by the Financial Times as, ‘one of the most radical alternative plans ever drawn up by workers for their company’. They showed job losses did not have to happen when an industry was no longer needed in the same way.  Workers were involved as were local communities in coming up with ideas, technologies, new markets and new products. It delivered debate and engagement and should have delivered new jobs but for the advent of a new neoliberal ideology and union busting in the 80s.

Decades later, the threat of climate change, and the need for a fair transition to low impact jobs and sustainable diets, suggests that a new Lucas plan involving workers and stakeholders along the food chain may well be just what is needed. A Bernard Matthews plan for instance…

Sustain works for better conditions and opportunities for workers in our food supply and for them to have a voice in policy change. We are campaigning to have a sectoral bargaining system reinstated in England for farm workers as well as wider systemic changes so the financial value of food purchases can get to where it is needed.

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The future in a newly ‘freed up Britain’ after Brexit is beginning to show itself. Joanna Blythman outlined a scary vision for the Guardian when food rules are thrown aside as we race to do a trade deal with the US. From banned pesticides and GM foods to hormones and chlorine washes in meat, our whole food system is hostage to what other sectors want from the negotiations, and later from what other countries want from our trade deals. Jamie Oliver is worried… and meat inspectors fear the worst when we lose EU slaughter safety standards. They remove 560,000 cases of parasitic roundworm larvae in pork products annually.

The potential for ill health to be one of the outcomes from the shift to a global market place is very real. And it has been clear since Theresa May’s US visit that agriculture is likely to be up for grabs. Sadly the UK National Farmers Union, instead of sticking up for concerned UK consumers or decent farmers seems to agree suggesting that British farmers should be able to use the same production techniques to ensure “an even playing field”.

Brexit Secretary of State David Davis says the process will “not be about removing existing barriers or questioning certain protections”. Meanwhile his colleague Liam Fox, Secretary of State for International Trade, is rapidly setting up the possibility of trade negotiation agreements with the US, India, China and other major trading nations.

Despite apparent prioritisation of worker protection in the Brexit White Paper, food workers’ rights will inevitably come under huge pressure if we are trying to compete globally. If pesticide rules are removed or weakened for instance, under pressure from new trading partners like the US, it seems inevitable that vital protection for workers will be removed.

Few members of the public concern themselves on a daily basis with tariffs or non-tariff barriers. Understandably, it’s not that accessible or engaging. Unless you realise what they do to food standards and to prices.

Tariffs – sometimes called import duties or taxes – limit access to our markets and can mean a huge price tag on imports. Being in Europe meant that tariffs were negotiated as part of a large and powerful trading bloc. As part of the UK being a member of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) there are also quotas (called Tariff Rate Quotas) which allow a certain amount of product in without tariffs. 128 of these exist in the EU for food products including New Zealand lamb and American chicken. Licences are required to import and the administration is hugely complex. No-one knows what future tariffs and quotas will be negotiated and this really matters to the future viability of UK farms, farm workers and the farmed environment. Work is underway to establish Britain’s own schedules (what we can trade in) at the WTO, after Brexit.

But it gets even more complicated (and scary) when you look at those non-tariffs barriers (NTBs). These are obstructions that affect imports such as border administration, labelling rules, employment and food safety laws. One country may not be able to export to another because their standards are considered not good enough, or not “equivalent”, or even “substantially equivalent”. The ban on hormones in beef is one example but there are many, and sometimes lead to protracted legal disputes or retaliatory trade bans or economic tit-for-tats between countries. What one country sees as protecting public health, another may see as protectionist and trade distorting. They can be challenged at the WTO.

The big question now is how far Britain will go to be a country that can compete on global markets. Once out of Europe, will we allow the 82 pesticides used in the US but banned in the EU? Will we open the gates to genetically modified (GM) foods with no labels, permissible in the US but currently not here? Will we have control over the standards of meat entering our school or hospital food, or will those standards be governed by trade deals?

There is also the matter of what we are going to be allowed to do in terms of supporting farming and land managers, to achieve for example environmental or rural development aims. To reduce the potential for trade-distorting state subsidies, there are WTO limits on how much support a country can give its food producers – called the Aggregate Measure of Support (AMS). We don’t know yet how much of the EU-wide AMS we will be allowed to spend all by our self. It’s likely to be cut but could still break WTO limits.

Conservation groups and farming bodies are getting dizzy in meeting rooms over what we could now set up, now we are going to lose the long–criticised Common Agriculture Policy. But what we do next needs to fit a global agenda and that agenda may not be all that friendly.

But the good news is that the more we specify public goods or benefits being the outcomes of our policy the better. With enough public pressure, those public goods should act against the nasties outlined by Blythman. But it will be a battle. Advocates for cheap raw materials for the processed food industry and cheap food will be working hard to weaken standards.

I am sure the public, whilst wanting affordable food, would not want a race to the bottom. Recent research shows that the public want support for agriculture to do more for nature. Let’s hope they stand with us in demanding policies that protect our health not some mythical free trade, export-led growth nirvana which really only suits global Big Food Inc.

