Urban Food Chains

the links between diet and power

crunchy numbers cultivation haulage ship Turnor
Supply side risks
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The first world war forced ever greater rates of change than the old order would ever have imagined. Here is a collection of data curated by Christopher Turnor during the first world war and published in Our Food Supply: perils and remedies (Country Life 1916). Any prices quoted are face value at the time, without any subsequent adjustment for historical changes in value. Turnor does not go into detail on the sources of his data and its authenticity, but since he had the run of market information gathered by the Agriculture Board he is unlikely to have needed to look very far. The tables in this post are mostly scanned directly from Turnor’s book, with the intention of giving readers the opportunity to form a view on Turnor’s line of argument. I have made odd comments here or there, but I defer to the readers’ many and varied viewpoints, believing they are better served by sight of the original publication.

The production figures for cereals and potatoes over a 20-year time period are open to question, but the contrasting rates of change suggest that Germany had a strategic advantage in feeding its citizens over this period in its history. Sub-plot: Germany had little access to food grown in overseas colonies, so that supply chains were shorter and more effectively protected from military action.

It is a moot point as to whether a rural population of 20 million in Germany is going to be more productive than thirteen and a half million British empire citizens spread around the globe. There is no obvious equivalence, since resources, skills and infrastructure are not comparable.

Turnor was convinced that British agriculture was being held back by a high proportion of low-earning grass supporting too few grazing animals. Here is what he wrote in 1916:

“In thinking out measures which will increase the amount of our home supplies, the permanent development of agriculture must be the aim. Attempts to increase, hastily and temporarily, the production of the soil must be ineffective and can easily be actually harmful. We must get to the root of the matter. Present conditions affecting agriculture are unsound and unsatisfactory; better ones must be created.” (Christopher Turnor; Our Food Supply, Perils and Remedies, Country Life 1916.)

Scaling up from a county level to national comparisons, Turnor dug out the following figures during the early years of the first world war:

Turnor then presents a set of headline consumption figures. These classify ingredients and the opening table reflects national dietary preferences. The line for rye, for instance, identifies it as a German staple crop, and may well include sale of grain for brewing beer. A similar interpretation of barley being sold for malting would seem reasonable.

Table VII, below, sets out the cost of imported foods, probably as a set of customs values.

Stats for fifth quarter products went through the Board of Trade.

More follows

That’s it, folks.

cultivation
Shrinking future?
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UK food production is set to decline in the medium term, due to a number of factors.

The first is that farmland is going out of production and is being sold off to non-farmers. The National Farmers’ Union (NFU) is in a separate running battle over government plans to impose inheritance tax on farms, neither side conceding any ground in a fiercely argued war of words. Over the past year, 400,000 hectares of farmland has been taken out of production and will never be recoverable as farmland. Prime minister Keir Starmer concedes that inheritance tax can have a significant impact, but argues that tax efficient strategies will keep farms in business. “That’s why I am absolutely confident the vast majority of farms and farmers will not be affected by this,” he told journalists. “It’s important for us to keep communicating how that works. Over the £3m, it’s then 20% rather than the usual rate (40%) and it’s payable over 10 years.” However, these figures only apply to farms passing from one generation to the next, which is no longer a reliable assumption to make. What is more, given the high average age of UK farmers, there will be less chance of the gaps between generations being as long as 10 years.

crunchy numbers cultivation
Commodity price rises will be hard to swallow
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With coffee trading at over USD 4 / lb and cocoa prices hovering around GBP 9,000 / ton, traders are preparing for an increasingly stormy market. Over the past year, supply chain experts have logged a growing number of unseasonally hot weather episodes that have been followed by recent sharp rises in commodity prices. Coffee, in particular, is vulnerable to extreme conditions: the first coffee trees were found fruiting in the mid-height levels of a rain forest canopy and their modern descendants have not adapted well to growing conditions on open ground.

