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REAL FOOD FOR ALL

Making Organic Food Affordable in the UK

A t the heart of FoE England, Wales and Northern Ireland's Real Food Campaign is the conviction that everyone should have access to safe and healthy food that is produced in a way which does not harm the environment and that gives farmers a fair return for their produce. As farmers in the UK begin to emerge from the latest crisis to hit them, Foot and Mouth Disease, FoE will be calling for a fundamental review of agriculture.

“Real Food for All” will be one of the key strands of the campaign. It is people with lower incomes who face the most difficulty in finding fresh food that is free of pesticides and meat products that have not come from animals raised in unhealthy intensive conditions or on a diet of genetically modified food. This is an unacceptable situation in the face of growing evidence that pesticides may have serious health consequences for humans, and in light of the huge uncertainty about the safety of GM foods. Yet organic food is simply not affordable to many households. For many people on low incomes it is hard enough to access fresh fruit and vegetables - finding produce that is pesticide free is only a pipe dream. Friends of the Earth believes that it doesn't have to be this way.

Can organic food really be affordable? Organic farmers deserve a good price for their produce, and we do not want supermarkets to squeeze them by waging price wars. But with the right support for organic farming and the use of economies of scale and technical innovations, we believe that it is possible to lower the costs of organic production.

It must be remembered that industrial farming has many hidden costs. Consumers pay for intensively farmed foods three times over: first at the cash register, second via taxation which mainly subsidizes non-organic farming, and third to remedy the damage that intensive farming is doing to the environment and human health. A study carried out in the UK calculated that the total hidden or “external” cost of intensive farming to the environment and human health was £2.34 billion (US$3.4 billion) per year or £208 ($300) per hectare. Friends of the Earth is campaigning with over 100 other organizations for the UK government to set targets and timetables for a significant increase in organic farming.

Organic food is also more affordable when it is sold directly to the consumer at farmers markets or via vegetable box schemes. And even if the food is not organic, buying local means reducing food miles and supporting smaller farmers, and there is evidence that farmers reduce pesticide use and increase diversity when they are supplying consumers directly. The sector is growing fast in the UK - there were no farmers markets here in 1997, and now there are 300. But farmers markets and veggie boxes do not yet offer low-income families regular access to healthy fresh food, as such schemes tend to be located in wealthier areas.

There are some innovative projects to overcome these inequities: for example, one project links farmers with low-income communities in Liverpool, delivering fresh produce directly to homes, and farmers markets in this area have also been deliberately located in lower-income areas. But if we are to really address the issue of “food deserts” and at the same time give farmers a viable alternative to selling to supermarkets, we need to keep small shops in business and supplied with local food.

We also need to be realistic. In the UK, some eight independent shops disappeared every day between 1968 and 1996, and the majority of people now shop in supermarkets. Therefore, we must also put pressure on the big retailers to sell Real Food. FoE is pressuring supermarkets to sell residue-free food - data for 1999 showed that about half of fruit and vegetables sold in supermarkets contains pesticides.

Several of the pesticides that occur regularly in our food are known to interfere with the hormone system, and others are basically nerve poisons. Fresh fruit and vegetables are very likely to contain pesticide residues, and yet are an essential part of a healthy diet. Indications so far are that the smaller supermarkets in the UK will respond to our demands, and this will help to put pressure on the five largest retailers. We will also be working with the Pesticide Action Network across the EU to increase the pressure on the biggest supermarket chains.

Sandra Bell, FoE England, Wales and Northern Ireland