Since reading the crazy statistic that 61% of Britons don’t think they earn enough to meet their basic needs, I’ve been curious to know exactly what a real figure would be. A base rate, an ‘enough’ for living in the UK. I’ve come across a couple, and this week the Joseph Rowntree foundation have announced a new one - £13,400.

Working on solving poverty in the UK, the foundation wanted to ascertain the costs of a decent standard of living, so they could compare it to current welfare allowances. The sum they have come back with amounts to £210 per week for a single person, £626 for a couple with two children. See the table below for the breakdown of where that goes.

What do you think? Realistic? What do you think is enough?

Those on state benefits receive about two thirds of what they need, the report concludes. The basic state pension gives you about three quarters.

The two other figures I’ve picked up for ‘enough‘ are higher, at £355 a week and £300, but of course everyone is going to have their own benchmark. Despite the ‘how long is a piece of string’ nature of the question, I think it’s something we all need to think about, for a variety of reasons. The great lie of the consumer culture is that you need more, more stuff, more experiences, and to pay for those you need to earn more. It’s very easy to get sucked into a lifestyle where you’re working flat out to keep up with the ‘needs’ you’ve created for yourself. Or, like the report I mentioned at the beginning, you may even convince yourself that you don’t earn enough. Since that is actually highly unlikely, that’s an ungrateful way to live. It’s that kind of attitude that makes it so difficult to encourage people to scale back their consumption, or to buy ethically, to resist the cheap exploitative deals - if we think we’re missing out, that the world is somehow short changing us, we won’t ever make sacrifices for anyone else.

Finding your ‘enough’, and sticking to it, is actually a very liberating thing. It stops that endless worry that we’re not quite at the level we should be at. It gets us off the treadmill of up-scaling wants. It allows us to be generous with the remainder.

Read the full report here.

We’re into the good stuff in July, with new potatoes and carrots everywhere, joined by courgettes, brocolli, and a chorus of broad, French and Runner beans. Cucumbers, cauliflower, cabbages and lettuces continue, and you may find an aubergine or two.

Lots of summer berries to enjoy too, with strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, redcurrants and blackcurrants.

Basically, you’re spoilt for choice in the summer.

I did learn an interesting thing about seasonality the other day though, about how easily it can be exploited. Asparagus is in season in June in the UK, and I popped into a Sainsbury’s near the station to pick some up on my way home. In the vegetable section was a great big ‘point of sale’ display with a banner saying ‘British season’, and boxes of asparagus in crates with a union jack patterned inlay. Great. Except that the crates were full of Peruvian asparagus. All of it, except for a tiny row of organic asparagus on the top shelf, 5% perhaps of the total display.

Seasonal food sells, in London anyway, but it’s still a good deal cheaper for the supermarkets to ship from Peru and grow all year round then move suppliers back and forth. But they still want to kudos of saying it’s seasonal. In my mind, selling Peruvian asparagus in union jack packaging is an insult to well meaning shoppers, to UK farmers, to Peruvian Farmers, and to asparagus too, why not, as British asparagus is something of a delicacy.

So, look at the labels on the actual products if you can, and watch out for devious supermarkets.

• River Cottage seasonality tables
• American readers see eattheseasons.com
  

Governments of developing countries face something of a quandary when it comes to conservation. They are urged to preserve wildlife, invest more in protected areas, and halt deforestation and biodiversity loss, but they have to balance this with development and poverty alleviation. How do you choose between people and the environment?

Madagascar is a country that illustrates this problem perfectly. It is the world’s most important biodiversity hotspot, but a large percentage of the population live in poverty. It has more to lose from getting this balance wrong than anywhere else on the planet. Fortunately it’s getting it right, and proving that conservation and development don’t need to be competing priorities…. continue reading on Celsias.

Yesterday was the annual circus that is Tesco’s AGM, and the Guardian has a good summary of events here.

Needless to say Shareholders did not rise as one to support Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s chicken welfare proposal. In fact they rose as 0.089, just 8.9% of shareholders voting for it. The motion needed 75% to pass, but a win is subjective on these matters:

“If it didn’t technically succeed, it certainly succeeded in putting Tesco on their mettle,” said Hugh. “I said before the meeting that if I got 10% then that would be something that Tesco couldn’t ignore.

