Recently the government committed a small act of sanity by deciding not to go ahead with granting the UK’s only sugar cane importer, Tate & Lyle, an  extra tariff-free quota of sugar cane. Effectively, this would have given Tate & Lyle a tax break to increase the UK’s sugar supply even further. The UK already has far too much sugar on the market – more than 2.5 times the amount needed to give everyone their recommended allowance.

How the government props up Big Sugar

A very brief history of sugar production reveals that sugar production has long been entwined with state support, with enormous impacts on the lives of people across the globe. Described as ‘White Gold’, sugar acted as the economic vehicle of hundreds of years of oppression and murder of enslaved Africans and Afro-Caribbeans.

The UK sugar industry has a long and ignoble history of state-supported exploitation, racism and colonialism, which continues to this day. Back in the 17^th century, the British Crown applied protectionist taxation policies to support imports of semi-processed sugar grown by enslaved Africans in plantations in the Caribbean. Slavery – the backbone of the early sugar industry – was underwritten by state support from the very beginning. This stretches to the present day – it was only in 2015 that British taxpayers finished ‘paying off’ a massive debt incurred by the government to compensate slave owners when slavery was abolished in 1835. Meanwhile, reparations and compensation to those who were enslaved remain firmly off the state’s agenda.

Plantation sugar was historically refined by many small refineries around the UK. Today the UK has only two sugar producers: Tate & Lyle Sugars (owned by American company ASR), which refines imported sugar cane; and British Sugar, which refines domestically grown sugar beet. This extraordinary duopoly has, and continues to, enjoy special treatment from the state – Tate & Lyle has access to tariff-free imports of sugar cane, and British Sugar, which received 11 years of subsidy in the 1930s and 1940s before eventually being nationalised, continues as a private corporation to benefit from agricultural subsidy of the production of beet.

One reason often given for ongoing subsidy of sugar imports in particular is that the UK has a historic responsibility to Caribbean sugar-producing nations to support this industry – an implicit and perhaps unconscious acknowledgement of the deep and abiding harm to not only the people brought to the Caribbean to work on sugar plantations, but also the land and economies of sugar-producing former colonies. Sugar plantations displaced Indigenous people, and destroyed the ecosystems upon which they depended. Today, this guilt-laced and ineffective logic no longer stands up – since Brexit liberalised our trade regime, the majority of UK sugar cane imports now come from Brazil, which is seen by ASR as offering ‘higher environmental and ethical standards’.

The reality is that sugar has always been monopolised to produce profits for the few and harms for the many. These harms disproportionately affect people of colour.

Sugar continues to damage black bodies today. Black people and people of colour are more likely to suffer from diet-related health impacts linked to overconsumption of highly sweetened foods, including Type 2 Diabetes. Childhood tooth decay, one of the biggest health impacts of overconsumption of sugar, is highest in Asian, Black and Mixed race children.

Colonialism and corporate greed – a recipe for our sugar addiction

In 1999, Harvard historian Walter Johnson wrote: “Much of the Atlantic trade was triangular: enslaved people from Africa; sugar from the West Indies and Brazil; money and manufactures from Europe… People were traded along the bottom of the triangle; profits would stick at the top.”

The same holds true today. As climate change drives fluctuations in sugar production and prices rise, neither farmers growing sugar beet in the UK, nor Black communities, benefit from the vast proceeds of this so-called ‘White Gold’. Associated British Foods, the holding company for British Sugar, brought in £162 million in profits in 2021/2022 from its worldwide sugar business. Meanwhile, Tate & Lyle’s UK sugar operations are now owned by American Sugar Refining Group, whose profits in Europe 2022 were EUR29.8 million. The sums are vast, and they continue to be made on the back of exploitation, whilst inaccurate narratives around guilt prevent us from pursuing justice: Money flows up the corporate pile, and the damage is left on the millions of bodies affected by this dangerous industry.

The history of ‘White Gold’ is a reminder that even the mundane things in our kitchen cupboards, snuck into our food, and passing through the tedious stages of government quota consultations, are deeply tied up in the threads of exploitation that run throughout our food system – those of the past and the ones we’re still untangling today.

