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Experiments with local food supply in 2 hi-density urban estates
Maison Radieuse, Rezé, Nantes and Broadwater Farm, Tottenham, London

soundtrack: interview with Anne Gray, Broadwater Farm Coop 2008

The past 20 years have seen massive increases in the corporate share at both ends of our food chain – downstream at the supply end with a few supermarkets and upstream the domination of food production by agribusiness cartels. Thus today just five companies control over three quarters of the world market in cereals with one, Cargill, controlling more than than 60%; three companies control 85% of the world’s tea market; three in cocoa have 84%; and with agrochemicals, the top 10 companies own 90% of the market. So why this wholesale takeover at a time of relentless environmental campaigning and anti-capitalist activism; is it down to the power imbalances of neoliberalism, or the lack of protective legislation, or subsidies  skewed heavily in favour of the large, or are the progressive messages not getting through to the masses? Perhaps that given the complex cultural dynamics of food, the corporate marketing men are better placed to exploit mass culture whilst the sustainable and ethical food industry remains contained by its own values or is simply too disorganised at present?
Whatever, the message is that one may get things environmentally and ethically right but be culturally wrongfooted. That said anyone who has tried to set up a community food coop will know that the difficulties. It’s almost impossible to compete with the free market, even with volunteer labour. So we have underestimated the achievements of the supermarkets with their synergies of vertical integration and outsourcing, well developed logistics of inventory management, synchronisation of supply and demand to reduce costs and maximise profits. So why not learn from them and create new markets that address the contemporary problems with contemporary means. This may mean that we don’t always revert to ‘default’ positions when thinking about concepts of  ‘local’ or ‘community’. Otherwise we will miss out on the useful innovations within the food industry and, with the new tools of social communication. If the idea of community implies looking backwards rather than forward,  the result may be lots of good feeling and possibly good press, but low market penetration, small turnover and little effect on the eating habits of mass society.

As fossil fuel reserves dwindle, the era of cheap food may well come to an end. The corporate food chain is entirely fossil fuel dependent – multiple calories of energy input for every calorie of food output. This won’t necessarily last; the future  potentially belongs to the low input farming methods. Further as the economist Amartya Sen and many others have pointed out, ‘There is an inverse relationship between the size of farms and the amount of crops they produce per hectare. The smaller they are, the greater the yield’. Small farms are far more productive than those of large agribusiness often by a factor of 10 but the image of efficiency the public have is the opposite. We wonder who is to blame for this.  But with small farmers beholden to the demands of the retail monopolies, its a loose-loose situation as it stands.

The question is how to scale up to the mass market, link the small to the mass – to do this requires strategies of engaging mass culture, the heartland of industrial food consumption. In this respect hi-density urban environments provide the perfect site for experimenting with potential up-scalable forms of sustainable food supply because of their built-in economies of scale – a lot of consumers within the same infrastructure. One can be sure that most people in an urban hi-rise estate for example would be relying on a lot of pretty much the same staple foods. At present this advantage is being wasted through normal consumer buying patterns. Community activists and environmentalists speak about externalities of the agri-food industrial machine. But food ecology is not only about the food. For example, most people now travel 50% farther to get their food than they did 15 years ago. Few do their weekly food shopping on foot – most use a car to go to the supermarket. What is unreflected in the price of food is the cost of consumers’ time and their use of cars.
Thus its entirely logical that food markets should come to estates, rather than the other way round. The challenge is how to make it work economically to the advantage of both the consumer and the producer. This requires experimentation with different forms of sourcing but not all experiments may be sustainable.
continued in following post

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