There are product prices that are monitored closely by retailers, which earn high margins, such as orange juice, butter or beef. The theory is that while customers are still buying products in these categories, consumer demand is intact. More problematic is the availability of a raw material like sunflower oil, a major crop in Ukraine and Bulgaria. With Ukrainian crops hit by war as well as drought last year, a wide range of food manufacturing businesses have seen sunflower oil price rises of 50% and more. It does not take many ingredient prices to start moving upwards for life to become very hard for any business that supplies multiple retailers, who systematically refuse to countenance price increases.

cultivation domestication fish pre-history raw
Food values
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To paraphrase Saint John, in the beginning was the meal. And the meal was with God…

We live in a world with more explanations than questions, more doubts than answers, more belief than knowledge. What sustains us is an unseen chain of events that conspire to make human life happen, whatever it takes. Our dependence on this process is total. Welcome to the world of food.

Our shared origins go back to the beginning of time before crops or livestock had been domesticated. There is general agreement once hominids had domesticated fire — tamed is probably a better word — there was a further four to six millennia before domesticated animals and crops emerged on the scene. Scholars may disagree over when this change came about, but we can be sure that until it was a fait accompli, everything else in the story of civilisation was on hold. There are quibbles about when exactly such a change can taken as read, but everybody is counting in millennia.

The rest is history. The trouble with history is its dependence on written records and sometimes incorrect attribution of artefacts. The reason we know so little about early agrarian populations is because they had neither written records nor surviving artefacts to bear witness to their passing. This is a pity, since what we do know about these groups is that they lived in harmony with nature and were environmentally enlightened. We are indebted to some of the world’s most dedicated and skillful archaeologists, who have traced the remains of villages that were built in the trackless alluvial wetlands. At this time, hominids and animals fed future generations of flora and fauna. Man was still bound to the laws of nature at this time.

When the world’s first states emerged, they were expressions of an agrarian social structure. Their dealings with the world around them were probably more extensive than we will ever know. What matters is that we learn and understand from such scraps as we can glean, to focus on value without being diverted by units of account.

cultivation Europe food production olives
Waiting for salvation
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All around the Mediterranean and across southern Europe, thousands of communities are waiting for this year’s olive crop to be milled. Until this year’s production is ready for packing, no new business can be written: there are no reserve stocks available. Every last litre has been sold and there will be no olive oil to sell before the first deliveries of the new crop year reach the market.

For months bulk olive oil prices have been sky high. As recently as August, some desperate buyers in Spain were paying almost 7,000 Euros a tonne for low-grade lampante that would normally have been a fraction of today’s prices. In August, the Spanish industry was forecasting a crop of 1.4 million tonnes of olive oil this year. This “business as normal” bravado is misplaced, since hot weather in the final weeks before the crop is gathered will affect the moisture content and can reduce the yield. In previous years, yields of 20% were average: but until this year’s crop reaches the mills, there is no reliable way of predicting finished tonnages. However, apart from wildfires, there is probably not a lot of additional damage that the environment could inflict on the nation’s olive groves.

The Spanish government is responding to the crisis by cutting VAT on olive oil from 5% to 4%, with effect from 2025. Consumers have seen retail olive oil prices rise from around EUR 3 / litre two or three years ago to hover around EUR 10 / litre now. The unthinkable is happening and Spanish consumers are buying sunflower oil instead of olive oil for home use. Since many households buy cooking oil in small quantities very often, Spaniards have suffered more from the rising prices than elsewhere in Europe. This is because most European retailers place huge orders immediately after the harvest is in, to cover the coming 12 months sales. This fixed price for the year means that retail bottle sizes can have stable prices for the duration, although there is a temptation for retailers to raise olive oil prices anyway, pushing up their margins.

Spain has imported 20,000 tonnes of olive oil this crop year, bringing Spanish consumer consumption and industry intake to a total of 100,590 tonnes. Bottler stocks in August were at an all-time low of 131,740 tonnes with a further 138,660 tonnes held by co-operatives and millers. Total production at the close of this crop year is expected top 820,000 tonnes, making it a poor year. An average season these days would be somewhere between one and two million tonnes of oil.