We are seeing a failure of government on sugar pollution. Last week the government announced that it would – for the fourth year in a row – allow British Sugar to ask sugar beet growers to use a highly damaging pesticide on this year’s sugar beet crop. Neonicotinoid pesticides have been previously banned because of their highly damaging impact on bees and other pollinators. Yet this year, the government decided once again to prioritise British Sugar’s returns over nature. This is despite British Sugar repeatedly promising that they were seeking ‘emergency use only’ and promising to develop alternative pest-reduction strategies to avoid needing to use these pesticides.

This is an active government decision to support UK sugar supply, a decision that is particularly irresponsible in the context of a sugar pollution emergency: the UK has nearly three times as much sugar supply as is needed to meet the safe threshold for the entire population, and excessive sales of sugary foods are driving ill health and increased pressure on the NHS.

Government policy on sugar is increasingly incoherent. Despite public health policies aimed at helping people eat less sugar – such as by promoting reformulation of sugary foods to make them healthier – it has yet to address the way that public policy actively supports an over-supply of sugar in the UK. Unsurprisingly oversupply leads to overconsumption.

Around half the UK sugar supply comes from sugar processed from sugar beet by British Sugar, and the country uses roughly the same area of land to grow sugar beet as all vegetable and salad crops combined.

A recent report by Feedback and Action on Sugar argued for a suite of policy measures aimed at reducing sugar supply, both from beet and from imports of cane sugar. Our current failure to address the damaging effects of Britain’s tidal wave of sugar is perhaps no surprise given our current Health Secretary’s decision to ‘recuse’ herself from decisions related to sugar, as she’s married to the boss of British Sugar.

Time will tell whether the industry uses these pesticides as they did last year – government has granted permission but pests levels need to reach a certain point before the pesticides can be used. As the industry breaths a sigh of relief and the status quo of sky high sugar supplies is maintained for another year, now is the time for all parties to get serious about how they plan to protect both people and nature from sugar pollution.

Read the full report here. 

A food crisis is deepening in West Africa, fuelled by demand from international companies for wild fish to feed farmed salmon in Europe. Just as climate change makes life increasingly challenging for fisherfolk in Senegal, Mauritania and other West African countries, trawlers continue to seize millions of fish a year to make fish oil and fishmeal, core ingredients in the diets of salmon farmed in places like Scotland and Norway. That salmon ends up on restaurant plates and supermarket shelves all over the UK and EU. While many big food companies and restaurants make a song and dance about the sustainability of the wild fish they sell, few have reckoned with the enormous impacts of salmon farming. Among these companies is Wagamama, a restaurant chain that has built a reputation on its self-purported environmental credentials – but its sourcing policies on salmon just don’t match up. 

Salmon, once considered a rare luxury, has become a ubiquitous presence on supermarket shelves and restaurant menus. However, the rapid expansion of the industry has come with toxic consequences. In addition to the hazardous pesticides, shocking welfare standards, and hideous waste, the farmed salmon industry relies on plundered fish from oceans half a world away – increasingly impacting Mauritania, the Gambia, and Senegal. It’s a vicious cycle of overfishing, robbing local communities, and jeopardising the well-being of millions.

The demand for wild-caught fish from these waters has led to overfishing, the depletion of local livelihoods, and many facing the threat of malnutrition. 90% of the fish manufactured into fish meal and fish oil (FMFO) in West Africa is edible. It forms an integral part of traditional meals and shared culture. For children, it holds nutrients essential to their development. For artisanal processors, most of them African women, the fish once represented a living and a way of life; in competition with the international market, it is now a commodity they cannot afford.

Wagamama sees itself as “support[ing] the planet, whilst spreading positivity… from bowl to soul”. Living up to this reputation, and to their commitment to “small choices for big change,” means taking immediate action to remove farmed salmon from its menu.

We have reached out several times to Wagamama. We’ve sent them emails and letters. We’ve even hand-delivered an analysis of their sourcing standards to their own front door. Unfortunately they have elected to ignore us – but this problem isn’t going away.

If we want to get their attention, we have to make a bit more noise.

So, we’ve launched a petition, in partnership with Eko and Wild Fish, calling for Wagamama to drop farmed salmon from its menu, and thousands of their own customers have already signed it. Wagamama could sever ties with the salmon farming industry tomorrow, but they’ve shown they’re unwilling to do it without a push. Could you sign our petition, and help take a step towards protecting people’s livelihoods and nutrition in West Africa by getting farmed salmon off our plates?

