The Co-operative Path to Food Security

Molly Scott CatoReader in Green Economics

Cardiff School of Management

Structure of the presentation

• Current food system is unsustainable and insecure

• The Co-operative Movement is a food movement

• Pioneering examples of local food into local shops

The index is derived from an average based on 2002-4 = 100.Source: FAO website.

Month (2007-8) Price (index)

October 174

November 179

December 186

January 195

February 215

March 217

April 214

May 215

June 219

July 213

August 201

September 188

Volatile food pricesVolatile Food Prices

Burgeoning Imports

The index is derived from an average based on 2002-4 = 100.Source: FAO website.

Food Insecurity

-30000

-20000

-10000

0

10000

20000

30000

40000

50000

60000

70000

Australia

Brazil

China

France

India NZ UK US

A

The food gaps are measured in metric tonnesSource: Authors’ graphic based on data from the FAO

Annual Energy Use Associated with UK Food Supplies

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Retail Packaging Catering Transport Homeprep Agriculture

Co-operative movement began with food• Co-op shops soon moved

into farming: CWS from 1896

• Co-operative Group is Britain’s biggest farmer owning around 28,000 acres of land and farming a total of 50,000 acres including some owned by other landowners

Still overwhelmingly a food movement

• During the 2008 trading year all but two of the top 20 co-operatives in the UK, ranked by turnover, were engaged in the food and agriculture sectors.

• Of the whole Co-operatives UK 100 for 2008, 83 of the co-ops were involved in food and agriculture

Social and political role

• The Co-operative: ‘good with food’

• Pioneered the mainstreaming of fair trade products

• Can now take a lead in mainstreaming local production and supply of food

Some leading examples

• Award-winning ‘Grown by us’ range and a policy to gradually refocus production away from cereals and towards vegetables

• Midcounties Co-operative ‘Local Harvest’ scheme: 150 products from 17 suppliers all within a 40-mile radius of the store

• Anglia Co-operative, East of England Society and the Southern Co-operative all carry extensive locally sourced ranges in their larger stores

Smaller co-operative intiatives

• Community-supported agriculture: 30 examples (1200 in USA)

• Community land trusts• Country markets• Community shops

Dominance in ‘new food’ economy• Wholefood distributors—

Suma, Essential and Infinity— are all worker co-operatives

• Halifax-based Suma had a turnover of £24.7m. in 2008: still managed by all the employees and with a flat hierarchy

• Infinity Foods, Brighton: turnover of £13.6m. in 2008. Essential, Bristol: turnover of £12.4m. in 2008.

The Co-operative Advantage in Food

• ‘Good with food’• Co-operatives’ distinctive ownership structure

with democratic accountability to members gives them a mandate to ‘do different’

• Important national role at a time when food crises threaten

• The co-operative advantage has always been the negotiation of value between producers and consumers and the elimination of loss through intermediaries along the supply chain. Nowhere is this more important than in the food economy, where extended supply chains lead to poverty and hunger in the poorer world and over-consumption and insecurity in the richer countries. While this message may be clear to readers of this journal, co-operative food solutions are also politically and socially appealing, as is evident in the rapid spread of interest in farmers’ markets and community farms. The challenge here for the co-operative movement is to ensure that these are genuinely co-operative with value being shared, rather than local middlemen profiting from the work of farmers who still lose the value of their labour.