6
Once upon a time a farmer sold his produce directly to the local fruit and vegetable shop. He made the 10-kilometre trip there twice a week and delivered his produce in the back of his truck. There was no agent. He didn’t need a logistics job sheet, a refrigerated semi-trailer and a 10,000-kilometre trip. There were no freight bills.
The fruit was probably of different sizes and had a few blemishes. That was acceptable back then. There was little waste.
The farmer didn’t employ a team of contract harvesters because the farm was small enough for the farmer and his two sons to pick and pack the vegetables. He therefore didn’t pay income tax, pay roll tax and employee superannuation.
The farmer probably didn’t owe a huge debt on the land because, back then, land was plentiful and cheap and had most likely been in his family for years. The bank didn’t take a cut.
The farmer didn’t fork out thousands of dollars a year in poly pipe and black plastic to maintain an irrigation system, fertiliser to make his crop grow fast, or fumigant to make the fruit last forever. Production was not that intensive.
The farmer wasn’t fighting his neighbour in court over spray drift that had wiped out half his tomato crop the previous year. The lawyers didn’t take a cut.
The farmer didn’t need to employ an agronomist to manage his insect problem, an accountant to do his BAS, a forward contractor to sell his crop, and a therapist to help him sleep at night. Life was simple.
Forty years on, the first person to suffer in our new industrialised system of food production is the farmer.
Farmers will tell you that there is no money in farming. For the majority, this is true. In real terms, Australian farmers’ income has declined over the past 40 years. Farmers’ terms of trade—the ratio of prices received to prices paid—are dismal. Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) figures show there has been a long-term decline of 1.8 per cent annually between 1970 and 2010.[1] In real terms, the price farmers receive for their product has declined significantly, while their costs to produce food have increased. But how can this be when the cost of food is at an all-time high?
Unfortunately, farmers are price takers. In general, they have no control over the prices they are paid for their product. They have no control over processing and distribution costs once the product leaves the farm gate. They certainly have no control over what the retailer charges for their produce in the shop. In real terms, prices have fallen steadily over time, meaning farm incomes have not kept pace with rising costs. This is the so-called ‘cost–price squeeze’ evidenced in the Australian farming sector since the 1970s. Conversely, the retail price of food has gone up.
‘So what?’ you might say. ‘That’s business. They chose to farm. What does this have to do with me?’ Well, poor returns affect the viability of Australian farmers. This, in turn, impacts the quality and integrity of the food on the supermarket shelf today. Simply put, the farmers’ viability affects what you eat: how fresh it is, how ‘local’ it is, if it is ethically produced. Farmers were once the backbone of Australia. If this is still the case, osteoporosis has set in.
The cost–price squeeze has permeated all sectors of conventional agriculture. The Australian beef industry has been one of the better performing sectors of Australian agriculture in recent times. It has ridden out many storms. But individual farmers still struggle to balance their books. The 2009 ABARES figures predict average beef cattle cash receipts to increase by 6 per cent while average total cash costs will increase by 7 per cent going into the next decade. To remain viable, farmers have had to reduce input costs. When costs are as low as possible and you are still not profitable, it might be time to get out. A lot have.
The other way to stay viable is to increase productivity, which is what Australian farmers have traditionally done to compensate for falling prices. Over the past 30 years to about 2004, farm productivity increased by an average of 2.8 per cent a year. This is unrivalled by any other sector of the Australian economy bar telecommunications and information technology. Farmers are not sitting idly on their hands. ABARES’ 2006–07 and 2008–09 Australian Farm Survey results showed that productivity growth relied on farmers becoming more innovative and adopting new technologies.[2] They also showed that the top 25 per cent of Australian cattle farmers had tried new types or breeds of cattle; changed feeding, handling and health practices; and grazing and pasture management.
Beef farmers have also proved they are able to manage risk. Since the inception of the Eastern Young Cattle Indicator (EYCI) in 1997 there has been an average 30 to 40 per cent difference between high and low prices paid for cattle in any one year.[3] This means a beast fetching $600 per head in February might only make $390 for the farmer a few months later. Market fluctuations like that make it hard for any businessperson to plan ahead.
As well as demonstrating their resilience, farmers who have stayed and survived have often taken the advice of government policy makers, research and development organisations, trade organisations and successful neighbours. They have got bigger, they have specialised, intensified, kept costs down and become more efficient and innovative—more industrious all round. Economies of scale have helped farmers stay in business.
