Supervalu & Organic Growers: partnering up

Is this, finally, a little bit of the farmers' market spirit right in the centre of the supermarket? Is this some sort of a solution to the imponderable of supermarket dominance and a lack of significantly penetrating alternatives, especially in the UK or Ireland (well, really the whole English speaking world, where supermarkets have a hegemony when compared to mainland Europe)

And does SuperValu's franchise structure actively allow for such a thing to develop?

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Organic vegetable sales up 150% for the retailer and twice the area planted for the grower. That, in straightforward terms, is what has happened in Glanmire thanks to the new arrangement SuperValu have with organic growers.

Walking into the Glanmire Supervalu, you cannot fail to be impressed by what is Ireland's largest Supervalu store. What's more impressive, from an organic perspective, is the dedicated island one organic vegetable grower, Colum O Regan, has all to himself.

Supervalu's fresh fruit and veg people have a direct, one-to-one relationship with organic growers all over Ireland, and it is, if you will, a growing phenomenon.

(Pic: Una Ni Broin of Beechlawn house, one of the Enterprises that initiated the SuperValu organic growers initiative)

Rather than centralised distribution and anonymous placement within the rows and rows of various vegetables, Colum O Regan's veg has its own display area out on its own, with dedicated blackboards, Specially commissioned photographs, and even regular appearances by the man himself at stacking time.

These islands act as a little organic oasis amid rows and rows of self-same produce.

I asked Emma Rochford of Musgraves about this recent departure for their SuperValu stores. �To allow us to differentiate from other multiplies in the market, we have decided to work with local organic growers, bringing them into our stores and giving their product treatment in a different way.�

�We treat the local organic growers differently in that we guarantee them a particular space in the store in which to merchandise their product. This area or section will be dedicated to them. We then support them by providing the growers with complementary bespoke point of sale materials � blackboards on which to write their name and key offer, and personalised communications � so we have their image on the posters or shelf talkers, allowing locals to really identify the growers�

She continues �SuperValu recruits growers to come on board and helps to get them retail ready. The arrangements however are made solely between the individual stores and growers in question. We issue a number of guidelines or recommendations but between them the retailers and growers come to their own agreements on price, delivery dates, range of products supplied and so on. There is no fee or charge to the growers for supplying the stores.�

�They do really know what they are doing� according to Colum. �When they give you advice on how to sell more of this or that, through better use of your display area, it works�. He cites highlighting a round figure value offer on the blackboard as an example: �when you put the beetroot at a 2E deal, and put this on the blackboard, the customer really goes for it.�

It all began with Padraig Fahy and Una Ni Bhroin in east Galway in early 2009, who supplied 6 SuperValu stores in the region. Receiving various supports (e.g. grants for packaging and chilled delivery) and training, the couple initially road tested just two varieties. Now, they stock 15 seasonal lines.

According to Emma �Last year in 2010 we worked with 8 growers who supplied 20 of our stores. Our aim would be to have growers supplying 50 stores this summer. We currently expect to work with 14 growers over this summer season but are actively seeking more growers. Our aim would be to continue to grow the project year on year and to be in a position to have this initiative in 100 stores by 2013.�

According to Colum O 'Regan, the growers who supply Supervalu have started to �get together to swap knowledge informally�: �its very precise, even down to the pure agronomy of the whole thing. How do you supply a tonne of carrots every week? Two tonnes, ten tonnes, what ever it is. And at a good quality.�

Nevertheless, the numbers Supervalu are aiming for are ambitious. Already they are talking to growers who are in conversion about future opportunities.

�There are Supervalus in many towns in Ireland, and there might not be the grower there, yet, to supply to the required volume�. �But� he adds, �this sort of set-up might give them the confidence to start�.

The most local local food event ever

�We boiled the sea water to make salt�. So says Sinead Ni Ghairbhith, organiser of the second annual Clare Harvest Banquet.

That's when I knew that this was in fact the most local local food event I'd ever been to.

The Banquet is a fundraiser for a street children's charity in Mongolia, Astral. Almost 300 are in attendance, and the mood is mighty, with a host of local performers complementing the food.

(pic: a chef, a farmer and a consumer at a Dungarvan farmers' market: says it all really. Copyright Oliver Moore)

Ireland's only Tibetan Lama and even Duncan Stewart himself are here: the latter is making a programme about food and the environment, the former a friend of Ni Ghairbhith.