Chicken welfare was one of several issues Tesco bosses were confronted with yesterday. War on Want represented sweatshop workers in India being paid 16p an hour making clothes for Tesco stores: “Our new evidence again reveals how Tesco’s cheap clothing comes at the shameful price of workers’ poverty” said campaigner Simon McRae.

ActionAid were in attendance, on behalf of fruit pickers in developing countries. South African fruit picker Gertruida Baartman was there for the third year in a row, after speaking to the AGM in 06 and 07, and seeing no change.

Presentations also came from Care for the Wild, who are concerned about sale of turtles through Tesco’s Chinese stores, and from the US shop workers union UFCW.

It may seem a little depressing, all these groups lining up in vain to present their case to a callous corporation. But AGMs present a unique opportunity to force companies to face the realities of their operations around the world, and for shareholders to see and understand how their profits are made. Sir Terry Leahy and his colleagues may be able to leave the AGM and proceed as normal, and in fact they have to, because it is their job to make generate profits for shareholders. They do leave publicly shamed however, and the news coverage of the issues is a valuable opportunity to educate the consumer.

The Affluent Society is a book I’ve seen quoted many times, and so it’s been on my reading list for a little while. I happened to find a secondhand copy recently, a first edition 1958 copy no less, and so I read it last week.

Galbraith’s central idea is that the production, or growth model of the economy is fatally flawed. It is based, he believed, on a good idea that was no longer relevant. For lifting the US out of poverty and meeting people’s needs, it had worked well. Now that people were affluent and their urgent needs were all met, it was foolishness. People aren’t happy, they work too hard, there is still great inequality, and there is a growing rather than shrinking income gap between rich and poor. “In recent times” he writes, “no problem has been more puzzling to thoughtful people than why, in a troubled world, we make such poor use of our affluence.” If he could say that in 1958, how much more so now.

If everyone’s primary needs for food and shelter and so on are already met, but your economy relies on ever-increasing sales, then it doesn’t matter what you sell as long as people keep buying. In order to keep buying, new wants must be constantly created. Not only that, consumer demand “comes to depend more and more on the ability and willingness of consumers to incur debt.” Until a credit scare of course, but we won’t get into that.

Not only does spending have to recklessly continue, it has to be private spending. Galbraith points out the flaw in the system that taxes are considered very bad in a liberal economy, and thus government spending is kept low so that taxes are at a minimum. This means that affluent people have polluted cities, poor infrastructure, overcrowded roads and trains, and lousy schools, because these things require public spending, and public spending is bad. Thus, in the logic of the economy, new TVs and cars are more important than schools and roads.

The growth model served it’s purpose, but the focus needs to be turned back towards equality, and towards wellbeing. This is something people are saying again as we reach unsustainable levels of debt and environmental overshoot. The Affluent Society remains highly relevant today, and I will summarise in Galbraith’s own words:

“To furnish a barren room is one thing. To continue to crowd in furniture until the foundation buckles is quite another. To have failed to solve the problem of producing goods would have been to continue man in his oldest and most grievous misfortune. But to fail to see that we have solved it and fail to proceed hence to the next task would be fully as tragic.”

• The New Economics Society is working a similar agenda today.
• Affluenza, by Oliver James, draws heavily on John Kenneth Galbraith’s ideas.

They’re at it again. The government is seeking a re-opening of the case for GM crops to be planted in the UK. It’s not a surprise. They’ve obviously long regretted the decision not to press ahead with genetically modified crops made in the 90s, and with good reason in some ways. It was a decision made in the middle of a nation-wide scare about them, with tabloid talk of ‘frankenstein foods’, so to have allowed them would have been political suicide.

Years later, nobody talks about ‘frankenstein foods’ any more, and it would be much easier to sneak through relaxed legislation that would allow the planting of GM crops. What bothers me about GM is not the science however, but the economics and the politics, and the way they are justified by claiming they are to benefit the developing world. Here’s environment minister Phil Woolas, speaking last week:

“There is a growing question of whether GM crops can help the developing world out of the current food-price crisis. It is a question that we as a nation need to ask ourselves”

Granted, it is a question we need to ask ourselves, and the answer is yes, they might, but there are 101 things that would help solve the current food crisis faster, more fairly, and more safely, than GM crops. The first thing we should look at is subsidies, and the fact that our over-production in the EU and the US harms agriculture elsewhere by destroying local markets with cheaper produce.