This year saw a closing of the gap between Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO) and cheaper grades. Paradoxically, strong demand for better grades meant that the market was picked clean, leaving mainstream buyers to pay more for lower quality grades because that was all there was left. Formerly used to fuel oil lamps, as the name suggests, today lampante refers to oil that needs work to return it to an edible grade. This means that lampante has a limited number of takers, since the consignment will need to go to a refinery, adding to the cost and commercial risk.

soil renewal UK
Measuring progress
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On Your Farm presenter Charlotte Smith and Archers’ actor Lucy Speed open the programme from the middle of Devon by explaining that they are looking for a farm but are surrounded by large sheds and outwardly industrial structures. Somewhere in this seemingly inappropriate setting, they are expecting to meet Andy Gray, a possible finalist for one of the programme’s annual awards.

Andy’s business bridges the gap between livestock farmers and end users of meat. He operates the large food grade cutting and packing lines that they saw on arrival. As well as selling dog food, he also farms 150 hectares of arable crops, as well as keeping a herd of deer and a herd of cattle. Other business activities in his eclectic business include a quarry for heritage building stone.

During the visit, the conversation turns to remedial best practice for soil and the new funding schemes for English farming, based on the provision of a public good such as healthy soil. Rothamstead soil scientist Andy Neil is on hand to discuss some of the vital detail. Charlotte Smith is impressed that Andy should have engaged a Rothamstead professional to measure the recovery of former arable fields. Andy, on the other hand is pragmatic: if he can’t quantify the improvements he is making on his land, he won’t get any government cash. Gotcha.

cultivation soil renewal
Going underground
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After centuries of agriculture, scientists are finally admitting that they are in the dark about the role of earth worms. Today’s Guardian carries a piece in which earth worms are estimated to add 140 million tonnes of wheat to the world’s wheat harvest, without a fully-argued reasoning of how they might do this.

There is more than “nice to know” involved. Crop scientists have been happy to spray crops without a full understanding of what makes them grow well. Shouldn’t we change this?

City life cultivation food production
Sharing the Earth
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The final episode of Chris Packham’s series Earth was the cue to wrap up a long awaited prognosis for the planet. Pulling no punches, Packham expressed his belief that humanity would either resolve the many threats the planet faces or disappear into planetary oblivion. Packham’s uncompromising position is completely logical: what we refer to as “the natural world” or “the industrial world” or even “the industrial world” is in reality a single space that is shared by competing interest groups. The problems we face arise from the planet’s collective inability to find ways of sharing one space. For instance society’s habit of staying up after dark created an economic demand for lighting: the routine use of oil lamps to light houses in the 18th and 19th centuries drove whales to the brink of extinction.

Click screendump to visit BBC website

It is easy to talk about nature as though it exists in nooks and crannies that are somehow unsuitable for human economic activity. Humanity’s industrial intakes come from space that could just as easily be supporting other life forms. Industrial farming generates mile after mile of unvarying monoculture. There is no sustenance for wildlife such as orang utans in palm oil plantations. Yet the apes are ruthlessly hunted and killed for being a “problem” when they search for food among the serried ranks of trees that offer no suitable food for their species.

By making nature, industry, urban and rural environments aggressively mutually exclusive, the scene is set for all-out war. It is not difficult to see that if industry is allowed to declare war on nature, for instance, or for rural resources to be diverted into urban areas, the result will do more harm than good. The challenge of Chris Packham’s outlook is to identify and rationalise shared interests in such a way that life can evolve productively. The BBC Earth series is currently on iPlayer: click the screen dump to access the BBC website.

City life cultivation dairy eggs pigs UK
Value or price?
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Today’s On Your Farm came from Yew Tree Farm, Bristol’s last city farm. Third generation farmer Catherine Withers faces existential challenges to a business that has adapted to extensive and rapid change, but is on the point of losing access to land that is vital to its survival. Part of a site of Scientific and Conservation Interest, the farm should have been spared the predatory attention of a local property developer.