Sign the petition

Photo by Bruno Martins on Unsplash

The AHDB’s new “Let’s Eat Balanced” advertising campaign is an insidious and irresponsible attempt to prop up a highly-polluting industry. The Climate Change Committee, the government’s advisors, have already clearly stated that meat and dairy consumption should be reduced to achieve national net zero targets, recommending an 50% reduction in all meat and dairy by 2050 for maximum impact. This latest PR push by a self-interested industry flies in the face of the scientific evidence, furthering the case for stronger regulation and sorely-needed government leadership.

We are disappointed, but not surprised, to see that the UK’s supermarkets have leant their name and advertising space to this ludicrous anachronism of a PR campaign. Once again, retailers representing over 90% of the market are exploiting their monopoly on people’s food purchases to push them towards the most harmful products. As we found in our 2023 Greenwash Grocers report, supply chain emissions (Scope 3) make up 95-99% of supermarket’s greenhouse gas emissions – about half of which comes directly from meat and dairy.

The willingness of food giants like Tesco and Sainsbury’s to engage in the AHDB’s new campaign only reinforces what we already knew – that supermarkets aren’t serious about net zero. These adverts are constructed to exploit the holes in the ASA’s growing regulation of environmental claims, by packaging advertisements for meat and dairy in general guidance for healthier diets. As an industrialised country, the UK consumes more than our fair share of global meat and dairy, so the AHDB’s new trojan horse advertising campaign hijacking the language of dietary guidelines to fix a non-existent problem. It will only push the public even further from balanced and sustainable diets.

We urgently need government leadership to ensure our food system is transformed for better public health, and arms-length bodies such as the ASA and CMA are granted guidance and authority to clamp down on this obvious greenwashing.

For the UK supermarkets, the holiday season is in full swing, nowhere more evident than in the sector’s annual festive advert charm offensive – no surprise, in a year when customer trust has hit its lowest level since the horsemeat scandal in February 2013.

People are right to be sceptical of an industry that has recorded massive profits in 2023, even amid the Cost of Living Crisis. In March 2023, the ONS reported that UK food inflation had increased to 19.1%, its highest levels in 40 years; just 7 months later, Tesco raised its annual profit forecast to £2.7bn. These figures are a crucial reminder that supermarkets do not have the public’s best interests at heart.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in their climate plans, or lack thereof. Our 2023 report ‘Greenwash Grocers’ drew attention to the greenwash gimmicks, dodgy data reporting, and climate crisis profiteering taking place in UK supermarkets every day. Across the board, we found that retailers were failing to detail how they would meet their Net Zero targets – if they even had them. Most refused to name the link between the climate crisis and their own sales of meat and dairy; none had a target for reducing these sales.

As 2023 draws to a close, we’re revisiting the retail sector’s greenwash greatest hits, by comparing what they say against the Competition and Market Authorities ‘Green Claims Code’ [1] which sets out rules for how companies make environmental claims. Here are a few of the year’s worst greenwash gimmicks for retailers’ meat and dairy emissions.

Waitrose’s Leckford Estate

The Claim

Waitrose claims to be “the only supermarket to own [their] own farm”, Leckford Estate, which they market to demonstrate their green credentials. Waitrose claim Leckford is “driving change through our farming techniques, responsible sourcing of products, wasting less and our target of becoming carbon net zero.” Most recently, they promoted that Leckford’s tractors are powered by methane produced by cow manure from the estate.

The Problem

Leckford Estate serves as a distraction from the realities of Waitrose’s supply chains, and its claims simply aren’t meaningful in the scale of the business, as required by the Green Claims Code. Every year, Leckford is set to produce a mere “150 beef cattle”, which hardly enters into the 5% of the country’s groceries that pass through Waitrose supermarkets. The overwhelming majority of Waitrose’s beef, let alone its other meat products, are effectively greenwashed by the loud celebration of minor initiatives at Leckford. By recalling the “romanticised vision of the farm”, Leckford leans on the power of nostalgia to hoodwink Waitrose customers into a false sense of security that their products are part of the climate solution – that the qualities of Leckford beef apply to the whole supply chain, which they don’t. The Times described it as a “communist show village” of “comfortable middle classness”.

