Feature

Buy organic – local or global?

Responding to our globalisation issue, Erika Zain El Din and colleagues argue that a global organic food trade could be good for us all

When UK frozen food chain Iceland announced it would only sell organic own-brand vegetables it made a stand for the international organic food trade, and made organic foods more available. And Sainsburys’ decision to make Grenada an organic island, providing more organic foods for supermarket shelves, was good news for the environment and consumers. Or was it?

As Sarah Sexton wrote in healthmatters 41, 70 per cent of UK organic food is currently imported, often over long distances. She argued, as do many NGOs, that long-distance transport of food damages the global ecosystem. And the organic food trade is an intensification of the export-led, cash-crop economies that have so damaged poor people’s food systems.

Solution: the ‘proximity principle’ whereby people source their organic food from their nearest farms. The solution, an ancient one, is local self-sufficiency in food, this time organic, for sustainability and long-term health.

Agricultural chemicals in Europe have impacts on human and animal reproduction, cancers, fertility, disorders of the nervous system and allergies amongst others.¹ Unsustainable transport is also ‘unhealthy’.

Biodiversity gains from changes in transport and farming – UK organic farms support 1.6 times as many insects, 1.4 times more birds and 57 more species of flower than non-organic farms.² Local organic farms and markets also help local economies and break supermarket hegemony.

But is it right to oppose organic food trade? Even if Britain was 100 per cent self-sufficient in local, rail or water-transported organic foods, the ‘grasshopper’ effect of movement of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) around the world, via atmospheric systems, remains. This derives from the use of pesticides in other countries’ systems, affecting everyone’s environment and health.¹ And if the problem is unsustainable transport and unfair trade terms, then this applies to much more than food. It is an issue of solidarity in a globalised world, with everyone helping to change policies internationally, including those concerning food, towards fairer, healthier and more sustainable economic systems.

The University of Tucumán, in the ‘garden’ province of Argentina, provides food for thought. It has a collaborative team of scientists working across five faculties on sustainable development, agriculture and health.

Tucumán is a province in the foothills of the Aconquija range of the Andes with 1,400,000 people. It has 11 microclimates and huge biodiversity. Its ‘garden’ has long been an industrial export crop system, based first on sugar and now on citrus. The people there are trapped in export-led, competitive, chemical agriculture, producing perfect lemons at the cost of the environment and their health. Monoculture has only been maintained by using intensive chemical regimes.

A few families control the land and workers, trading internationally, competing seasonally on prices and annually lowering labour conditions. Small producers just about survive and have little or no access to internal or external trade. Worse, US and European subsidies and regulations keep them trapped. It is called the ‘race to the bottom’.

British consumers have a big role in sustaining this: 14 per cent of UK lemons are shipped from Argentina, 30 per cent in summer, and the trade is worth £4m annually.

Are there health, social and environmental benefits from organic agricultural trade? The answer, according to the University of Tucumán, is: many if it is fair trade based on a fair price to consumer and producer, on good labour conditions, social, health and environmental standards.

Organic agriculture means working with ecosystem diversity, not against it. A shift could alter the entire structure of agricultural and economic systems, with health, social and environmental benefits.

Consumers have a big role. UK consumer demand for organic food based on fair trade shifts local agricultural and economic processes. For example, land in organic production in Argentina has already increased 200-fold in 8 years.³ Organic food then becomes locally available too.

Organic agriculture requires intensive, all-year-round labour. This means that large-scale producers must change their labour structures and small-scale producers can have more access to international trade. Rural employment improves, local economies regenerate and inequalities reduce.

There are direct short-term and long-term worker and population health benefits in terms of reducing pesticide exposure and the risks of poisoning and reproductive disorders.

Health and biodiversity benefits locally and internationally from reduced use of POPs. A return to organic land fertilisation reduces nitrogen loading of the soil and benefits global climate change.³ Crops can be more intensively planted, with excellent multicrop productivity, benefiting the workers’ nutrition.

Perhaps Sarah Sexton underestimates people’s demands. We hope they’re not asking for ‘cheap’ organic food sourced from wherever, under whatever conditions, transported unsustainably. Maybe, through food, people in the UK can finally see their role in changing trade structures, reducing global inequality, protecting the environment and improving health. The ‘proximity principle’ is a healthy one for organic foods you can source locally and seasonally. But we must not give up on our role in solidarity with producers of fairly traded, ecologically produced foods – including lemons.