Organic battle: Delia vs Monbiot
Two of TrashBlanc.com’s favourites appeared on BBC Radio Four this weekend debating organic food. George Monbiot, environmentalist, anti-capitalist and all round do-gooder, and Delia Smith, middle England’s favourite go-to-girl when it comes to traditional Brit food recipes.
TB missed the show and we can’t find it on the BBC’s iPlayer. However we are led to believe Delia has no time for organic food and by all accounts takes pleasure in shipping various variety of pea from Kenya to the UK. No doubt for the half time spread at Norwich City football club where she’s a big time shareholder. In fact Delia is convinced this does a lot of good for the Kenyan economy. We here are TrashBlanc.com aren’t.
Has Delia ever heard of cash crops, does she know about the Fair Trade movement, is she concerned with the central distribution and long range transportation of food? Absolutely no idea and as we can’t find the show in question we’ll just have to come to our own conclusions. If you can help us on this one do drop us a line.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/mainframe.shtml?http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio4.shtml?listen
It was on PM on Saturday!
O
It is bad science and bad economics to suggest that either organic or fair trade produce is more beneficial to the planet or to people in the developing world.
Encouraging the growth of specific crops in villages and co-ops that meet the narrow FT criteria rewards over-production and stifles crop diversification. This negatively affects producers who are not eligible for fair trade schemes. It creates a false economy, bolstering some so others can suffer.
It is not clear how it is greener to produce smaller quantities of food on larger quantities of land in a manner that requires more labour. Asides from more+more = less. It also requires more vehicles delivering small quantities of food to small shops and markets. This means people must to drive further (/more frequently) to acquire the goods they need.
Organic? Fair trade? Which? Both are protectionist. There is no such thing as good capitalism. Shopping is not a political act. The middle classes cannot buy their way out, even if organic food is an indulgence.
The initial argument being made by Monbiot in this piece was for consuming locally produced seasonal vegetables. He was denigrating the middle-class thinking which has led Delia to believe that we can consume what we want and as much of what we want whenever we want it - as long as we can afford to pay for it.
The idea of indulging in Tesco’s “organic” avocados flown from Cental America wrapped in three layers of plastic is perverse. The organic movement has no doubt industrialised but in Western Europe, the world biggest market for organic goods, there’s a massive expansion recently in outlets (farmer’s markets etc) for local produce. Airfreight accounts for as little as 2% of the UK’s organic supplies.
While the complicated structures of agri-business and global supply mean that developing countries’ farmers benefit in the short-term from cash crops, the concentration on high yields encourage monoculture and practices which have long- term ecological and economical consequences on their own communities. The Fair Trade movement was established to address this very problem and not as a marketing tool for supermarkets to sell more bananas.
You are attacking the wrong dog Negative Smith. There may be some flaws in how the movement has progressed since the 70’s but the very concept of organic and fair trade food is a good one, despite having been hijacked by corporate industry.
Shopping involves choice. Every choice is a political act. Just shop wisely and shop less.
I shan’t argue with you on so called organic locally sourced food. It’s one interpretation of the facts v’s another. One could produce counter claims, in nuce, 1. there are no health risks, 2. land doesn’t need to be left idle, and 3. we would use one third less land with intensely farmed food.
One ought not confuse choice with freedom. Even so the basis of so called Western autonomy is the servitude of others and ourselves to the systematic demands of a whorish world history. Capitalism is contradictory; like the shark, it must keep moving or it will die. It must constantly expand and rebrand in order to merely remain the same. Fair trade is one of the subtler examples of its ability to expand. But one cannot escape the initial dialectic with price fixing and water melon smiles. If you want to know how fair the west is, watch out for the British aid and devolopment package being established to bolster the Zimbabwean economy. And see what conditions and stipulations the crafty Brits employ. It will effectively amount to a corporate buy out of Zim, coca-colonisation.
I just think it’s naive and complacent to think what one puts in their trolly is a political act. It shows how little we believe in politics…how politics always already means capitalism.