The average beef cattle property covers about 1200 hectares in southern Australia or 11,000 hectares in the north of the country, and runs between 400 and 2500 head of cattle. These small to mid-sized businesses are likely to be run by farming families. But the number of farmers is declining and their average age is increasing. Today we have fewer farmers and in their place larger, more specialised beef cattle ‘businesses’.
Many of the large, profitable beef cattle holdings are run by wealthy Australian private companies or long-established farming families such as Stanbroke, the North Australian Pastoral Company (NAPCO), S. Kidman & Co Ltd, or the Australian Agricultural Company (AACo). These companies have bought up or, in recent times due to the increase in the price of rural land, leased formerly family-owned farms all over the country. Corporate farming is also taking off in Australia. International banking and investment giant the Macquarie Group runs 200,000 sheep and 200,000 cattle on 3 million hectares of pastoral land across Australia.[4] Since 2006 its Paraway Pastoral Company Limited has acquired 23 properties, mainly in southern and northern New South Wales. It also has large-scale holdings in the north of the country including Walhallow Station in the Northern Territory, Gregory Downs Station in north Queensland and Davenport Downs Station in the Channel Country of south-west Queensland. It is one of the largest farmland owners in Australia. Unlike small farmers, these big operators have deep pockets, which enable them to ride out the various waves of uncertainty in the industry including drought, flood and periods of low prices. ABARES figures show that larger holdings are more profitable than small farms.[5] Many small farms are kept afloat by off-farm income, with the farmer or his wife working a second job.
There are many reasons why Australian farmers struggle to make ends meet. Rural properties are not cheap. For example, for a beef farmer to acquire enough land to support a family year round through all seasonal and market conditions, he will need to spend well in excess of $1 million—no matter where he is in Australia. Rural land is expensive and, for cattle farming at least, the return on investment is questionable. Or as ABARES puts it in the Australian Farm Survey results 2008–09, ‘in recent times average land prices for broadacre farms have become historically high relative to the cash receipts per hectare generated by cash farming activity for this period’.[6] Just ask your accountant what that means. Yet banks are still lending money, and farmers are still buying farming land and hoping to make a living from it.
Farm debt increased by 18 per cent during 2007–08 up from a 10 per cent rise in 2006–07.[7] In 2000 a farmer needed 12 per cent of his income to service farm debt. Today he needs 30 per cent of it. Like all debt, farm debt puts pressure on farmers to make more money, more quickly to meet interest and repayment commitments. While most rural banks are working in partnership with farmers for win–win outcomes, all the pressure is on the farmer.
Cattle farming has a high capital outlay and is costly. The means of production is the land. Much of the farmer’s wealth is tied up in this asset. While some farmers might be multimillionaires on paper, they are not necessarily rich when it comes to cash in the bank. Beef farmers’ business profits have been negative for seven out of the last ten years. The average beef farming business in Australia in 2010 made a loss of $13,656.[8] So, like other business operators, farmers borrow against the value of their asset to get out of a tight cash-flow position.
Financial considerations also influence the nature of the business: the product produced, the practices and ethics used to produce it, the impact on the natural environment and to whom the product is sold. For example, a farmer who has a high level of debt, with monthly or six-monthly interest repayments, can’t afford to breed a calf and wait two years for it to become a fully grown and fattened bullock. He probably can’t even wait a year until the animal is saleable to the feeder market. Therefore, a backgrounding operation might better meet this farmer’s needs. ‘Backgrounders’ buy in young cattle of about 280 kilograms in weight, graze them on pasture for approximately six months, or until they reach 380 kilograms, and then sell them on to a feedlot. He might also choose to use a hormonal growth promotant (HGP) to ensure the fast growth rates in his cattle that he needs, particularly if he has forward-contracted cattle. Beef producers who use HGPs are able to turn off, or produce, 10 to 30 per cent more beef without buying in more stock. In 2007–08 HGPs stimulated an extra 7 to 8 per cent of beef production in the Australian herd. This is the equivalent of adding another 2.25 million cattle to the national herd. A single HGP pellet, which costs $3 and lasts for 100 days, will help guarantee that the animal reaches the required weight by the required time.