Beyond that, we can look at irrigation, using water more fairly and more efficiently. The GM industry talks about special seed that needs less water, so that dry areas can be pressed into use that wouldn’t have been productive before. Sounds great, but you could achieve the same thing by spreading methods like Mediterranean-style underground water silos, or the drip-feed irrigation techniques widely adopted in India, using hosepipes with strategically placed pinholes.

Besides irrigation, there are higher yield normal seeds that are being well used to improve harvests all round the world. These urgently need to be made available in Africa. Then there is the most basic knowledge of things like crop rotation, leaving fields fallow to replenish nutrients, nitrogen fixing plants. Teach these before you bring in corporately controlled GM seed.

Then there are fertilizers and pesticides, which are heavily used in most places in the world, but aren’t yet affordable to farmers in the poorest parts of the world. These aren’t strictly necessary on small farms, provided people understand the nitrogen fixing and rotation mentioned above, and organic agriculture could feed the world. But again, we have much simpler solutions than GM.

The whole GM solution reminds me of the urban legend of NASA’s ’space pen’, a hugely sophisticated pen that could write in zero gravity, while the Russians used a pencil.

Some Republicans like to claim that fighting climate change will damage the developing world, because measures to reduce emissions would harm emerging economies. It makes a handy excuse to dismiss climate change. Claiming that GM crops would solve the world food crisis is exactly the same. It uses the poor as a moral argument for expanding the reach of globalized agricultural corporations. That’s what GM crops are ultimately about. Despite the propaganda, they are not being developed with the poor in mind. They’re there to protect Monsanto patented seeds, to respond better to Monsanto pesticides (and only to Monsanto pesticides). They are to make more money for rich American companies. I don’t deny that there could be some interesting developments in GM technology in pharmaceuticals or in nutrition, their primary purpose at present is control. And the last thing the world should do in the face of a food crisis, is hand more control to big corporations. On the contrary, it’s time to encourage self-sufficiency, local solutions, seasonal produce.

Simpler solutions are available to us. We don’t need GM crops any more than we need a zero gravity pen.

We’re all familiar with the Fairtrade logo, certifying that producers in developing countries have been paid a living wage. But what about things that don’t have a Fairtrade logo? Presumably those are all ‘Unfairtrade’ products.

Why do we get to shout when we treat people decently, and keep silent when we treat them badly? How come we get to feel virtuous about buying Fairtrade, but don’t ask questions of everything else?

To make sure consumers have all the information, Make Wealth History is proud to present the Unfairtrade logo. We expect to see it rolled out on products across the country very soon, as we write and invite companies to participate.

We’ve started with Starbucks, since we need to start somewhere and we just wrote about them. Here’s the letter we’ve sent. We’ll let you know if and when they reply. In the meantime, join our Why isn’t there an “unfairtrade” logo? group on Facebook, and spread the word about this big consumer oversight.

Dear Starbucks,

As sometime quaffers of your fine beverages, both hot and cold, we hope you don’t mind our writing you about your product labelling.

It has been our observation that evidence of fair‐trade practice is all around your premises generally, on posters and flyers, murals and the like. Highly commendable. However, when it comes to buying drinks, the labelling is noticeably unspecific in the detail.

This may lead customers to the obviously false impression that either all your drinks are fair‐trade and they needn’t ask, or that none of your drinks are fairly traded, unless specifically requested.

To help clear up any potential misunderstandings, might we suggest that you use more specific labelling on the big board above the counter, marking both fair and unfair traded items. You may wish to place either a fair‐trade or an unfair‐trade logo as appropriate, so that customers can make a more informed selection. We realise that as yet there isn’t a recognised ‘unfair‐trade’ logo, so we have taken the liberty of devising one. Do let us know if you would find it useful.

Many thanks for your time.

