supermarkets and the food system

Here's a two parter I'd published in the examiner in January. It discussed why some organic producers dislike supermarkets....I'll stick my critique on the DEFRA/MBS report up here soon

You could call the relationship between the organic movement and supermarkets biting the hand that feeds you. Or, depending upon your perspective, you could describe the situation more as the hard hand of economics slapping the impudent nippy little organic pup.

According to the latest (2006) Bord Bia research, 85% of all organic food sold in Ireland is sold through supermarkets. Yet this same research found that some organic producers, �on a point of principle� (to use the specific words used by Lorcan Bourke of Bord Bia at a recent organic conference) refuse to deal with supermarkets. So its not that the producers of the other 15% (who are numerically greater than 15% of producers) can�t get their products in � they have no intention of going next nor near the places. Why is this?

In general, supermarkets have given us a cornucopia of choice, an abundance of options and an array of alternatives. We can have whatever, whenever. Whether its strawberries in winter, or readymade meal, one for every day of the week an (Indian, Italian, Chinese, Thai, Mexican...) have never had it so good. Especially in a Celtic Tiger context where we are more and more busy, with both men and women in the workforce. We spend less and less time and money on cooking, and food is, for the majority of people, nothing more than a thing that gets us through the day. Supermarkets provide cheap and cheerful choice and convenience, the mantras of modern Ireland.

So what�s the problem with these organic producers who don�t like supermarkets then? On the one hand, supermarkets are an obvious growth area for organics, and in Ireland and the UK have pumped a fortune into promoting and developing various organic brands. In other parts of the developed world, notably North American and Australia, this is not the case at all. Walmart in the US have only belatedly joined in on the organic revolution, and have done so to a fanfare of accusations that much of their organic produce isn�t actually organic at all.

Back home in Ireland, some supermarkets have a great reputation within the organic sector � Scally�s Supervalu in Colnakilty being a standout example.

Yet in my own years of research I have come across this same feeling of antipathy amongst organic producers towards supermarkets found in the Bord Bia research.

There are some basic practical things - like not getting paid for months. Sometimes, the standard waiting time for payment can be up to three months.

Putting all your eggs into the one basket is another worry. If you are dropped, or squeezed, you have little power when you have no other avenues for selling your product. Even those whose produce ends up on the supermarket shelves worry about the sheer scale and power of the modern retailer.

Your product might turn out to be the wrong shape, size, colour, texture, but superior in a multitude of ways. Quality depends upon subjective interpretation and perspective. Your product might be leading edge; unwaxed fruit, so long the preserve of artisan and organic producers, is finally socially acceptable in city supermarkets. Five years ago, that would quite simply not have happened. Recently, I encountered an organic grower who claimed to have �ploughed �30,000 (old money) of lettuce into the ground, because they were the wrong size for the supermarket�

Supermarkets� lack of malleability is another related issue. Small, innovative products need a distinct display, and the remote control management techniques of the vast majority of supermarkets isn�t subtle enough to provide this. The two of the products featured last week that are sold through supermarkets - Chill Baby organic babyfood and Blazing Salads� artisan organic bread � have passionate and forward thinking producers who fight for specialist display areas. The products would be lost elsewhere in the supermarket. Where they succeed in getting specialist dislays, their products succeed. Joe and Martin Fitzmaurice of Blazing Salads have waxed lyrical about their preference for small, independent supermarkets over and above the bigger chains for this very reason.

But there is so much more to it that this.

Some of the issues some organic producers have with supermarkets cut a little deeper. Some are stubborn, ideologically driven pioneering producers who hate the thoughts of the massive mark up supermarkets make, or the thoughts of their food going off on the shelves. So they innovate. Organic producers have always been to the forefront of alternative distribution schemes (box schemes, farmers� markets) and will continue to be (direct digital delivery a la Ballybrado here or Riverford in the UK).

But this latter point, the one on personality types, actually goes deeper again. Some see supermarkets as part of the problem. According to the alternative discourse on how food (and to some extent life) should be, some of the problems include concentrations of power; declining food nutritional levels; the evisceration of town centres; the move of power from producers to distributors; the vacuousness of modern life; the tailoring of food supply to suit cars and road expansion schemes; the ignorance in urban consumers of the realities of rural life and food production.

It is also noteworthy that the countries with the strongest food cultures in Europe (e.g. Italy and France, and the general Mediterranean rim) have amongst the lowest supermarket penetration into the food supply system. Where supermarkets do function in the Mediterranean rim, all the processes so familiar to us in Ireland and the UK, such as own brand vertical integration, just-in-time delivery and so on, are completely underdeveloped.

People who study organic farmers for a living (yes, they are out there, and I myself am one of them!) sometimes define organic farmers in fundamentally different ways to other farmers.

Hilary Tovey (TCD) uses three interrelated categories to describe what she calls the knowledge interests of organic farmers. These are cosmological, organisational and technological. Cosmological simply means ideological, or belief-orientated. Organisational means a fundamental desire to change how food is produced, distributed and consumed � organising these things differently. Technological means a belief that farming should happen differently.

Tovey points out that the three are inter-related � as an example, there is an ideological side to organisation; farmers� markets have lots of socio-cultural and environmental benefits, other than just giving local farmers a business incubation service. Whether it�s the opportunity to justify the differences in your products, the chance to see actual humans (farming is a very solitary life at times); a way to fight food miles practically, a way to keep cash circulating locally, or just to take some power over your product back, the list goes on.

Likewise, there is an ideological side to the technical - not using various agri-industrial products and processes, (such as synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and so on) is related to a different belief in how food should be produced.

And even if you move on from the farmers� market, there is always another organic producer with these beliefs and practices to replace you. So the movements� knowledge interests get replenished.

The conventional food system (the Department of Ag, the IFA, Teagasc, supermarkets etc), when it deals with organics, tries to foreground the technological, and background, or ridicule, the other two. So scale, and an export and mainstream retail orientation are encouraged in organics by these players, whatever about the historical pitfalls these processes may have thrown up in the past.

But still, stubborn and at the same time innovative organic producers keep on keeping on, while some are replaced in the movement by fresh young blood. Importantly, for those who study organics, a personnel change, or an incorporation of a particular organic producer into the more mainstreamed food supply system does not mean that the movement ends. The ideas and practices, the beliefs and actions just get to live on in different people.

Simply put, there will always be a bit more to organics than the production of a technically different food.