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facing page: The Butter Exchange in Cork was central to the urban and social development of the city.
food + business
A Bird in the Hand is Worth Two in the Bush | (i) | 2014 |
âThere is a serious snag from the foreign visitorâs point of view. This is, that you practically donât find good English cooking outside a private house. If you want say, a good, rich slice of Yorkshire pudding you are more likely to get it in the poorest English home than in a restaurant, which is where the visitor necessarily eats most of his meals.â
â George Orwell, âIn Defence of English Cookingâ, 1945
Power within the food industry is concentrated in the hands of a few. The large multinational corporations, known as âBig Foodâ, have come to dominate the global trade of food and beverages; in 2005, only 100 retailers controlled 40% of the total global grocery market.1 Processed food accounts for three-quarters of global food sales and Big Food control a third of this processed market.2 These monopolies extend beyond the direct trade of food itself; in 2008, the top ten agrochemical corporations were responsible for 90% of the global sale of pesticides and only ten grain corporations controlled 67% of the US$22 billion seed market.3 On average, people spend 20% of their income on food and the global food market is the domain of a few large companies, gaining increasing control over peopleâs everyday diets and expenses.4 The influence of these corporations is cited by some as the reason for a visible ânutrition transitionâ from simple, traditional, locally sourced meals to highly processed purchased foods.5
Often overlooked when analysing the larger systemic inequalities of the global food trade, are the gender inequities inherent in the food system. Women account for 43% of the agricultural workforce, however they are often disenfranchised from the system even at a local level. Despite this, the potential of women is huge and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) argues that âif women had the same access to productive resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by 20â30%. This could raise total agricultural output in developing countries by 2.5â4%, which could in turn reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 12â17%.â6
Around the world, the trade of food has in many cases defined and acted as a catalyst for the traditional roles men and women play in society. In many lower-income countries, women play a larger role than men in the agricultural sector, typically in subsistence production.7 Trade liberalization, leading to an increase in the production of cash crops, affects men and women differently as a result. Men, predominantly engaged in the farming of cash crops, have seen an increase in income and women, predominantly producing food for local markets and subsistence, have seen a decrease in profits.8 In India, wages from cultivation are markedly different between the genders; women average 20% of menâs wages.9
facing page from top left clockwise: Cairo, Ipoh, Mumbai and Seoul. Low investment food practice can offer women a stable source of income.
Movements opposing the global monopolies of Big Food are gaining strength. To name a few, the ideals of Via Campesina, the Slow Food movement and Occupy actively protest and promote alternative practices. Pertinent to the study of urban space, the Occupy movement saw the invasion of public, urban spaces globally by a movement opposed to the control and distribution of wealth and resources and the global social and economic systems in the world today. The actions of Occupy and similar movements, such as Tahrir Square in Cairo and the Puerta del Sol in Madrid, show how the city has emerged as a portal through which global trends can be analysed; not purely a reflection of the industry of a single place and its immediate surroundings. Further, these urban spaces are emerging as sites of transformation out of the monopoly of the food industry. As sociologist Saskia Sassen argues, âthe city is a space where the powerless can make history.â10
Transition Town Totnes
In the British town of Totnes a uniquely powerful movement is taking place. Relative to similar sites in the UK, the town has an independent character. It has a small population of just below 8,000 residents and has become renowned as a place where people can live a âNew Ageâ bohemian lifestyle.11 Labelled by Time magazine as the capital of âNew Age chicâ, the residents of Totnes have actively campaigned against the presence of large corporations in their local food markets.
Totnes has joined the Transition Towns (TT) movement; a community-based response to the pressures of globalization and globally declining fuel stocks. A key area of the movement is creation of a sustainable food industry for their communities. The TT community believe in âfood feet, not food miles!â; that their food should be sourced from their immediate local environment. The town has even introduced a local currency! Accepted by over 70 businesses, the aims of the Totnes pound are to preserve the circulation of income within the community and its local industry.12
In Totnes, the greengrocers deliver boxes of produce to the cafĂ©s, the bakeries prepare cakes for the delis; everyone knows each other and is interested in each otherâs business plans. Darren Thorne and Lucy Hornsey, from Seeds2Bakery agreed, âItâs bringing people into town, but whatâs best is that all the retailers here are working together instead of trying to compete with each otherâ.13
Unsurprisingly, in 2012, faced with the prospect of a Costa Coffee opening in the town, Totnes declared war on the global food giant. The story of the anti-Costa sentiment in Totnes is a pertinent case study of how the notion of localism, a phrase used by the townâs politicians, is tried and challenged.
