Better Food Economics at the Better Food Traders Gathering

Last week a number of food partnerships joined Better Food Traders’ annual gathering in Penarth Pavilion. The day celebrated the brilliant work that BFT does in supporting, networking and advocating for ethical food retailers who sell locally grown, planet friendly foods. From coops to local food markets, their members serve as community assets and vital routes to market for producers. They provide key infrastructure for a resilient food system, so to join together with them for collaboration, networking and learning was such a pleasure.

Even better to do that here in Wales.  We heard from Bwyd Powys and Cultivate, Cardiff Farmers Markets on the Planet Card project undertaken with Food Cardiff, Food Sense Wales and Food Vale over the day.

The role of food partnerships in supporting and developing local food supply chains and ethical business felt interwoven across the sessions. The other interweaving was vital work on justice and representation. There is a lovely blog from Sustain’s Sareta Puri on her micro presentation with Idman Abdurahaman from Eating Better about the JEDI (justice, equity, diversity and inclusion) leadership programme, with lots of lessons to support SFP’s FAIR Food framework.

My own micro-presentation was on what a good economy of food might look like. Our economic system underpins the many problems that we face, so we need to do some rethinking to help us reframe the debates and create real systems transformation.

Five minutes didn’t allow me to get much into the beautiful possibilities of doughnut economics as just one possible model for this, but I love the idea of setting a limit beyond which we shall not grow, ensuring the survival of future generations on a planet of finite resources. And equally importantly, defining a line below which no human being will fall in terms of food, shelter, clothing, dignity. We know people are falling below that line all the time in our current economic system, and healthy food is too often out of reach.

We can do better.

With that wider thinking as context, we had a good discussion of whether one proposal much in the news at the moment could offer an opening towards real change. Price caps on food formed part of the Scottish National Party’s manifesto and were raised again by Labour after the elections. They have been kicking around for hundreds of years, and last raised as a possibility by Rishi Sunak for the Conservatives.

This cross-party support (however lukewarm) and the ease with which they can be understood by everyone (if not implemented) makes them potentially interesting as a lever.

But after discussion, we remained wary.

First, because food is not valued in our current system. People need cheap food because rents are too high, land hard to access and wages and social security too low. The rise of ultra-processed food, knock-down supermarket prices and ubiquity of cheap takeaways support people within this broken system at huge cost. We need broader understanding of this cost to farmers and workers across the supply chain, to pollinators and wildlife, to climate and ecosystems, and to people’s own health and well-being. We need people to understand why cheap food is part of the problem, not the solution.

Can price caps ever support a better understanding of food’s true value?

The other wariness lies in the difficulty of implementing such a cap fairly so that it aligns with our own work to create a food system good for people, place and planet. Despite the heavy opposition from supermarkets to this idea across the board, the feeling is that if it were actually implemented they would likely be the ones to pocket any subsidies.

That said, what if government decided to channel funding directly to agro-ecological farmers, producers and local food businesses through something like a Universal Basic Income? We ended the micro-presentations with Jo Poulton talking about their campaign and pilot. A policy like this would directly subsidise ethical food production within the UK, that could in turn be sold at low-cost. It would tackle insecurity at both ends of our local food chain, creating a more resilient food system with positive impact on livelihoods, health, poverty and climate change. Wouldn’t this be a massive step forward?

It was great to take a step outside the day to day to have a deeper collective think about economics, and this is only a tiny flavour of the discussion. A huge thanks to BFT for the hard work of hosting such a generative gathering.