Urban Food Chains

the links between diet and power

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The pricing of daily bread
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Industry_during_the_First_World_War-_Flour_Mill_Q28276.jpg

This female factory hand was photographed at work in Birkenhead during September 1918. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Logistics contractors refer to it as the final mile, but many of us would settle for “delivering the goods.” It is potentially a complex stage in a product’s journey to meet the end user.

In December 1924, the LinLithgow Committee supplied the Royal Commission with four sets of costings and an outwardly robust methodology to analyse the cost of bread.  It was based on the bakers’ key ingredient, the 20-stone (127 kg) sack of flour at the heart of every batch of bread baked across the land in those days. In its day, this was a Known Value Item, to borrow a modern term. It traded at forty two shillings and a farthing, according to popular belief, not moving from one year to the next. Every baker who ever bought a sack of flour from a miller in those days  paid 42s and one farthing, the story goes. Did anyone ever query the extra farthing? Where did it come from? Where did it go?

Here is the first of the Linlithgow production costings, based on data supplied by the National Association of Master Bakers. It gives a repesentative view of the additional inputs to make a batch of bread from a sack of flour. The data were supplied by 26 local firms and 63 local associations. Get ready to work in farthings for a while, since the farthing was the lowest common denominator of the day.

The dry ingredients added to a 20 stone sack of flour were valued at 161 farthings or 3s/4d and a farthing. Upstream expenses for converting the flour totalled 112d, that is 9s/4d, ignoring a stray halfpenny. Downstream expenses including distribution for the resultant bread was 11 shillings. Total cost to convert a sack of flour left change out of £2/4 shillings. Stables accounted for just over three shillings of the running costs, while depreciation on the capital for automotive vehicles was just a third of that. The early stages of growing automotive investment can be detected in the economy, but there is no indication of its likely size as yet.

 

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Horsepower finds a new balance
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There is no shortage of examples of horses travelling to WWI battlefields, only to be shipped out as carrion within a month, if that. The British army had been working on mechanised replacements to haul heavy artillery pieces, for the best part of a decade. It would only be fair to give the military engineers credit for their efforts to minimise internal rows, and soldier on to modify the original design through two or three iterations by the end of the first world war. Thousands of horses still died in the process, but there was an end in sight to mass equine butchery.

This could not come too soon, as inter-war businesses set about restoring their delivery systems. When trying to track the development of value in the pricing of bread and bakery goods, the editor of Industrial Peace, Major W Melville, conceded that the public grasp of the price structure was “little understood”. The only accessible estimates came from the Linlithgow Report and started outside bakeries with the purchase of sacks of flour. From the plains of north America, the vast expanses of Australia,  to the more modest arable holdings of England, Linlithgow collects the entire growing stage of breadmaking flour into a single undifferentiated lump.

The disadvantages of average returns are there for all to see. Melville put it like this: “No evidence offered in respect of price structure of flour. My inquiry begins at the point at which the baker buys his flour from the miller.” The opening price of breadmaking flour in January 1923 was 42 shillings and a penny. There is no indication of whether this should be taken as an “asking” price or a “taking” price, as given in a trade paper, meaning that flat pricing goes out of the window, speeded on its way by discounts applied at strategic order volumes. The figures discussed in the Linlithgow report were fixed during a time when flour prices were starting to fall, leaving a number of question marks over the validity of 42 shillings and a penny as a credible price for a sack of flour at this time.

more follows later…

crunchy numbers
Are you sitting comfortably?
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There is a serious error in the opening of the commission’s report: the sales figures of a major retailer were either misquoted by M. Charié and the record of what he said was an accurate record, or, an error was made during the transcription of an otherwise accurate account of the hearing. It consists of a total in billions being rendered in millions. It is  an error anyone could have made, since we are all capable of making gaffes like that. What matters is that we untangle the original instance and ensure that there can be no repetition.

The opening pages of the Charié report (vol 1, p17) carries a parallel message, likening a distortion of competition to a pin left behind in an armchair. No matter how well-appointed the chair, a single pin can render it unuseable. (montage: Urban Food Chains)

Charié was both surprised and impressed by the quality and quantity of replies to the commission’s questionnaire for the coming weeks. He noted that many were hand-written and often from senior management across a wide range of sectors. While the captains of industry, large and small, were keen to see fair play, there was an unfortunate degree of flexibility in the interpretation of the basic terms such as “single price list” or “payment terms”, or even “selling at a loss”.

