Bittersweet Brexit

Charlie Clutterbuck

Description

*Selected as one of openDemocracy's Best Political Books of 2017*



Although widely criticised and hugely wasteful, The Common Agricultural Policy did at least afford British farmers a degree of support. Post-Brexit, that support will vanish - to be replaced with a woefully misconceived agricultural export drive that cannot possibly deliver.



Bittersweet Brexit suggests a solution: paying workers decent wages in the agricultural sector could radically transform the nature of farming in Britain. It would improve yields, increase sustainability and ensure greater self-sufficiency at a time when food security is becoming a vital issue.



This scenario provides a progressive, forward-thinking and optimistic future for food and farming in Britain, which, unlike many other industries, is currently being ignored.
List of Photographs, Figures and Tables

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part I: The State We're In

1. All Change

2. Coming Out

3. Moving On

Part II: Society

4. Trade

5. Labour

6. Land

Part III: Farm and Food Science

7. Sustainability

8. Obesity

9. Pesticides

10. Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)

Part IV: The Future

11. Favourite Foods

12. What We Can Do

Abbreviations

Notes

Index

Sujets

• Food Processing
• Economic Policy
• Public Policy
• Tariffs
• Climate Change
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Employabilité, métiers et formations
• Agricultural
• USA
• Carbón
• Reino Unido
• 21st century
• Agricultural law
• Import
• Natural Resources
• Food bank
• Laborer
• Land tenure
• National Farmers Union
• Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
• Pasture
• Conservative Party
• Regulation
• Common Agricultural Policy
• Organic
• Tariff
• Political economy
• Biodiversity
• Seed
• United Kingdom
• European Union
• Economics
• Capitalism
• Great Britain
• Importation
• Business
• LAW
• Agriculture
• États-Unis
• Carbon
• Water
• Soil
• Sugar
• Wales
• Labor
• EU
• Parti conservateur
• Labour
• Export
• Monsanto
• Land
• Gestion de la chaîne logistique
• Pesticide
• Royaume-Uni

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 octobre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781786802088
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Bittersweet Brexit
Bittersweet Brexit
The Future of Food, Farming, Land and Labour
Charlie Clutterbuck PhD
First published 2017 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright Charlie Clutterbuck 2017
The right of Charlie Clutterbuck to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 3771 5 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 3770 8 Paperback
ISBN 978 1 7868 0207 1 PDF eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0209 5 Kindle eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0208 8 EPUB eBook