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If you had £200 to spend on food each year what would you spend it on? That is roughly how much each family of four spends on current subsidies for farmers and the food sector. Has anyone asked taxpayers how they want that money spent?

Clearly that would be a bit foolish without a decent discussion and information about what that money pays for now and what it could pay for.

After 2020, EU-designed farm support will end. This amounted to £3.2 billion in the UK in 2015. As the farm and food industry prepares for life after Brexit in terms of prices, trade and markets so too the way we as taxpayers support farming will need to change.

Some may think we should just remove all that support and treat the sector as any other. I don’t subscribe to that view. There is a strong case for support for the land based sector – from the need to ensure public ‘goods’ such as protected rural and natural environment, water, soil, (paying for afforestation to provide natural flood management for instance), through to supporting rural economies. Many argue we must also guarantee some food production so we don’t leech land and water from other parts of the world or become entirely dependent on the world market.

As markets fail to recognize many of these ‘goods’ we get from farming there is a case for intervention. But what should that intervention look like when we leave the EU and how much would it cost?

Seizing the opportunity to test new approaches would be ideal – a transitional phase where we maintain a level of support but undertake regional pilots that address nature, animal welfare, market and research questions.

Public benefits aside, as we are leaving the EU family and its Single Market and Customs Union, the level of support we give our farmers will come under significant World Trade Organisation scrutiny. And that means getting to grips with some of their terminology. The ‘green’ of my title refers to a way in which farm support is categorized according to how trade distorting it is. If it is not linked to production directly or it’s considered minimally distorting, it is allowed under a ‘green box’ status. More ‘coupled’ types of farm subsidy and support – which are linked to production and affect prices and trade – are given ‘blue’ and ‘amber’ status and are restricted.

This is a complex area – rife with politics and horse-trading – that the UK government, industry and others are beginning to grapple with after some years of neglect under the umbrella of EU trade negotiations and competence. The £3.2 billion (or more or less) will be under significant scrutiny alongside new tariff regimes which we will be negotiating.

Assessing the ways in which a government could support its farm sector (alongside regulation) has now become a live exercise. Some schemes focus on insurance mechanisms or Bonds to give farms protection from market shocks. Other proposals are for greater investment in local infrastructure, such as abattoirs, and in skills and training to prepare farmers for the challenges ahead, and possibly more investment in public sector food. The latter could deliver a triple win of increasing the market for high standard British produce, as well as healthier diets and reducing the burden of diet-related disease on the NHS. These could benefit rural livelihoods, communities, the economy and in the long term reduce taxpayer spend. Global Justice Now and nef have outlined a novel approach I’ve not seen elsewhere – the concept of a universal income for all farmers.

Many designs share a commonality in approach largely based on ‘public support for public goods’. Most proposals advocate ditching the current system of direct area payments and advocate linking payments to outcomes in some way – from an enhanced agri-environment scheme approach to tradable markets for services such as flood protection (DEFRA Minister George Eustace). People Need Nature outlined a framework for future support in A Pebble in the Pond, as have CPRE and the National Trust based on taxpayers paying public subsidy to farmers only for outcomes that the market won’t pay for but which are valued and needed by the public. They stress that any payment should be conditional on meeting demonstrably higher standards of wildlife, soil and water protection.

The Landworkers Alliance agree with ditching area payments but place stronger emphasis on securing healthy sustainable UK food supplies, jobs in farming and the smaller farm sector as well as democratizing decision making.

The big question is what outcomes does the public want? Sir Don Curry speaking at the recent Sustain AGM spoke of the Big Prize at the end of all this. What is it? I would feel happier if I felt we had time to discuss this and could involve all stakeholders – including customers and taxpayers – and good evidence on policy efficacy.

What about governance? We need strong regulations and priorities and direction set at national (devolved) level. But could more of the decisions be made at a local level? Sounds good but what are the risks? Who decides what nature is protected and how?  We need to be sure experts are to hand and that we don’t get outcomes suited to those who shout loudest or who have time to turn up at local meetings…

Workers rights must not be lost in designing a remedy. Some argue for shifting subsidies to the relatively unsupported fruit and vegetable sector to reduce the massive trade gap and fruit and vegetables, deliver healthier produce and, maybe, reduce the heavy environmental burdens of imports and meat consumption. Horticulture however requires considerable labour and as such has some of the worst record in low wages and gang master abuse often of migrant labour. Would subsidies ensure better wages or for mechanization and robots as the answer?

Or is a return to scale, for more local and regional markets, mixed farming and market gardens and a better return from the market place (which means regulation) a better solution? Could we pilot both and see which delivers the most public goods?

Good policy design needs the right input and needs testing. And the design process can be useful in itself. Whilst DEFRA needs to move quickly to set the framework for what future policy aims to do, the process of designing it must be transparent and involve all stakeholders. Sign up to the Sustain farming mailing list for more developments and debates in these areas.

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