Whilst Waitrose champions the idea that Leckford ‘leads by example’, the potential of scaling up these initiatives is equally dangerous. Firstly, without a target to reduce its overall sales of meat and dairy as recommended by the Climate Change Committee, Waitrose risks misleading the public that its methods could sustainably meet current demand. If Leckford scaled up its current 2,800 acre estate to cover every single acre of available pasture land in the UK, it would still only be able to produce a quarter of the 2,800,000 cattle currently slaughtered in the UK each year. [2] In other words, it would need to cover almost the entire land area (88.1%) of the UK to meet our current beef consumption, bulldozing everything into beef pastures and Leckford visitor centres on the way.

Waitrose’s suggested ‘lead by example’ initiatives are not fair and meaningful in comparison to its genuine day-to-day operations, as required by the Green Claims Code. In advertising, claims relating to one part of a product or service shouldn’t mislead people about the overall impact of the product or business. This is exactly what Waitrose’s promotion of Leckford Estate does, and without an overall meat and dairy reduction target to accompany, the overall claim of Leckford to be “driving change” for the John Lewis Partnership’s 2050 Net Zero target remains unsubstantiated at best.

Sainsbury’s Reduced Carbon Beef

The Claim

Sainsbury’s is next on our (hit) list, with its October launch of ‘Reduced Carbon Beef’.

The retailer claims that its new Taste the Difference Aberdeen Angus range offers 25% lower CO2 equivalent emissions than the ‘industry standard’ for beef. After some pressure, Sainsbury’s published the ‘industry standard’ marker at 32.14kg Co2e per kg of beef on the shelf, which would out their new product at 24.105kg of CO2e per kg of beef. 

The Problem

Sainsbury’s has not made their methodology available for public scrutiny. This  claim appears to rest on earlier slaughter for the animals (not mentioned on the packaging) with few further details provided. According to the CMA, green claims must be clear, unambiguous, and substantiated, which this is not.

This claim also omits more important information: a fair and meaningful comparison to plant-based alternatives. 25.105kg of CO2e might get you 1kg of Sainsbury’s Lower Carbon Beef, but for the same carbon budget, you could produce over 7.6kg of tofu (a complete protein), 24.5kg of peas, or a whopping 56kg of nuts. Even ‘Lower Carbon Beef’ is incredibly carbon intensive against the alternatives, which Sainsbury’s choose not to point out to their customers. As we pointed out in our Greenwash Grocers report, Sainsbury’s has no target for reducing its overall sales of meat and dairy, without which it cannot hope to meet its net zero target for all its emissions.

Aldi’s Carbon Neutral Claim

The Claim

In July, we caught Aldi UK out for making the outrageous claim of being ‘Carbon Neutral since January 2019’ on their website. What they didn’t mention was that this ‘Carbon Neutral’ claim excludes over 99% of their emissions.

The Problem

Carbon Neutral is commonly used to refer to Scopes 1 and 2 emissions, essentially the climate cost of businesses keeping the shops open and the lights on. What Aldi didn’t say on their website is that less than 1% of their emissions are in Scopes 1 and 2. Over 99% are Scope 3 emissions, which we can think of as the climate cost of everything on the shelves that the business sells to make money. By using corporate jargon, Aldi UK attempted to hide from their responsibilities for meaningful climate action, and contravene the Green Claims Code requirement that claims are clearly set out and can be understood by all.

After we called this out by reporting Aldi to the Advertising Standards Authority, Aldi tweaked the claim on their website to specify that it only applies to ‘Scope 1 & 2’, but have left the claim up. Even with the clarification, leaning on this problematic jargon leaves the claim unclear and ambiguous, leaving customers to think that Aldi’s climate leadership is stronger than the reality. Even if a visitor to the website is familiar with the meaning of different ‘Scopes’, they may not know Aldi’s specific emissions breakdown, tucked away in company reports. The claim is meaningless when put fairly in context against their Scope 3 emissions, which dominate their business activities.

