That authenticity, that link back to the farmer and the land and the nurturing that comes with it is really powerful imagery for the dairy industry generally and it should be reflected in the brands and how the category is marketed. Andrew Reeves, Managing Director: National Foods. 2009.
When the lady at my local IGA supermarket told me recently that they were “getting rid of the Pura Milk fridge,” I was surprised but impressed. Here was a small, but formidable, act of rebellion; a statement of defiance instigated by the quiet, congenial staff of the local grocery shop.
Such modest gestures seem to embody a burgeoning local movement, determined to wrestle control of milk back from the corporate forces of darkness in the wake of a dispute between dairy farmers and National Foods.
Milk, along with bread and maybe crude oil, is one of those essential commodities that keep the wheels of Western culture turning. When we go down to the shop for milk and bread, we are doing more than just lining our stomachs; we are participating in a social ritual, a rite of convenience, a celebration of abundance.
The recent campaign mounted by Tasmanian dairy farmers, seeking a fair price for their milk, has struck a chord, or hit a raw nerve. Either way, it seems to be cultivating a greater awareness of how our most basic human needs, food and sustenance, are being ensnared in a matrix of perilous corporate control.
Dairy farmers complain that National Foods, a branch of the nebulous Japanese beer firm Kirin Holdings, maintain a monopoly on the Southern Tasmanian milk market. This expansive business, that also runs the King Island, Yoplait and Berri brands, is offering farmers a price for their milk, that, farmers claim, is lower than the costs of production. So farmers are trapped: if they accept the National Foods offer, they risk running their businesses into the ground; if they reject it, they have nowhere to sell their milk.
The arduous early-mornings and barely profitable struggle of the average dairy farmer, it seems, stands in stark contrast to the operations of the big companies who we buy our milk from. Kirin Holdings reported an annual profit of $1.14 Billion in 2007. National Foods claims that it is “committed to investing in its people” and recognises that “times are tough”, but doesn’t seem to be doing it too hard with new Managing Director Andrew Reeves, an ex-Coca Cola executive, talking up the prospects of the $3.3 billion business.
So, as we add a dash of milk to our morning coffee of douse the kids’ cornflakes, we are, rightly, incensed to contemplate the prospect of foreign, corporate fat-cats screwing over the hard working farmers who supply one of our most basic daily needs. Tasmanians have reacted, with a boycott call hitting sales of Pura milk, and now even the ladies at the IGA are staging a kind of Boston Tea (or Milk) Party by jettisoning the whole Pura fridge.
But is this milk-induced unrest testament to a wider awareness of the exploitative nature of global, corporate-controlled food production? The pressures and problems faced by Tasmanian dairy farmers are becoming the norm for legions of the world’s farmers, especially in poor countries. In fact, the very system that provides droves of western, middle class consumers with a seemingly infinite supply of sumptuous snacks, fresh vegies and wholesome dairy products, systematically exploits the farmers and families that actually produce the food.
As the production and distribution of food is gradually, but inexorably, incorporated into the business profiles of a number of colossal super-corporations, the global community is allowing the financial motives of distant CEO’s and shareholders to dictate the way we receive our basic sustenance. The simple question is: do we want a small clique of powerful individuals and companies, who are sequestered far away from the people who actually make or grow the food we eat, controlling the production and distribution of that food?
Farmers in “developing” countries are only too aware of this dilemma.
The authors of the Asia and Pacific Women in Agriculture programme, established to safeguard and highlight the essential role of women farmers in global food production, and their plight under the dominion of “corporate agriculture”, point out that globalisation in farming and food production will “intensify the control of agriculture production and distribution, and inputs into the hands of a few Trans-national Corporations with headquarters in the North.”
“Corporate farms”, the organisation believes, exploit women labourers whilst capitalizing on and pirating traditional agriculture systems and knowledge. In India, both the production and sale of food is dominated by seemingly ruthless western corporations; trapping farmers in a demoralizing downward spiral, which often ends in tragedy.