Indeed the Tibetan and Mongolian dimensions really reveal how positively 'glocal' the whole show is: a local event aware of the globe in all its positive and negative nuances.

The event also acts as something of an agri-food experiment. The aim is to have a completely local event, where all, literally all, the ingredients come from the county of Clare.

Its as if Clare is a blockaded island during a war. Unlike frugal but clever wartime rationing, like boiling the egg in your kettle on the range while making a cup of tea, the aim is to actually have a brilliant banquet. So this is a glorious, spectacular celebration of the resourcefulness and ingenuity and, most of all, of the food of the county.

Even all the unusual frilly extras are local. Like the six local fruits, including pears and grapes. Or the chilli, corriander, and corn on the cob, from the farmers' markets' of Clare.

Local organic fruit and veg growers and suppliers Goerg and Angelika Schleiser produce what is amongst the best veg in the country: up there with Cork's Ultan Quinn. At home, both my nine year old son and my 60+ father can spot their carrots a mile off by their taste and appearance respectively.

Ann Nolan and Clare Linanne from Burren vegetables are also providing great vegetables, as well as oats.

Eva Hegarthy from Kilfinora, who sells at Kilaloe and Ennis farmers' markets, has provided the smoked pork belly.

Clare is especially lucky to have Killaloe's Wines of the Glen, who's gooseberry, elderflower and apple and elderberry wines are a perfect replacement for imported grape based wines. The elderberry is remarkably like a Beaujolais.

Excellent cheeses abound: They include Sinead's sister Siobhan's St.Tolas raw organic goat's cheese, from Inagh. Michael and Lucy Hayes's Mount Callan is another raw milk's cheese featured, this time from a herd of Montbelliard cows.

The Ice Cream, in one of the largest ice cream bowls I've ever seen, comes from Bridget and Rodger Fahy's Linalla in the Burren. Their herd of shorthorn cattle provide exceptional and creamy milk: when its this good, I always go for the vanilla.

A key trick seems to be smoking and storage. Smoking and proper storage means many foods, from fish to apples to spuds, can be eaten out of season in Ireland.

Peter and Brigitta Curtin's Burrensmokehouse in Listoonvarna is renowned for the quality of their salmon and mackrel, smoked in their 5.5 tonne cavernous steel smokehouse beneath their eatery.

Ni Ghairbhith also pointed out that the Irish Seed Savers gave both great apples and great advice on storage. �They have the largest collection of self-rooting apple trees in the world� she tells me. They also have 140 different types of Irish native varieties, making it a great place to source a tree or two.

How did it all taste? In a word, spectacular. Much of the produce was either donated or cost price, and the good vibes must have entered the food by osmosis.

While the effort gone to was a special effort for a special occasion, this event nonetheless acts like a microcosm of what could be done to relocalise food in Ireland. Or, at least, what could be done if Ireland 'the food island' is to reduce food imports. Each year we export nearly E9 billion, but import E6 billion.

The dairy sector, incredibly, is actually an area with serious import substitution potential. We import about E900 million of dairy products into Ireland each year. For every four euros of diary exports Ireland makes, it imports one euro back in.

While for a tiny minority of these imports, a case can probably be made - for example with unusual artisan cheeses - in the majority of cases with dairy one commodity replaces another.

So, while being almost 1000% self sufficient in a commodity like butter, we also import butter. This food product literally passes itself on shipping lanes, coming in and coming out, like shift workers duplicating work.

There are some mitigating circumstances: some of these imports are for the agri-food processing sector, or of products not available or producible here.

However, consumers have a responsibility too: the consumer can and regularly does change consumption patters over time.

For example, there is a growing market for 100% grass fed beef. This would reduce our cereal imports, as well as the carbon footprint of our meat and dairy sectors.

The desire is there: According to Bord Bia research, seven out of ten shoppers want to buy local � and that research was conducted before the recession, when the national economic benefits have become all the clearer in supporting local and Irish. Even then, 93% of those that buy local do so because they want to support the local economy. 58% of supermarket consumers buy local food there.

Growth rates for farmers' markets continue to rise; there are over 150 listed by Bord Bia now. Certainly, while smaller rural markets may occasionally struggle, markets serving a bigger catchment area are thriving.

When I spoke to the department of Agriculture Fisheries and Food about imports and self sufficiency, they informed me that �there would be capacity for import substitution in areas such as pigmeat, poultry, certain dairy products, certain cereals, vegetables and potatoes�.