This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America
Contents
List of Photographs, Figures and Tables
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Introduction
PART I: THE STATE WE RE IN
1. All Change
Up for Grabs
Where We Are Now
Imports/Exports
Markets
How We Got Here
Corn Laws
After the Second World War
My View
Overproduction
2. Coming Out
If, How and When ...
Tables Turned
Brexit
Opportunities
Challenges
Doing the Deal
Out of the Single Market
But Inside the Free-trade Zone
Outside the Single Market but Inside the Customs Union
Leaving the Customs Union Too
Brexiteers v Free Traders
Tariffs
Sanitary Measures
3. Moving On
Going Global
Challenges
Buying British
Challenges
PART II: SOCIETY
4. Trade
Food Trade Deficit
Mad Markets
Globalisation
World Trade Organisation
EU Single Market
Doing Deals Elsewhere
United States of America
BRICS
Commonwealth
Food Futures Markets
Food Prices
E-Food Trading
5. Labour
Fruits of Our Labour
Migrant Workers
Plantations
Agricultural Science Worker
Agricultural Wages Board (AWB)
Farm Fatalities
They re Off!
Technofix
Investment
Technology and Labour
Subsidise Land Workers not Landowners
6. Land
Not All Land is the Same
Agri-Environment Schemes
Forestry
Land Use
Save Our Arable Land!
Erosion
Carbon
Where Has All the Carbon Gone?
Soil Health
Soil Animals
Birth of the Earth
Who Should be Doing What?
Land Research
Lost Land Research
Questions
PART III: FARM AND FOOD SCIENCE
7. Sustainability
Land
Energy
Air
Water
Nitrogen
Pesticides
Biodiversity
1 Crops and Creatures
2 Food Products
3 Seed Banks
4 Biodiversity Action Plan
Waste
Sustainable Diets
8. Obesity
Fats or Carbs?
Flawed or Fraud?
Saccharine Disease
Dietary Guidelines
Hard to Swallow
9. Pesticides
Insecticides
Herbicides
Digging up the Dirt
Post Brexit
March for Science
10. Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)
Tomato Case Study
Purple Tomato
Kumato
Private
Public
Concerns
Citizen s Panel
PART IV: THE FUTURE
11. Favourite Foods
Full British Brexfast
Lunch
Afternoon Tea
At the Bar
Evening Meals
12. What We Can Do
Identity
Predictions
Proposals 1 Society
Priority - subsidies
Proposals 2 Science
Proof of the Pudding
Personal
Practical
Policy
Principles
Abbreviations
Notes
Index
List of Photographs, Figures and Tables
PHOTOGRAPHS
1. The then Mayor of Todmorden Jayne Booth listens in to Pam Warhurst at the opening of the Aquagarden in the small Yorkshire town
2. The author is looking forward to taking ideas in this book on to union education courses
3. Digging for Britain was written in 1965 by the man who piloted through Parliament the 1947 Agricultural Act. Attlee said in the foreword that the Act effected nothing less than a revolution in British agriculture
4. The author is delighted that the Hazards Bulletin - now magazine - has played an important part in the movement that has saved so many lives and limbs
5. Under the Common Agricultural Policy large landowners scoop up 3bn annually. They include the Queen who pockets a third of a million for the land she owns in the Forest of Bowland
6. More Than We Can Chew was published in 1982
7. Joseph Arch in 1872 at the time of the formation of the National Agricultural Labourers Union
8. Ivan Monckton and Steve Leniec from the Rural and Agricultural sector of Unite
9. Charlie Clutterbuck s testing weedkillers field trial plot at Wye College in 1970
10. Most children know little about farming or how food is produced
11. Unite s Book of the Month, which has led to this book being published
FIGURES
1. Predicted Brexit Vote, April 2016, predominately around arable land in eastern England
2. Change in Soil Carbon Content 1978, 1998, 2007
3. Ancel Keys 7 Countries Study
4. Yerashalmy Hillieboe 22 Countries Study
5. Prevalence of Obesity Among Adults Aged 16+ years
TABLES
1. Tariffs between the EU and MFNs (2013)
2. UK Government Food and Drink International Action Plan, 2016-20
3. Food Imports (in dollars), Possible Targets as Percentages and Savings over 5 years
4. My Suggestions for Soil Animal Indicators of Good Soil Health
5. EAC Recommendations and the Government s Response
6. Land-based Research Stations Closed Since 1990
7. Coffee Tariffs
8. Summary of Possible Changes with Implications for Four Main Aspects of Food and Farming
Foreword
When Charlie suggested I write the foreword to his book on food post Brexit, my immediate reaction was, why me? I m not an expert on any aspect of the food chain, have no qualification in nutrition or food science and possess only a layperson s knowledge of the politics of food and why we are where we are.
But I guess to some extent that s the point. I m a working mother with grave concerns about the future of my child and the children I will never ever meet.
I m a founder of a grassroots movement, Incredible Edible, whose purpose is to get people thinking of the world they live in and what they can do to build something kinder. If you eat you re in is our motto, and we use food to motivate people to challenge a status quo that isn t working for many people across the globe.
So of course Charlie s book is important to people like me who have a stake in how our food is produced, where our food is produced and what impact all that has on the planet we call home.
Over the years Charlie and I have spoken many times of the idiocy of flying beans half way across the planet and the importance of creating sticky-money food economies where the profit stays where the money s spent and you can see how it s produced if you had a mind to.
We ve ranted at the idiocy of not using our schools to teach our children about the importance of living soils and respect for all life forms on which human beings depend for their existence.
For me, better use of our public realm and our markets to reconnect people to growing food and seasonality is the first step in rethinking what we want from the food sector and challenging the powers that be to create a system that invests in the wellbeing of all, not only those who can afford the artisan food we find in many upmarket supermarkets.
I m an optimist and I believe that an informed public can shift the patterns of their life if they are given alternatives that allow them to imagine a better, happier, healthier future for their families.
That s why this book is so important, not just because it informs, but because it challenges us all to take the opportunity Brexit presents to rethink our food systems, rethink our investment in food production and reconnect, locally, with the opportunities to re-skill and re-plan land use, so we are not flying all those beans from one side of the world to the other.
Bring it on.
Pam Warhurst
Founder of Incredible Edible in Todmorden, Yorkshire, Incredible Edible Network - If you eat, you re in

Photo 1 The then Mayor of Todmorden Jayne Booth listens in to Pam Warhurst at the opening of the Aquagarden in the small Yorkshire town.
Acknowledgements
Thanks go to Mark Metcalf for making this book happen, my wife Frances for helping and supporting me, Richard Hooper for the cartoons, Geoff Tansey and Anne Beech for editing, Nick Hayes for helping with the money tree, Steve Leniec for helpful comments, Incredible Edible in Todmorden for inspiration, Sustainable Food friends in the North West, Tim Lang for lots over many years, and Jenny Shepherd, Carol Marshall and Nancy Thompson for proofing and commenting, and thanks to Unite the Union, in particular Jim Mowatt, Director of Education, for backing this book.
Introduction
My book spells out the big changes to come. It draws on my over 40-year experience as an agricultural science worker and trade unionist. I trained as a scientist, gaining three agricultural degrees, including a doctorate from Wye College, then probably the best agricultural college in the world, but since closed down. I learnt about many agricultural science disciplines, from pests and diseases, biochemistry, pesticides, agronomy, horticulture, tropical crops, through to soil science and, in particular, soil zoology.
I also have experience in all parts of the food and farming chain; from working in kitchens and fields, plucking turkeys, picking hops, helping set up the first politics of food group, living on a farm, advising retailers about responsible food, building food ethics into online food supply chains, to setting up a module in a new food entrepreneurial degree on sustainable food.
I have been involved with the farmworkers union for over 40 years, first writing articles on pesticides for the National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers in the 1970s, then representing them on the Health and Safety Executive s (HSE) Chemicals in Agriculture (CHEMAG) Committee