Jeremy and Paul Williams

This is not about someone trying to sue Starbucks for purchasing a cold coffee they expected to be hot. No. This is about Starbucks’ cold disapproval of trademarking Ethiopian coffee.

Those who drink coffee on a regular basis should understand Ethiopian coffee to be a beverage a cut above it’s tropical brothers. I understand that something about mountain soil, altitude and temperature makes varieties such as Yirgacheffe, Sidamo, and Harrar particularly high quality coffees.
It comes as no surprise then that the Ethiopians would like their brands trademarked so as to prevent any other coffee makers using their names to label coffee, not grown or produced by the original Ethiopian farmers. Considering Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in the world, a boost to their income insured by trademark security seems fair. Starbucks beg to differ.

Starbucks have a mixed reputation. Many people go about their daily lives, purchasing and consuming their coffee without a moments thought. Similarly, a percentage of people are very hostile towards the coffee giant, publicly proclaiming its injustice. Until recently, I was on the fence. I knew Starbucks had questionable morals and I avoided them just to be sure. Until the other day however, I never knew enough to make an informed decision.

Starbucks never really feels like a multinational giant. It’s too homely. Their cafes are usually small, cosy and warm with comfortable chairs and almost every form of coffee imaginable. Its hard to compare them to a supermarket, which is large, cold, bleak and jam packed with goods and bargains yet the two are very similar. Starbucks has led its customers to believe that it is not the run of the mill multinational company, and that they sell “coffee that cares”. To some extent they do. They do look after their farmers. Until recently however, Starbucks paid little attention to its producers (Howard Shultz, founder of Starbucks’, in his memoir “Pour your heart into it” has very little mention of farmers) It was only once the consumer started questioning “Fair trade” and “Fair to Farmers” that Starbucks realised they would be losing out if they did not appear to be playing along. They therefore initiated C.A.F.E (Coffee and Farmer Equality) which you can read about here. Funnily enough, the former name of C.A.F.E was “Starbucks Preferred Supplier Program” which I’m guessing was renamed to sound more “fair to farmers”. I have a quote from Douglas B. Holt (author of the essay “Is Starbucks “Coffee that Cares?”) that says:

“The perception that Starbucks works hard to benefit its poor coffee farmers has become a valuable part of the Starbucks brand for the company’s educated middle-class customers. And Starbucks ethical positioning is meaningful not only to customers, but to its other key stakeholders as well, especially investors and employees”

If Starbucks truly was looking out for its farmers, why is it bluntly protesting the trademarking of Ethiopia’s highest income product? The trademarking of coffee brands Sidamo and Harrar (which are up for debate) would significantly increase the income of the estimated 6 million Ethiopians involved. Surely this is increasing the welfare of the farmer? Where then is Starbuck’s support? More to the point, why the hostility?

The coalition of Ethiopian coffee producers lobbied to have their three best and main coffee varieties (mentioned previously) trademarked. Starbucks caught wind of the idea, and voiced their protests through the National Coffee Association (NCA) and tried to block efforts to trademark the products, insisting certification was a better alternative. This move has come under a lot of scrutiny with people accusing the company of going to the NCA with direct complaints to Ethiopia’s demands. It must be made clear that this is not the case. To clarrify the matter, Starbucks’ senior vice president of coffee procurement denied approaching the NCA saying:

“We did not get the NCA involved - in fact it was the other way around, they contacted us.” (BBC)

It just so happens that Starbucks’ Senior vice president of Coffee Procurement is also the Chairman of the Government Affairs committee of the NCA. It would appear there was no need for Starbucks to approach the NCA about blocking Ethiopia’s bid considering they already had a key man handling trademark concerns on the inside. It must also be taken into account that Starbucks are also one of the largest, and most influential players in the NCA when it comes to superior coffees and it is hard to believe that a multinational company had no involvement in the NCA’s decision making.