Regardless of the quality of the responses, it was clear that a lot remained unspoken. Would a supplier risk offending a client and potentially lose a listing, when orders, let alone listings were hard to win. Or how many companies would admit to having extracted preferential terms  (answer: zero). The subject may be complex, but no-one is going to miss out on getting one over the competition.

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A voice from the past
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Twenty five years ago Europe was in a state of flux. Many differing political agendas were being promoted in the belief that drafting the right regulations would somehow automatically unlock all the expectations with little or no further discussion or purpose.

If there was a single example to illustrate the processes involved, you will not be surprised to learn that I happen to think that competition is  sine qua non  for civilised society. Considering the central role of competition in a liberal economy, it is disturbing that at no point during the closing years of the 20th century was there a single EU-backed discussion or study of commercial planning permission for urban populations. At the time, there was just one voice to be heard in the darkness, challenging the naif notion that competition would somehow develop unhindered in a bed of thistles, that we would somehow recognise this state of innocence when it emerges from the shadows. The voice was that of French deputy Jean-Paul Charié. He presided over la commission de la production et les Echanges, publishing a parliamentary report into dysfunctional competition. At the time I was a production sub on a weekly trade title . Intrigued by the subject matter and knowing that this was a one-off opportunity, I phoned the French parliament and spoke to Chariés office. I was pleasantly surprised to get a phone call back from Charié in person, when he promised to post me a copy of the report to get the full story. Sadly, I never spoke to him again, since he died, but his published work casts a bright light on topics that thenceforth could  be debated in public with impunity. The evidence he collected on commercial malpractices came from all over Europe, painting a rather downbeat picture of how ethical standards in  retailing had declined while managing to appear outwardly presentable.

Follow the Freench logo to track this extended series.

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What makes Scottish smoked salmon special?
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Environmental campaigners in Scotland have been spied on for years by private surveillance contractors. Many of them have been trained by former military staff, who are given a free hand to operate outside the law. They are collecting higly sensitive personal data in ways that would land a legitimate operator in jail very rapidly.

Farmed salmon is Scotland’s most lucrative food sector: it does not occupy such a widely coveted position without being controversial. Early fish farms in Norwegian fjords were used as a model for similar developments in Scotland. However, Norway’s deeper fjords have stronger currents that prevent uneaten food from accumulating beneath the caged fish. The Scottish experience, on the other hand, has seen abject failures, leading to financial crises in the sector.

Rather than lose face, salmon farming investors hired the surveillance skills of an Afghanistan veteran. The ex-soldier targeted former fly fishing guide Corin Smith and another campaigner, Don Stanford after the pair filmed appalling conditions of young farmed salmon. They were crawling with jellyfish larvae, called sea lice. These parasites affect both wild and farmed salmon alike: in the later chronic stages, the skins of the infested fish become red  and blotchy, making them unsaleable for many end uses. A reliable way of shifting sea lice infested fish is to turn it into smoked salmon and look the other way when the bins go out. Instead of resolving the technical issues which dogged the irretrievably blighted fish farms, the investors paid huge sums of money over many years for surveillance operatives to dig out any personal information on the environmentalists, who were campaigning in the public interest. It is ironic that Scotland’s biggest food export earner should have a skeleton like that in its cupboard.

 

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Of jellyfish and drifters (and coral)
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Thanks Clarise for use of this pic.

For years now we have made doomsday predictions of what would happen when the earth started to heat up in earnest. Covering two thirds of the globe’s surface, the oceans are an obvious places to start looking for the intense and complex lifestyles of people like the Baujau, who have built a way of life in pockets of sheltered coastline. The groups live by the sea in the Phillipines, Malaysia and Indonesia. Perched atop marginal menisci of tidal sand, their houses are in constant need of repair. The fisher folk  take in huge lungfuls of air and freedive down to the reef, 20 metres below. Dives to 12 or 15 metres are common, compared to 5 metres for an active swimmer. A BBC team filmed them in action in 2020, ensuring that their way of life would be preserved for posterity. Women dive as routinely as the men, who will catch 15 kg or more in a morning’s fishing. One of the strongest freedivers filmed by the BBC used to be out at sea by 4 in the morning, and back on the shore around midday, with catches of about 15 kg. Having evolved bigger spleens, the Bajau divers can hold their breath for longer. Fisher woman Ima Baineng explains that the Bajau inherited their knowledge of fishing and the underwater world around them from their ancestors. She started diving at the age of four and went to sea with her father regularly from a very young age. “The corals are where the fish breed and if they suffer any damage, there won’t be any fish left,” she says.