Click the screengrab to access the programme on the BBC.

Instead, acres of hay and winter feed once intended for Catherine’s dairy herd is under lock and key. The tenancy on the field concerned was terminated in favour of a planning proposal for 200 homes that has yet to be agreed. When the BBC visited, the hay in the field was ready to be cut and the livestock would have been sure of winter sustenance. However, Catherine is kept away from her crop by a heavy padlock on the gate. Being able to see the crop but not gather it in just adds injury to insult.

Elsewhere on the farm, another tenancy on a field adjacent to a local council crematorium is set to end, as the town hall plans to extend the amenities for its residents. Again, it is the dairy cattle that will lose out. Catherine has a small dairy herd, as well as outdoor pigs: she also grows vegetables, which she can sell to local residents within walking distance of her farmhouse. Bristol used to have more than 30 farms within its boundaries: as the city’s only remaining farmer, Catherine is something of a local hero, not just to her customers.

Yew Tree has a high proportion of ancient meadow in its grazing, an irreplaceable asset that has been quietly sheltering threatened flora and fauna for centuries. Its value to Bristol is incalculable, but depends on being an integrated space, across which wildlife can roam. The shift from viable and productive to long term decline is an ever-present threat and determined by factors that neither Catherine nor her many supporters can control.

Listen to the programme while it is available on the BBC Sounds website. It raises questions for all of us, regardless of whether we live in a city or a rural area.

crunchy numbers cultivation
Cumulative cereal crises (1)
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Climate change can be expected to set off multiple simultaneous food crises around the world. The following post started with a story about rice, then collected a footnote about wheat from war-torn Ukraine and another from southern Europe in the grip of a drought. It could have had a snippet from north America’s struggling maize crop, but that will have to wait.

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India is curbing its rice exports in the face of predicted shortages. The country is the world’s biggest exporter of rice, selling 22,000 tonnes abroad in the crop year 2023. An estimated 10% of the world’s rice production is exported and traded internationally, according to data curated by the All India Rice Exporters Association . The tonnages traded internationally are less than one might have expected for one of the world’s most important cereal crops: global production tops 50 million tonnes.

In all its diverse forms, rice supplies about a fifth of the human calorie intake. As a labour intensive crop with very specific irrigation needs, rice does not travel as far or as readily as other mainstream cereals like wheat or barley. Rice is a complex commodity, with many specialist varieties and qualities. Indian rice growers produce premium grades of scented basmati rice for export sales, in addition to more basic varieties. The guiding principle is that all basmati rice is scented, but not all scented rice is basmati.

The first two months of the new growing season (2023-2024) have seen growth of just over 6% in volumes traded internationally, even though India imposed an export duty of 20% on rice part way through the 2022 crop year. The additional duty has not damped down demand, which remains strong. The current season has been hit by more rain and flooding than usual. “We are still keeping our fingers crossed over the likely impact of El Nino” AIREA president Nathi Ram Gupta told his members.

Rice export figures from India and all the significant growing areas across the world for the 2022-23 crop year have not moved dramatically against previous years. But past performance is a notoriously unreliable indicator of future shortages in any sector of the world economy.

This week there are reports of Russian military action destroying a grain silo in Odessa. First reports suggest that 40,000 tonnes of wheat were destroyed in the attack: more significantly the action removes storage capacity for 120,000 tonnes of grain in the middle of the harvest. One single incident casts a shadow over both dockside facilities and the safety of shipping that up until now had been able to deliver wheat to east Africa.

With southern Europe in the grip of a persistent heat wave, there are signs of firmer prices for durum wheat, which is grown across Spain and Italy. Since July 1, prices for European durum wheat price have bottomed out from a pre-harvest low point of around 330 Euros/tonne and moved up to almost 400 by late July. Southern European shoppers are high volume consumers of pasta, which is likely to push up prices of durum wheat in the coming weeks.