The farmer may feel morally uneasy about growing his cattle in this way, but if he wants to meet his financial commitments, this is one way of doing it. Ethically dubious choices can be made out of financial necessity. Likewise, he may also be tempted to run more cattle in paddocks that can’t support them, putting the natural environment at risk. It sometimes comes down to the survival of the fittest, and as Charles Darwin says in On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, it is a ‘cruel, amoral’ world out there.[9]
The world can seem particularly cruel and amoral to the beef farmer when he receives $1.90 per kilogram for a quality animal at the farm gate—on a good day—and the quality cuts of beef on the supermarket shelf sell for $22 per kilogram the same day. Even the poorer quality cuts fetch $10 per kilo. The consumer no doubt feels the same way. Either someone is making some serious money along the way or there are huge costs or inefficiencies in the production and distribution chain.
Farmers tend to blame the middlemen—the processor and the retailer—for this. When the steer leaves the farmer’s gate it will go via the local livestock saleyards or direct to the ‘processor’, who buys the animal and turns it into meat. The processor operates the abattoirs and meat-processing plant. The processor then sells its meat to retail supermarket chains, food manufacturers, restaurants, fast-food chains and other outlets both in Australia and overseas. These retail outlets then sell it to you, the consumer.
Figures included in a submission by the Western Australia red meat industry to the 2008 Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Inquiry into the Competitiveness of Retail Prices for Standard Groceries painted a realistic picture of the costs involved in taking a steer from the farm gate to steak on the supermarket shelf.[10] While the inquiry’s report was made in 2008, the cost–price ratio remains similar in 2011. The submission showed that the farmer is paid $1.95 per kilogram for a good quality, fat steer. Out of this price the farmer takes the costs of feed, veterinary treatment, stock handling and labour for the life of the beast. He also takes out fixed costs to run a farm, including maintenance of fences, bores, pumps, water pipelines, troughs, dams, water licence fees, machinery, fuel, electricity, insurance and other day-to-day expenses. Transport to the saleyards and the agent’s commission to sell the beast are the final expenses. There is very little change out of $1.95. Most cattle farmers make on average between 1 per cent and 3 per cent profit margin; that’s 3 or 4 cents on every kilogram of beef they produce.[11]
Processors say it costs them about $4.31 per kilogram to kill the beast, cut it into smaller parts, package and chill it. The Australian meat-processing industry is capital-intensive, heavily automated, has strict occupational workplace health and safety standards for its workers, and high food safety standards for its product. This all costs money. It costs a further $0.10 per kilo to transport the sides of meat to the supermarket. The retailer adds another $3.42 to slice, package and display, promote and sell the meat. Coles says it adds a 3.5 per cent profit margin as well.
We must also keep in mind that during the steer’s journey from paddock to plate, the saleable weight of the animal reduces by 65 per cent—usually at the processor’s, where the bones, hide and other parts not used as meat are removed. According to the processor, the added value and cost of transforming the beast into meat effectively increases the price per kilo by 80 per cent. Processors will tell you that it is this that accounts for the difference in price per kilogram between the farm gate and retail price.
The processors are, in the main, no longer the local family-run butcher shop, as was the case 40 years ago. The local, small meat processor has been forced out of business by large processing plants owned by multinational or major Australian companies. Companies such as JBS, Teys-Cargill, Nippon Meat Packers Australia, Australian Country Choice and Stanbroke Beef, just to name a few, are the processors. They are large, efficient, influential operators producing a consistent product on a mass scale. They work hand in glove with large beef producers at the start of the meat supply chain all the way through to the large supermarkets who sell the meat at the other end. In many cases, beef breeding and backgrounding properties, feedlots, abattoirs, meat-processing plants and beef brand names are all owned by the one entity. This entity then negotiates large, long-term contracts to supply meat to the big supermarkets, food processors and export customers. Between them, these players have integrated the supply chain. Owning and operating the means of production all the way down the chain means they have the advantages of economies of scale, and more control over input costs, price and hence profitability. And a small, individual farmer selling to a giant like this will take the price he is given.
But ABARES figures show that the Australian meat-processing industry, like farmers, has been doing it tough. Reduced numbers of cattle slaughtered due to drought, floods and other constraints on livestock numbers; the high Australian dollar; and reduced exports during the past five years have all seen revenue to processors drop by 6.8 per cent.[12] Meat processing might have a large dollar turnover, but it is a low margin business. In 2009, Australia’s second-biggest beef-processing company, the Queensland-based family-owned Teys Bros (now Teys-Cargill), is reported to have made $30 million profit from $1.2 billion revenue in 2009.[13] While this sounds like a lot of money, it works out to be only 2.5 per cent profit.
