The empty food and vegetable shelves in the UK got plenty of coverage last week. Little got to the root of the problem though.
he EU celebrated 60 years of the Common Agricultural Policy last year. Aside from a few articles in the farming press, the anniversary went unnoticed by most people. Which is telling, really.
The food system is only worth covering these days when there is a crisis. Most EU citizens, particularly those in wealthy countries, have no sense of food insecurity. The authors of the CAP in the 1960s couldn’t have imagined such a massive success. But is it?
While it has brought huge benefits to farmers and consumers across Europe over the past 60 years, it has also helped skew the market from both ends.
The social contract was clear — farmers would provide cheap food and consumers will subsidise it through their taxes.
Farmers were rewarded for producing more and more food, to the extent it became unsustainable and needed to change. Today, the CAP is more focused on environmental benefits and public goods than feeding the masses.
But this is where the social contract broke down.
Policymakers have pulled back on subsidies from food production to focus more on social goods, but the consumer expectation is still for cheap food all the time.
Read More
It comes as the seasonality of food has been systematically undermined in the minds of consumers over the decades.
It has been replaced through marketing with demands for uniformity, familiarity and regularity. In the background, the growth and dominance of powerful supermarket chains mean they can have exacting demands from producers and have whittled down supplier numbers.
It’s little wonder we are down to a handful of fruit and vegetable producers who supply the supermarkets in Ireland.
Modern-day food production systems are alien to the average consumer, whose complacency towards food and its source is astounding at times.
The downside of a lack of understanding at the consumer level is that when tight supply chains don’t work for whatever reason, there is disbelief and almost panic at not having the selection and variety of seasonal fruit and vegetables all year round.
Irish consumers spend just 8.3pc of their household income on food, the lowest in Europe.
When we value our food and food producers so little, how can we expect the food or the producers to be there when we need them?