A recent report by MPC Associates, documents how Indian farmers are not only trapped in unsustainable debt to fund purchases of apparently “high yielding” seeds, pesticides and chemicals from Multinational corporations, but are also forced to sell their produce at low prices to giant UK supermarket chains. Whilst the supermarkets generate extraordinary profits, farmers are trapped in a matrix of corporate control, haemorrhaging much needed income from both ends of the equation. Most harrowing of all, a phenomenal number of these farmers (as many as 150,000 in the last ten years) choose to escape the cycle of despair by committing suicide, often poisoning themselves with the chemicals destined for their profitless fields.
Farmers across the globe are cornered in a treacherous kind of corporate blackmail. If they don’t dance to a tune pumped out by boards and CEOs from the top floors of distant office complexes, then their produce won’t get sold. If they can’t sell their wares, they can’t meet the loans and bills from all the other corporations, in the pesticide, chemical and fertiliser industries, that keep their desperate enterprises just barely surviving.
While Tasmanian dairy farmers are clearly not facing problems of the same magnitude as their Indian counterparts, the very same forces are at work, and the same worrying story is unfolding. Australian farming families survive on average incomes far below the mean. Many work intolerably long hours and rely on income from outside sources to survive. A 2002 study found that About 15 families per week have exited the Australian agricultural industry over the last 25 years. Farming communities also face higher rates of suicide with some Tasmanian farmers apparently on suicide watch over recent weeks.
But, while farmers struggle to make ends meet, we hear reports that Australians are paying more for their groceries than any other “major developed nation”, with the cost of feeding a family rising 40 per cent in the last decade. So, farmers are struggling, consumers are struggling. Where’s all the money going? Of course, it’s the big supermarket corporations who are sucking up the surplus. This sorry equation is the sign of a system gone bad. The growing corporate control of food doesn’t seem to be doing anyone any favours.
But, on the other hand, we’ve experiencing an untold abundance and choice of food, hardly imaginable to previous generations. Our supermarkets ooze a thousand combinations of antipasto dips, exotic fruit, endless new lines of chocolates and obscure new flavours of potato chips. Dumpster bins overflow with staggering volumes of produce. Australian households chuck something like $500 worth of food in the bin every year. We rarely pause to think about the system, and the people, that are furnishing this abundance. Because we are reliant on this vast corporate food system that delivers all manner of products, out of place and out of season, to our local supermarket, we can’t really afford to complain about how it gets there. We don’t complain. We don’t really have a choice.
But when milk – our milk (that is more then just food, but part of our way of life) – falls under the looming spectre of corporate tyranny, some recessive justice gene kicks in. Animated and angry sentiments fill the comments pages of local news media. Many Tasmanians articulate an antipathy towards corporate control of their food. Just how much these comments represent a deep and sustained determination to change the status quo, or just a convenient cause celebre, is hard to gauge. However, the controversy is certainly opening up a potent space where change is possible.
Many Tasmanians seem to have taken the opportunity to ditch “big milk” and go for some of the wonderful local, small dairies that produce and sell their own product in Tasmania. These small-scale producers are effectively independent, probably less subject to the whims of the global milk price and definitely more local and hence less carbon intensive. Their milk is also most likely tastier. You could call it a good news story: honest, hardworking local farmers producing and directly selling wholesome milk to their local communities, restoring independence and sovereignty. It’s a clichÈ worth fighting for.
As consumers, and communities, perhaps we can do our bit to assist farmers as they try to navigate turbulent global markets and keep their heads and businesses above water. By supporting small scale, local food production that provides decent returns to producers and sidesteps the scandalous corporate cash-grab, we are not only creating a demand for more sustainably and ethically produced food, we are fighting the perverse tendencies of a capitalist order that cares only about itself. For, in the end, its not just farmers who will lose out.
I wonder if anyone down at the local IGA will notice that the Pura fridge is missing.
