Local Economic Solutions for Sustainability
Extending Localisation
Localise West Midlands
The Warehouse
54-57 Allison Street
Digbeth
Birmingham
B5 5TH
Tel: 0121 685 1155
Fax: 0121 643 3122
Email: info@localisewestmidlands.org.uk
Registered in England and Wales as a company limited by guarantee (not for profit) no: 6239211
Extending Localisation
- an exploratory report
Food
There are potential savings of £2bn in reduced environmental costs if the UK's population ate produce from within a 12 mile radius . The interrelatedness of all parts of the supply chain: we need local shops, wholesalers and producers to be viable for it to work.
Negative trends
- Trade liberalisation has led to unnecessary food miles that serve no useful purpose- such as food swaps where two countries both produce, say, milk, and supply it to each other.
- Many good local food initiatives do not affect mainstream food supply which continues to centralise.
- Consumer demand for out-of-season products makes for energy-intensive local greenhouse growing. This can have a higher environmental impact than non-local food grown in its right season.
- In developing countries the overdependence on food crops can damage communities and food security, pits poorer countries against each other for the same markets, in which there will always be a loser, and can bring less income than other economic options.
- Regulation is becoming an ever-increasing burden designed for larger scale and more distant systems but suffered most by smaller producers. 'Food labels' such as organic status can work the same way, where with local supply chains local knowledge can be a better quality control.
- Increasing dominance of centralised supermarket supply chains.
- Producer collaboration has been encouraged by DEFRA but has not quite gone to plan; rural hubs seem relatively dormant and the national school fruit scheme remarks that local producers have 'not managed to collaborate' to supply together. Perhaps too time-consuming in an already high workload.
- In the UK and across the world, small-scale and mixed agriculture
has been made almost economically unviable by a variety of factors including
free market pressures, the use of subsidies and regulation, increasingly
unpredictable weather and fluctuations in global food prices during
the recession.
Positive trends, good practice and opportunities
The sector where there is most understanding and the highest number of localising initiatives, but many of these remain in some way niche activities.
The West Midlands' central conurbation and rural 'hinterland' provides the potential for the conurbation to be more locally fed.
- High oil prices may encourage local food supply chains to become more mainstream.
- Public procurement has achieved some successes in the region: Staffordshire county council's three-year meat contract with 8 independent butchers to supply local meat; Shopshire has awarded contracts for school food to several local producers through breaking up the county into several areas. The UK-wide public sector food procurement initative (PSFPI) has facilitated related studies in the region.
- Fair trade initiatives provides those in the West Midlands with a way of ensuring they can support similar principles in developing countries (co-operative management, fair wages, smaller scale farming). There are also strong movements for food sovereignty such as Via Campesina and UBINIG, Bangladesh.
- Some producer co-operatives make trade links with each other between countries to trade in surplus or unseasonal goods: Italian El Tamiso and East Anglian Eostre have linked so that El Tamiso can supply goods that are out of season in the UK, and produce arrives often fresher than by conventional distributors.
- The Wholesome Food Association provides an organic 'food label' that does not involve the lengthy, expensive and bureaucratic systems of other labels, but simply asks producers to commit not only to high standards of natural production but also to allow any interested potential customers to visit the farm to check conditions for themselves.
- In the North of England and the South, supermarket chains Booths and to a lesser extent Waitrose have sound local sourcing policies for a good deal of their produce and more decentralised supply chains - at least in comparison with the major 4 chains. Waitrose additionally has the local multiplier and democracy benefit of being worker-owned as part of the John Lewis partnership. But Booths has no presence in the West Midlands and there is no local equivalent; and Waitrose have only a 9-store presence in the region.
- Using wholesalers: the WM Farming and Food team commissioned Heart of England Fine Foods and Localise WM to conduct two separate pieces of research: the former to map all contracts in the region to produce a database to facilitate local producers to supply to them; and the latter to map wholesalers in the region who are prepared to source locally for public procurement to facilitate procurers in finding them. This has led on to a further feasibility study on using Birmingham wholesale markets as a hub for local produce to supply into public procurement.
- Prevalence of farmer's markets, community supported agriculture and box schemes: around 30 farmers' markets in the West Midlands, the Soil Association website lists 4 CSA schemes in the region, but this is probably not comprehensive. Such schemes provide new markets mainly for dedicated customers (raising awareness, high traceability, raised farm income, CSA sharing risk and responsibilities) but the traditional shop method tends to be better for most producers and consumers.
- An advantage of a localised approach is a heightened awareness of footprints of different food types; localisation of feedcrops for livestock might lead to a higher proportion of pasture-fed crops and mixed rotation farming. The footprint involved might also lead to a culture of eating less, but higher quality, meat and dairy products.
Potential recommendations
- In support organisations, a strong focus on local seasonality in procurement to avoid 'wrong outcomes' in energy use.
- Can producer collaboration be made easier by any form of public support? Particularly for national school fruit scheme (DEFRA case study).
- A global coalition campaign to change international food trade law including the right for all countries to protect small-scale domestic food markets but also for the abolition of non-redistributive subsidies for export
- Research into and support for pasture-raised livestock as part of a mixed farming system.
- Depending on outcomes of feasibility studies, to get regional support
for the use of the wholesale markets as a hub for distribution of local
food, whether for public or other procurement.