Not before time, the agri-food sector in Ireland has begun to get its act together to promote Irish food, with the 'Love Irish Food' campaign. Agri-Aware has also gotten in on the act, recruiting high profile economist Jim Power and pointing out that one in seven jobs in Ireland depend on the agri-food sector. Crucially, agri-food has proven itself to be less prone to the recession than other sectors in the economy.

multiple retailers and the request for a 40% reduction in price from organic producers

Understanding the balance and flow of power is crucial to understanding what people say, what they don't say and what they imply.

Below is the original version of what appeared in the Irish Examiner yesterday, Thursday 28th May.

It was reported various places that multiple retailers are set to ask for a 40% price reduction from their suppliers of organic produce.

I have spoken to numerous well positioned people involved in production, distribution, processing and retailing of organic produce since then, and it seems the reality is more complex than was first reported.

The particular producer featured in the story on the 40% price reduction is uncertain at present whether the retailers were directly asking for a reduction. However he did receive strong signals that this was coming downstream.

Others, when queried, told me that there they have not been asked for this reduction directly.

According to Glenisk, �We have not had any 'demands' from retailers and we're on good terms with them all. Pricing is obviously a challenge right now; we're focused on the broader issue of value for money. For example, we're running 50% extra free promotions on all of our 4 packs and that has been very well received by consumers.�

Glenisk also claim that this cost will not be passed onto the farmer: �No, it's our cost. We find that consumers appreciate the extra value and consequently that has a positive effect on sales.�

Supermarket sources also told me, when queried, that they were not directly asking for a 40% reduction.

This raises interesting and important questions about whether producers, consumers or those in between - the retailers, processors, distributors - have the most power when it comes to the organic sector.

Whatever about direct requests for price reductions, the market share multiple retailers command defines the terrain within which their suppliers � Irish farmers - operate.

In mainland Europe, nowhere has the same level of multiple retailer penetration as do Ireland and the UK. Simply put; there are other routes to market, so those who supply into the agri-food system have options. They have more power.

So when Tescos announce a more international sourcing policy for Irish stores, or a change in store layout, Irish producers can start to feel the pressure.

While Tescos claim to send over 600 million euro of Irish product abroad annually, it is also the case that Irish agri-food companies have many more options when supplying the mainland EU market. This is clear from, for example, the various routes to market in European countries the Good Herdsman achieved at BioFach this year.

At the end of the day, does it actually matter if a supermarket directly asks a for a price reduction, if all the signals and pressure are pointing that way for sooner rather than later?

Will processors who supply supermarkets make price-reduction predictions and pass these on to producers? Or will they behave opportunistically?

Some of the facts of the retail situation for organic farmers at the moment make for stark reading.

While organic is sold through other routes, sometimes in a very high profile manner, it is still the case that the majority of organic produce is still sold through the multiple retailers: up to 85% according to Bord Bia.

Organic farmers make up about 1% of farmers. There are often hardly any alternative options for sourcing feed or processing units.

In general, consumers are cutting back. This can have unintended positive consequences � some consumers eat out less and eat organic food at home more, and still save money.

Organic is not due to suffer to the same extent as other areas, according to recent research into Irish consumer motivations. However, consumers cutting back by 1/3, as the research suggests, will inevitably have some negative consequences.

So we have a small number of producers, with few input or processing options and one main channel to an under pressure market. This main channel has enormous overall clout in the agri-food sector.

Along with this, there is a new version of an old issue: the Northern situation. It is to this we turn next posting.

from the Guardian in March:

Adam says that the pressure leads management sometimes to behave almost inhumanely. He tells a story by way of illustration: "One day I got a call from a store manager in Manchester, saying that four men armed with shotguns had just come in and robbed the store. He said that he thought they had got away with �2,000, and wanted to know what form he needed to fill in to explain when cashing up why the tills were going to be two grand down that night.

"It was only when I asked about the girl who had been on the checkout they robbed that it became clear that she was still sitting there, expected to carry on working. Not only that, but he hadn't called the police either. He had called me first, wanting to know what the armed robbery meant for his admin duties. This is what being a manager at Lidl does to you: it makes you so hard that when you're involved in an armed robbery, instead of being terrified, you just feel like saying to the robbers, 'You have no idea how much harder you have made my day; how much extra paperwork I am going to have to do now.'"

Wow. Well worth reading, is the article on LIDI, their secrecy and their staff relations

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.