Other people blame the supermarket duopoly for poor returns to the farmer and high retail prices. Coles and Woolworths are the big retail players in Australia. Between them they sell half of all red meat sold here. The number of independent butcher shops selling meat has declined since the 1970s, although this decline has stabilised in recent times. Independent supermarkets such as IGA and ALDI take a smaller share of the market.
Supermarkets provide the convenience of having all food products available in the one store, so many consumers choose to buy their meat there. The big supermarkets negotiate long-term contracts with meat processors to supply a huge volume of meat. Smaller processors just can’t compete for these contracts. Australian Country Choice (ACC) owns beef properties, feedlots and abattoirs, and supplies a large portion of all fresh beef and veal sold through Coles supermarkets. While the Woolworths supply chain does not appear to be as vertically integrated, its meat is still supplied by a variety of large players thereby benefiting from those important economies of scale.
Some consumer groups and parts of the Australian beef industry suspect supermarkets are working together to keep retail prices high. While Australian red meat production has increased over time, domestic consumption has fallen. ABARES figures show that there has been a drop in demand for beef but a corresponding increase in demand for poultry and pig meat, which partly reflects the fact that beef is comparatively expensive to buy. Some argue this is caused by a lack of retail competition.
In a submission to the 2008 Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Inquiry into Competitiveness of Retail Prices for Standard Groceries, the Australian Beef Association (ABA) argued that Australian cattle prices were 25 per cent lower than US cattle prices yet Australian consumers paid twice as much for their beef as consumers in the United States.[14] The ABA claimed Coles and Woolworths had ‘used market power to limit competition and manipulate prices to their mutual advantage’. The results of this behaviour, the submission stated, were unsustainably low prices paid to farmers and a technically inefficient beef processing and distribution chain. However, the commission inquiry found this to be untrue and instead said that the market was open and big enough for everyone to play. It concluded that supermarkets were not adding an unreasonable margin to the price of their red meat.[15] Many still disagree.
It is hard to know who to blame for what. The 2007 Australian Competition and Consumer Commission ‘Examination of prices paid to farmers for livestock and the prices paid by Australian consumers for red meat’ concluded that the long and complex supply chain meant turning livestock into fresh meat was just plain costly.[16] So maybe for the farmer it is just a dud business to be in? Or maybe the consumer doesn’t realise how much more his meat could cost.
If beef farmers are doing it tough, one wonders how the Australian dairy farmer has survived during this period of farming industrialisation and corporatisation. Perhaps there were some early signals it would not be an easy road ahead for dairying in Australia. In 1788 Captain Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet brought ashore at Sydney Cove seven cows and two bulls. The cows were to provide the basis of Australia’s dairy herd. This small herd was moved to Parramatta. However, the cattle promptly escaped into the bush and were not seen again for seven years.[17] Once recaptured from the Parramatta scrub, the herd had grown to 61. So, like today’s dairying industry, the pioneers had the ability to prosper in adversity and reinvent themselves when necessary. By 1891 there were almost 1 million dairy cows in Australia. By 1900 there was hardly a township even in the most remote parts of Australia that did not have its own fresh milk supply.[18]
That has all changed. The number of dairy farms has fallen by two-thirds during the past 30 years, from 22,000 farms to 7511, and is continuing to decline. The average size of the herd has increased from 85 cows per farm to 220.[19] There has also been a shift to very large farms of more than 1000 cows. It is that get-big-or-get-out thing again.
Likewise, the many small dairy co-operatives which bought the milk from the farmer, processed and distributed it, have been taken over by large public, private and multinational processing companies. Fonterra from New Zealand, Kirin from Japan, and Parmalat from Italy well and truly have the market share of fresh milk. An added challenge for farmers was the deregulation of the industry in Australia in 2000. Government pricing subsidies were withdrawn. Many small, less-efficient dairy farmers left the industry. The bigger ones who stayed expanded further to stay in business. These changes turned farms into factories. The resulting problems that go with factories came too: the cow became a unit of production, milk a commodity, and workers robots. Social and environmental bottom lines were dwarfed by the financial. The cow has been milked for all she was worth.
