Consolidated Control of Food Chain
Oakland Institute USA, has released a New Policy Brief Reveals that Consolidated Control of Food
Leads to Declining Food Security, Economic Health, and Labor Standards :
Facing Goliath : Challenging the Impacts of Retail Consolidation on our Local Economies,
Communities, and Food Security.
This new policy brief from the Oakland Institute exposes how corporate consolidation in food
retail has put our access to a reliable supply of healthy and affordable food at risk.
The top five food retailers, which now control more than half of all grocery sales in the
country, have gained unprecedented market power," said Katy Mamen, Oakland Institute Fellow and
author of the Policy Brief. "As a result, cost savings garnered through increased bargaining
power are generally not being passed on to the consumer, supermarkets are abandoning low-income
communities where profit margins are lower, and labor standards are being forced down."
The shift from small and medium scale food stores to big box stores brings broader economic
turmoil for many communities. When a retail mega-store enters a community, independent shops that
serve the local community are often forced to close. New Wal-Mart stores in a community have
been associated with increased poverty levels and a decline in locally owned and operated
businesses.
"In the U.S., the independent business owner is held in high regard - but small businesses
throughout the food supply chain, from farmers to processors to grocers are being forced out as
consolidation continues, undermining the American Dream," said Mamen.
The Policy Brief teases out the architecture of change in the food supply chain, outlines some of
the key impacts on local communities, and suggests strategies for bringing balance back to the
food retail landscape, including:
* Developing successful and innovative regional distribution and retail models;
* Re-creating real retail diversity that includes both locally-owned outlets that source a
majority of their products locally and products that are direct marketed by producers;
* Fostering locally-owned and operated retail outlets in low-income communities;
* Working to balance the public subsidy and support system, which currently disproportionately
favors large supermarket chains over independent markets;
* Raising public awareness about the social, economic and environmental benefits of locally owned
and operated grocery stores.
Facing Goliath : Challenging the Impacts of Retail Consolidation on our Local Economies,
Communities, and Food Security is a publication of the Oakland Institute, a think tank for
research, analysis, and action whose mission is to increase public participation and promote
fair debate on critical social, economic, and environmental justice issues.
Management Gurus and Food Retail
Supply Chains, Logistics :
Management gurus are gingerly sniffing the Indian retail food pie from all sides and from
all directions. The foreign gurus are doing it gingerly and reading up on the George
Fernandes years when Coke was ousted, while the Indian gurus are doing it more stridently,
flaunting their Indian credentials and inside knowledge of how the "system works".
The Indian politicians have played a sterling role with their six lane highways
and are unmindful of any social fissures in the rural society or the need for any concept of
social security, regulatory frameworks, food control regimes and ethical policy led transparent
politics.
In fact, the Indian Agriculture Minister, is best known all over the world for his dubious wisdom
of defending the acceptable pesticide levels in the milk that a mother feeds to her child. This
can only happen in India.
The Indian retailers are gleeful that they enjoy the first mover advantage and have already built
up a sizable reputation amongst loyal consumers with their neighbourhood food retail concept with
a European choice of food items, that the Indian middle class is thirsting to shower its surplus
income on.
The foreign retailers are ensuring that the political bigwigs keep up the pressure on Indian
Agriculture and Commerce ministers to ensure that a level field is available to compete for the
loyalty of the dosa and vada eating South Indian, the Stilton eating Europe returned Brigadier
settled in Delhi, the Bengali moshai babu with his fish and rice packets, as well as the
conservative Gujju with his vegetarian mix of dhokla and okra.
The idea of lokavidya is a result of long struggles by a large number of people,
over more than 15-20 years, through their engagement with people's movements.
The organisations one can specifically name are PPST Foundation, Mazdoor Kisan Niti
Group, and Nari Hastkala Udyog Samiti, which engaged with questions of knowledge,
from an emancipatory out look, and which developed processes, like Congresses of
Traditional Sciences and Technologies of India, the unity of peasants, artisans,
women, and adivasis as swadeshi samaj, the carrier of new light for a new world,
and Nari vidya as the ultimate basis, for women to find their feet in this world,
and a possible new one.
Lokavidya belongs to ordinary life.
This is life without condition, and therefore, it is not possible to privatise
lokavidya, not even by the mightiest of the empires.
... lokvidya engages with questions of knowledge, from an emancipatory framework, dedicating itself to the unity of peasants, artisans, women and adivasis as swadeshi samaj, the carrier of new light for a new world ...- Sunil Sahasrabudhey