The contested site is in a prime location and transport hub where most tourists first arrive in the town, and previously belonged to a local wholefood business. Frances Northrop, the manager of Transition Town Totnes, has voiced the concern: âtheyâll come straight in, and theyâll see a Costa Coffee. And if people are in a new place, a lot of people think: âIâm not going to try the unknown â Iâm going to go somewhere that I recogniseâ.14 The Chief Executive of Whitbread, the conglomerate that oversees the coffee outlet in the UK, has also spoken about the extensive reach of the coffee shop. âPeople really donât want to walk very far for a coffee,â he has said. âWe can have them a couple of hundred yards apart on a really busy high street, then another at a retail park and another at the station.â15
The town has responded to the perceived threat of an impending Costa Coffee by using the communal urban space to celebrate and communicate the independent character of Totnes. Residents held a two week Independent Coffee Festival, the culmination of which was a barista competition on World Fairtrade Day. Baristas from all of the unique coffee shops in Totnes were offered prizes for the quality and credentials of their fairtrade coffee, as well as in the calibre of their âcoffee artâ â the ability to draw images in the froth.
The âNo To Costaâ campaign was based on the legal obligation of councils to consider a planning applicationâs effect on the âvibrancy and vitalityâ of the area; however the planning committee would go on to approve Costaâs plans by 17 votes to 6. Of the decision panel, only four of the councillors directly represent Totnes. There has been strong local opposition to the application at local planning meetings; at one, 100 people were ordered to leave a single planning hearing.16
The Totnes community are now mobilizing contingency plans for how to respond if, or when, the Costa actually opens in town. Residents are planning various acts of civil disobedience â such as regularly visiting Costa, ordering tap water and drinking it painfully slowly; another proposal is to constantly paste anti-Costa posters on the windows. The activities of the residents of Totnes are evidence of a movement by local communities opposed to a pervasive multinational capitalism encroaching on their food markets. Transition towns are emerging throughout the world, with 380 initiatives listed in the UK alone.17
The Golden Export
Other cities have embraced and capitalized on the global market. Butter exported from Ireland built the city of Cork into a powerful economy that dominated world dairy markets during the late eighteenth century. Cork was the great emporium of the butter trade, and its rural economy was largely orientated toward dairy product production. Land became exclusively devoted to maintaining dairy herds as market capacity grew during the Industrial Revolution and beef become a byproduct of milk production in the region.
The geographical location of Cork was vital to its expansion. Located at the head of one of the finest natural harbours in the world, the city became a crossroads of the food trade between northern Europe, the Americas and further afield. The role of the butter merchants was not only central to its commercial development, but also to the civic, social, religious, educational and artistic life of the city.
Trade in the city peaked in the eighteenth century. The butter trade was generating considerable wealth in the city and would shape its use to present day. The centre of the city had become a zone of industry accommodating the production of butter, slaughter houses and tanneries. To avoid the disease and stench of the centre, the wealthier residents moved to the waterside suburbs to live. These distinctions still persist, and nowadays people still prefer to live outside the commercial centre.18
To control demand at its peak, âThe Cork Butter Exchangeâ was established by a voluntary organization to oversee the public inspection, branding and making of butter for export from the city in 1769.19 Daily price quotations were monitored as closely as the stock exchange is today in a large building located in the centre of the city. Specialist routes to facilitate the butter trade were built through Cork. Dairy farmers would deliver butter in simple wooden containers, colloquially known as âfirkinsâ, on horse-drawn carts to be unloaded at the Butter Exchange, along main routes that became known as âbutter roadsâ.20
The rich grassland in the countryside around Cork city provided an appropriate landscape for grazing cattle. Dairy cows generally fed with high-quality forage, produce more milk with less supplemental concentration than cows generate on lower-quality forage. Natural grasslands provide grazing animals with a richer and more diverse diet than pastures used for more intensive farming.
Cork is now the second largest city in Ireland. The butter market has since declined. This is largely attributed to the Exchangeâs reluctance to modernize in the face of foreign competition. Amongst other reasons, the introduction of margarine, labelled a ârogueish compoundâ by the Exchange, offered a tasty, cheaper butter supplement.21 The landscape of Cork city continues to be influenced by its predominant trade. Fittingly, for a city which was built on the strength of its ability to capitalize on the global market, Cork now is a hub for pharmaceuticals and IT technology with an esta...
