Food for thought

The Economist leads this week with claims that "ethical shopping harms the world" - "people who want to make the world a better place cannot do so by shifting their shopping habits: transforming the planet requires duller disciplines, like politics." It trains its sights on three targets: the organic, Fairtrade and local-produce movements. Organic farming is far less intensive than chemical methods and thus requires much more land under cultivation, threatening wilderness. Fairtrade encourages overproduction by providing a disincentive to diversify, with the corollary that commodity prices are depressed for the majority of farmers not fortunate enough to fall within a Fairtrade scheme. Local food with supposedly fewer "food miles" is often much more energy intensive to produce, and smacks of protectionism reinvented as environmental-awareness. The only way to make a real difference, claims the Economist, is through the ballot-box, influencing governments to introduce a global carbon tax, reform the world trade system and abolish agricultural tariffs and subsidies such as the notorious CAP. Ethical-food movements, while offering the hope that governments will recognise the potential support for an ethical agenda, may nevertheless "leave the world in a worse state and its poor farmers poorer than they otherwise would be".

All of which is short-term and naive. As the Economist admits, buying ethical food "sends a signal that there is an enormous appetite for change and widespread frustration that governments are not doing enough to preserve the environment, reform world trade or encourage development" - but it tucks this concession at the very end of it's article and chooses instead to stress the manifold ways in which ethical food is self-defeating. There are very few ethical organisations that believe governments are not at the heart of any realistic solutions. But to lecture consumers that real change only comes through the ballot box ignores the lack of choice voters are faced with unless ethical movements pursue parties and governments to co-opt part of their agenda. The intentions of organic and local food pressure groups are admirable, but for me they are not priorities. Fairtrade, however, is, and I will continue to support it despite the qualms I have over its actual impact. I will also indeed continue to vote, but my power at the ballot box can only be enhanced by a movement which seeks to influence what the parties have to offer.