It is completely beneficial financially to prevent Ethiopia from trademarking its highest quality produce because as long as it is “certifified”, Starbucks can continue to buy it at a cheap price, and sell it to consumers at an extortionate one. In fact, any coffee company could buy certified Ethiopian Coffee at negotiated low prices and then market it to coffee consumers as higher quality coffee. By certifying the products rather than trademarking them, Starbucks can insure they dictate the price of purchase and sale. They therefore rallied the NCA to protest to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in order to prevent the trademarks going through, claiming Certification was better. According to Douglas Holt, in the 24 months since making this claim, Starbucks still failed to produce sufficient evidence that certification marks would provide benefit to farmers. As i am aware, they continue to protest and make up excuses to this day. For “coffee that cares”, this is hypocritical.

Surely a company that claims to be fair to farmers wouldn’t be opposing a bid to make farmers lives better? Like all multinationals, it boils down to profit and public relations. If they appear to be doing the right thing, more people will like them. They will only help people as long as they get a good deal out of it. As soon as their profits are threatened, the hammer falls and the company will show its true colours (this can also be said for other companies such as Tesco and Walmart which we are also in the process of researching). It is a two faced approach, but one the business community is happy to endorse. Starbucks has “The Economist” on its side, for example. In it’s November 30th 2006 edition “Storm in a Coffee Cup”, the magazine questions Ethiopia’s competence in running its own businesses, taking stabs at corruptions in the government saying that supporting the Ethiopian farmers in this matter (trademarking) would be fruitless under such a corrupt regime which failed to build a stronger economy. (Holt argues that this is a poor and un-researched argument with regards to Ethiopia’s efforts). It should also be recognised that trademarks would be governed by the coalition of Ethiopian Coffee producers, exporters and producers which is a commercial enterprise and has little to do with governmental affairs. Even if it did involve the government, how does this give a US company grounds to interfere with foreign private industries and deprive one of the poorest countries in the world with a means to increase it’s GDP? How is this a fair to farmers, fair trade approach?

I end this entry with another quote from Douglas Holt whose research referenced above has been extremely helpful in clarifying the murky water and whose excellent referencing has been the foundation of the information I have used.

“Starbucks is carefully guarding its economic interests and doing its best to muddy the issue so that the media and its stakeholders won’t pay attention. Starbucks opposes Ethiopia’s efforts in order to shore up its market position, not out of paternal concern for the plight of the African people”.

For the benefit of those wanting to read Holt’s essay and his detailed analyses of all Starbuck’s approaches and excuses, click here.

]]> http://makewealthhistory.org/2008/06/19/starbucks-coffee-served-cold/feed/ Paul Image Preview http://makewealthhistory.org/2008/06/18/boycott-the-boycotts-engaging-positively-with-consumerism/ http://makewealthhistory.org/2008/06/18/boycott-the-boycotts-engaging-positively-with-consumerism/#comments Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:21:19 +0000 Jeremy http://makewealthhistory.wordpress.com/?p=309

The trouble with much of what we write about here is the powerlessness that goes with it. It’s not hard to talk about the problems with things like supermarkets or sweatshop clothes. People don’t really persuading that they’re bad. The much bigger issue is what to do about it.

The snap answer here is the boycott. It’s often the first resort. I read about Tesco, and I no longer shop there. I view an index of ethical practices and see that Next comes very low on the list, and I don’t buy clothes there any more. Ultimately though, we need to do better than that, for a number of reasons.

1. All or nothing
Firstly, choosing whether or not to boycott something can be a luxury that not everyone enjoys. I’d love it if we could all stop shopping in supermarkets, and I do my best to avoid them when I can, but for many people that’s just not possible. What if you don’t have corner shops, a farmer’s market, an independent high street? Often the supermarket is all you have. Calling for a boycott of supermarkets is a waste of time. People are guaranteed to carry on as normal, only now they feel bad about it too.

Not only that, if we make our campaigns ‘all or nothing’, and people can’t do the ‘all’ we ask of them, they have no choice but to do the ‘nothing’. We’ve asked too much, and that makes it easy for people to say no. And so things never change. If a boycott is impractical, it risks excluding a lot of people.

2. The problem of scale
Secondly, boycotts only work on a huge scale. That’s kind of obvious, but it doesn’t stop people loudly denouncing companies and telling all their friends never to darken their doors again. Individual choices do matter, but only to a tiny degree. It takes a massive movement to make a real difference with a boycott. There have been some good examples, like Nestle in the 80s, or Nike being forced to confront (if not solve entirely) their sweatshop practices. Others however, have barely made a dent. Total is still in Burma, CocaCola is still in every fridge.