 

The Bajau are completely committed to preserving the sea, which is hardly surprising since it keeps them fed. If, or when, life in the oceans fades away,  the Bajau will be the first group to feel the consequences. For now, there has not yet been a complete breakdown in the fishing, but there are growing numbers of damaged reefs and the Bajau lack technology to meet the potential threats head on. They are are politically active across the region: “From our ancestors to our great grandchildren we protect the coral,” says Mandor M Tembang. The Bajau efforts to preserve coral should be adopted as a standard for international conservation projects, argues Coral Reef Ambassador Muh Yakub, making the point that while Bajau coral management practice still works and is sustainable, there are good reasons for it to be supported.

Tuna are fearsome hunters and eat whatever the ocean currents bring.  In previous years, the composition of plankton around the world has been relatively stable. As the sea warms up, the effects on the food supply become clearer. The ocean can carry more nutrients, if the opportunity arises. Riding the wave are species that were once considered as lunch. Turning briefly to tuna, they were once major predators, preventing coastlines getting piled high with trailer loads of beached jellyfish. Now look closely at a fish that has been raised in a fish farm — and preferably with a microscope or a magnifying glass. You’ll need a reference picture too, just confirm that you know what you’re looking at. 

Start off on Wikimedia Commons to get an idea of what is available. Enter sea lice salmon in the search box and sit back, popcorn at the ready. I have just tried this: blink and you’ll miss it! To save time,  here’s a screengrab, showing three infested fish. In the top lefthand corner is a salmon (photographed in 2013); top centre an Atlantic farmed salmon and on the lefthand side again, an image of a brown trout retrieved from the publication of a book in 1910. Another sea lice picture, from the same publication occupies the top right hand corner, a 2020 diagram from Bergen University is centre left, while the 2010 picture of Loch Eilt was part of a photographic survey of the UK. How I came to snag a 1921 book cover on growing roses is a total mystery.

Now I’m not convinced that this even a drop in the ocean of general knowledge and I would say that there is an elephant in the room, getting in the way of some fairly basic facts that are uncomfortable for some folk.

Let’s start with sea lice, otherwise known as jellyfish larva. They used to have much lower survival rates in previous centuries, needing to embed themselves in the skin of an active fish soon after hatching. In the open waters of the world’s oceans, sea lice are way down the food chain, scattered far and wide. But a fish farm is an oasis of opportunity for countless creatures, even such a  random life form as a jellyfish. Hold that thought for a moment and ask yourself “Does a jellyfish ever decide anything?” No sooner have we posed the question than we have a ready answer: no way. It’s quicker than asking a jellyfish, for sure. They are simply not great communicators and it’s not personal: it’s a species thing.

Back at the fish farm, arrivng sea lice are greeted by the sight of more fish flanks than they could ever hope to get their teeth into. Beneath some of the fish cages there are piles of uneaten feedstock, that literally slipped through the net, not to mention wild fish cleaning up on the leftovers from above. By the time all this has been redistributed, another batch of tiny sea lice have hitched rides on both wild and captive fish. Life goes on.

There is something of a paradox in the way that creatures which are totally incapable of navigating in any sense of the word, should end up in such well-adapted feeding stations. The correlation between the extensive growth of fish farming and the resulting scourge for wild and captive populations is too well established to be talked down. Around the world, as well as exemplary sites, there are locations where ocean drifters have been carried to the kind of habitats that once upon a time, a species could only dream about. In the meantime, reputable fish processors reassure their customers that their hands are clean. Only top grade fish enter their premises and none but the finest salmon is handled on their lines.

Alongside the growth in fish farming has been the development of a mass market for smoked salmon. Conveniently for some fish farmers, it is possible to recover some marketable product even if the skin is less than perfect. Not that anyone would ever do such thing, you understand.

Drifters and evolution

Earlier in this blog I touched very briefly on the domestication of species that we now regard as part of the family, so to speak. The timespan for this process is counted in millennia, hundreds of generations. Is evolution a process that can be directed or driven? Or is it a developmental drift? Is this even a topic worth investigating? Share your thoughts in a comment and give me a break from folk with cryptic email addresses and obscure sales messages.

More follows later if there is a demand for it…