Dairy farmers have been skimmed of any fat. Look no further than their profits. Before the industry was deregulated in 2000, it cost farmers $0.35 to produce a litre of milk. The farmer was paid $0.45 per litre. In 2009–10 it cost the farmer $0.56 to produce a litre of milk. He was paid $0.56 per litre by the milk processor.[20] In 2011 it was forecast that famers would be paid $0.53 per litre but that costs of production would spiral beyond this amount giving farmers no return at all.[21] Meanwhile, a litre of branded milk sells for up to $1.75 a litre in the supermarket.[22] Generic or supermarket home-brand milk normally sells for $1.25 per litre, price wars permitting. Where does the difference go? The farmer gets no more. Since deregulation, there is no longer regulation of pricing or production in the Australian dairy industry. There is no government subsidy of price to guarantee farmers’ survival and milk’s availability. The industry is totally at the whim of the market. While this system provides consumers with cheaper milk, it is at the farmer’s expense.
Farmers, themselves, do not set the price they receive for their milk. They negotiate contracts with processors. Prior to the advent of large multinational processors, farmers negotiated with local dairy cooperatives that were owned by the farmers and aimed only to cover processing costs, not make a profit. There are still a few successful, independently owned, Australian dairy co-operatives, such as the Murray Goulbourn Co-operative in Victoria and Challenge Dairy Co-operative in Western Australia. However, they concentrate on manufactured dairy products more so than fresh milk. The demise of the co-operative has seen the farmer’s bargaining power reduce. It is tough dealing with the multinationals. Farmers accept the price they are offered. What choice do they have? Because more than half of Australia’s milk production today is exported, the international market price for milk determines what farmers are paid. Or so farmers are told.
But is this really the way it works? A comparison of international farm-gate milk prices shows Australian dairy farmers receive less than those in other advanced economies including the United States, the European Union and Canada.[23] Like Australia, these countries are high-profile dairy exporters too. If global price alone sets milk prices, why aren’t Australian farmers paid more? Or overseas dairy farmers paid less?
Sadly for the farmer, there appears to be no correlation between what it costs farmers to produce the milk and the prices they receive. Or between the farmers’ costs and the prices the processors negotiate with the large retail chains, either. In business terms, this is sheer madness. Farm-gate prices have remained relatively unchanged between 1992 and 2009, but retail prices have increased significantly.[24] We are also buying less branded milk but more home-brand or generically labelled milk. In 2009 generic supermarket brand milk made up 52 per cent of all milk sold in Australia compared to 25 per cent in 2000. Branded milk, like Pauls or Dairy Farmers, is where the processors make their profits, not through large-volume supplies of home-brand milk. Supermarket chains buy their generically labelled milk from processors by tender. The tender to supply will last for two or three years. Only large processors can credibly bid for contracts due to the scale of the transaction. Theoretically, at least, this profit flows back to the farmer. In 2000 the price difference for a litre of branded and a litre of generically branded milk was $0.21 cents. In 2009 it was $0.71 cents.
The 2009 Senate Inquiry into competition and pricing in the Australian Dairy Industry found that the market for milk was far from perfectly competitive due to the limited and diminishing number of milk processors and also the duopoly of supermarkets in Australia. As Philip Depiazzi from the Western Australian Farmers Federation summed up in his submission to the inquiry: ‘The national tendering process and the amount of volume sold through the big supermarkets enables supermarkets to squeeze the processors, because with that volume it becomes an imperative part of that processor’s business to ensure that they do not lose those tenders ... The only thing left for the processor to do then is to, in turn, squeeze the dairy farmer, and the only thing left for the farmers to squeeze is the cow’s tit.’[25] As if it hasn’t been squeezed enough?
The inquiry found it difficult to determine into exactly whose pocket the profits from milk went. Coles supplied information that suggested 20 per cent of the retail price charged went to the retailer, 45 per cent to the processor, and 35 per cent to the farmer.[26] Other retailers and processors were less forthcoming with their figures so a comparison can’t be made.
To the disbelief of dairy industry bodies around Australia, in early 2011 Coles actually slashed its Coles brand milk prices by 33 per cent to $1 per litre. The peak body representing dairy farmers, Australian Dairy Farmers (ADF), challenged Coles to prove that the milk price cuts would not affect farm-gate milk prices paid to dairy farmers. Coles said it was not reducing the price it paid to milk processors so it should not disadvantage the farmer; Coles would absorb the costs. ADF said this ‘defied logic’ and that it was inevitable the price cuts, which cost Coles $30 million a year, would be passed on to farmers via lower prices for their milk or to consumers via higher prices of other products in Coles’ stores.[27] Milk processors make their profit from their branded milk. Aggressive promotion of home-brand milk at the expense of branded milk will eventually hurt the dairy farmer when milk processors lose profits.
