Give farmers a break! Use your LOAF

Some time ago I came cross Christian Ecology’s LOAF principle which encourages people to choose food that meets at least one of the following criteria: Locally produced, Organically grown, Animal friendly or Fairly traded.

Now the Church of England has told the Competition Commission that the pursuit of cheap food coupled with the buying power of the big supermarkets is putting farming livelihoods at risk. Making farmers pay for supermarkets’ own promotions is just one of a number of invisible and pernicious practices squeezing farm-gate prices.

The Church argues that a wider debate is urgently needed on the effects of retailers extracting ‘below cost’ supply agreements from farmers and their effect on a sustainable and flourishing agricultural sector. The call for wider debate comes in the report Fairtrade begins at home: Supermarkets and the effect on British farming livelihoods submitted to the Competition Commission by the Church’s Ethical Investment Advisory Group (EIAG).

The report encourages consumers to question the impact on farmers of very low prices and the nature of special promotions (2 for 1 offers etc) in store, who the beneficiaries are, and how supermarkets supply certain goods at reduced prices, and at whose expense. It contends that there should be a debate around a genuine fair trade “mark” for British food, reared, grown, produced and processed, that offers consumers and suppliers a fair product for a fair price.