There are dozens of boycotts in operation, for all sorts of reasons, from small companies to the whole of Canada. They are all well meaning, but most of them will make no difference whatsoever. They will just never gather the momentum needed, and the organizers’ time and energy will have been wasted.

3. De-activism
The biggest problem with the boycott is that is passive. It does sometimes involve some campaigning, protesting, and general agitating, but at the heart of it we are asking people to ‘not do something’, rather than ‘do something’. Some participants will be active, but the vast majority will just respect the boycott without campaigning for it. To take the example of supermarkets, thousands of people will stop using them and move their custom elsewhere. From now on, they will ignore the supermarkets, and to ignore something is ultimately the opposite of activism. The boycott becomes simply a withdrawal from the problem, and once dis-engaged, we are able to keep the moral high ground while actually doing nothing useful to solve it.

4. Creative engagement
The more I read and write about the consumer culture, the more I discover that I don’t like. I have a list as long as my arm of companies I don’t want to support. One of these is Gap, for example. I could join the boycott against them, even take part in ‘Gapatista’ protests, but why stop there? Primark need it just as badly. Next need to be boycotted too, and Banana Republic, and Levi’s, and just about every high street brand you care to mention. The problem is endemic. Backing out is both impractical and futile.

So what do we do instead? I think a better solution to boycotting is to engage with the companies more creatively. Labour Behind the Label recently ran a campaign against Fila sportswear that encouraged Fila customers to send a postcard to the company, with their receipt stapled to the back. It’s easy to ignore a half-baked boycott somewhere, but genuine customer feedback needs to be respected. That sounds much more constructive to me. It says ‘we like what you’re products, but we want to see you do better’, rather than ‘I want nothing to do with you’.

The Chicken Out campaign has been realistic in its approach to supermarkets. Rather than encourage people to shop elsewhere, they have recommended that customers ask their favourite supermarkets to stock free range chicken. As demand went up and limited stocks ran out, customers were asked to take pictures of the empty shelves, as evidence to the supermarkets that they weren’t supplying enough.

Where we can, we should exercise the freedom of our consumer choice to buy things that we know are ethically produced, but the choice isn’t always available. Where it isn’t, let’s make our displeasure known, and suggest ways that the companies might want to improve. One of the big excuses that companies use is there is that the market will not support the necessary price rises to make things organic, fairly-traded, or sweatshop free. Write to companies you like and tell them you’d remain a customer if their prices went up a little to accommodate fairer, greener practices.

How about taking a positive rather than a negative attitude? Here’s a little exercise we can try.

1. Make a list of five favourite companies. It could be the maker of your most comfortable shoes, your normal breakfast cereal brand, the supermarket nearest your home, your mobile phone manufacturer, anything that you value, that you’d miss if you didn’t have it any more.
2. Find out about the company. Search out their ethical practices, read up on where their products are made, the conditions of workers, their environmental record.
3. Write or email the company your response, as a satisfied customer with a few questions. If their record is good, congratulate them. If it’s bad, tell them your concerns and ask what they’re doing about it.

There are plenty of good reasons for ducking out of the consumer culture, but let’s not ignore it. Let’s work with, rather than against the companies, because we won’t win by opposing them. Let’s be positive, ask for the changes we want to see, and remember to praise what is good as well as condemn what is bad.

“For millions of people, the ground is a dangerous place to be. Watch to see if we could walk around 50,000 square meters of London without touching the ground.”

The Dangerous Ground project is raising money to clear a 50,000 square metre minefield in Cambodia, and this is their highly successful viral video. I’m posting it because it’s a great example of creative campaigning, and because it raises an issue that we don’t hear about very often.

Although the civil was ended in 1997, in the last ten years Cambodia has seen 20,000 deaths and 43,000 injuries from landmines. Over three quarters of these were civilians.

The following countries still manufacture landmines: Burma, China, India, Nepal, North Korea, South Korea, Pakistan, Singapore, Vietnam, Iran, Cuba, Russia, and the United States.

For more information on landmines, visit the ICBL website.