There is every chance that price wars like this will knock branded milk off the shelf for good. Australian competition and consumer expert Associate Professor Frank Zumbo says once this happens the price of home-brand milk will go up as supermarkets have no incentive to keep it low. In the long run, consumers will gain nothing and farmers will lose everything.[28] He notes that slowly but surely the big supermarkets’ home-brand products are pushing branded product off the shelf, across all aisles, to the detriment of suppliers and consumers. He suggests this will not only affect price but may lower quality.
There has already been debate in Australia over the use of a cheese-making by-product called permeate to ‘water down’ home-brand milk, making it cheaper to process. Dairy processors who use permeate say it is a natural part of milk and is used to standardise not dilute milk. Many in the dairy industry support the use of permeate as a nutritious, healthy and perfectly legal product.[29] But some consumer groups claim the use of permeate in fresh milk creates a different product and should be labelled accordingly so consumers can choose. Either way, during the Coles milk price war campaign, Australian Dairy Farmers appealed to shoppers to buy branded milk, butter and cream as paying a little more supported Australian dairy farmers.[30]
To add insult to injury, the Coles campaign took place during the 2011 Queensland and Victorian floods, which severely affected the very centres of Australian dairying. Hundreds of dairy farmers had cows and fodder washed away and infrastructure destroyed. At the time, Brian Tessmann from the Queensland Dairyfarmers’ Organisation said slashing milk prices sent a wrong message to consumers when dairy farmers, in fact, needed a price rise to sustain their recovery from the crisis.[31]
Price wars or no price wars, Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that Australian dairy farmers are constantly in crisis. Forty-four per cent of dairy farms had a negative cash income during the 2009–10 year. Farm debt had increased by 20 per cent in the period 2008–10, with the average dairy farmer owing $683,000.[32] ABARES’ 2010 Farm Survey Results predicted the average dairy farm would make a loss of $44,000 for that year.[33] While it didn’t turn out quite as badly as that for dairy farmers—the national average loss per farm in 2011 was $1400—the state average for Victoria was a loss of $21,200 per farm and for Tasmania a loss of $51,900.[34] Milk production fell and is predicted to stay about the same in future years. The only shining light on the horizon is that there is a growing demand for dairy products on the international market, as unless something changes drastically, Australian dairy farmers will continue to be an endangered species. Australian consumers, retailers and milk processors should thank their lucky stars that Australian dairy farmers are only endangered and not militant like the French species, who protested the drop in wholesale milk prices in 2009 by blocking French city streets with tractors, stampeding their cows and spilling milk in the streets.
Farmers across all food-producing sectors—horticulture, grains, eggs—have similar stories. The small farmer struggles to compete in this deregulated market and make a profit. Although he may produce a very good product on farm, he has no control once it leaves the farm gate. In Australia we are seeing a shift from the small, family-owned farm to much larger operations, or indeed the takeover of farms by large corporations or multinational companies with vertically integrated supply chains. The commercial meat chicken industry is dominated by two major companies, Inghams Enterprises and Baiada Poultry (incorporating the Steggles brand). Between them they grow and process more than 80 per cent of the chicken meat eaten in Australia.[35] They own the means of production right down to the farm where their chicken growing is contracted to farmers who do it the way the company instructs.
‘If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’ is the attitude of some farmers, who give up their independence for security of some sort under the wing of the big companies where, in the long run, there is no guarantee they will be better off. At first glance this may not appear to be a negative, just progress. After all, corporatisation, industrialisation and vertical integration have happened in many other spheres of business and industry and the world has not ended.
But is food not sacred? Like air and water, food is rather important. Should food and those who produce it not have some special protection from the vagaries of the market? If ‘progress’ saw all the makers of electric towel warmers, jewellery for pets, and nose-hair trimmers go to the wall, it would be unfortunate for those businesspeople and their customers, but not the end of the world. Can we say the same about food? Perhaps we need a complete paradigm shift around our system of food production and distribution. Surely there must be a fairer, simpler and more sustainable means of producing and distributing our food for all concerned?