Supermarkets must step up to the plate

Meat and dairy reduction constitutes a fundamental element of reaching net zero – academic research showed in 2020 even if fossil fuel emissions were eliminated immediately, emissions from the global food system alone would drive the world beyond 1.5 degrees of warming. These are just three examples of the way supermarkets are systematically engaged in activities which ultimately fail the test of climate leadership – are they reducing their overall emissions, fast, on a clear and transparent pathway to net zero?

Retailers have repeatedly promised climate action, yet year on year their words speak far louder than their results. If businesses won’t clear up their act and get on with the meaningful job of facing up to the climate crisis, regulators will need to show them where the line is, and how far they’ve gone in crossing it.

[1] CMA Guidelines

1. Claims must be truthful and accurate
2. Claims must be clear and unambiguous
3. Claims must not omit or hide important relevant information
4. Comparisons must be fair and meaningful
5. Claims must consider the full life cycle of the product
6. Claims must be substantiated

[2] Leckford is a 2,800 acre estate slaughtering 150 cattle each year (Waitrose). The United Kingdom is 22% pasture land, representing 13,252,261.61 Acres (ONS). 13,252,261.61 divided by 2,800 is 4732.95 – the number of Leckford Estates that could fit into the UK’s pastureland. 4732.95 slaughtering 150 beef cows per year each would collectively slaughter 709,942.5 beef cows per year. In total, the UK currently slaughters 2,844,000 cattle per year (Agriculture in the UK, 2022). 2,844,000 divided by 709,942.5 is 4.006. 22 multiplied by 4.006 is 88.1%.

“We are beyond dismayed that the Court of Appeal have dismissed our claim for judicial review. It seems counterintuitive to us that the Court has ruled that the government was under no obligation to develop policies to reduce emissions in food and farming in the Food Strategy, despite its earlier Net Zero Strategy announcing this precise intent. It further seems counterintuitive to us that the Court established that, while the Climate Change Committee has the power to advise the government on climate policies, the government is not obliged to take this advice into account- let alone act on it. In our view, this raises serious questions about the point and efficacy of the Committee, and deeply worrying wider questions about how the targets set out in the Climate Change Act can be operationalised across government departments, and ultimately met, if we are to avoid climate catastrophe. We are currently discussing our options with our lawyers, including considering an appeal, and will not be issuing any further statements until we have decided how to proceed.” Carina Millstone, Executive Director of Feedback

You can view the full judgment here.

In a final negotiation session on 8th December, Member States did not bow to pressure from the European Parliament and rejected the introduction of a binding high biomethane target by 2030 in the Gas and hydrogen markets Regulation.

Check out details in the Euractiv article
Read the full press release

Coalition’s Call for Action

This is a huge victory for the coalition of independent not-for-profit organisations who have been actively campaigning for the target to be dropped based on evidence of major environmental risks associated with the high biomethane target.

Among recent studies, Feedback EU’s latest research highlighted the risks of encouraging more livestock production and food-feed-fuel competition and concluded that at best the high EU biomethane target would be unachievable, at worst it will lock in dangerously unsustainable agricultural, land use and energy practices.

Joint Letter: Rejecting Industry-Backed Biomethane Goals

The call to reject the industry-backed introduction of  the high biomethane target was made in a joint letter to Member States by a mounting coalition of not-for-profits active in the fields of food security, sustainable land use, clean transportation and climate change mitigation. It is a big success and relief that the call has been heard.

Next Steps: Advocating for a Scientific Approach

The coalition now requests that the Commission heeds to its other demand echoed by participants of the recent Feedback webinar on biomethane requesting that a scientific target-setting process be conducted in conjunction with independent food system experts to set an EU biomethane target that is fit for food and the climate.

Navigating Further Challenges and Industry Pressures

While we celebrate this significant victory, we are aware of ongoing risks, in particular in relation to the inclusion in the Regulation of a 100% tariff discount for the injection of biomethane into networks which will create perverse incentives in favour of biomethane. In the face of intensive industry lobby, the campaigning effort to secure a biomethane target that allows it to play its important but niche role in a truly decarbonized future, within a sustainable, healthy and just food system will continue.

Learn more about biomethane from our webinar

Last month, we filed for a judicial review of the UK government’s decision to scrap its proposed plans to introduce reporting requirements for businesses to tackle food waste. The decision was taken by the previous Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Thérèse Coffey. Following the government reshuffle, the new Environment Secretary, Steve Barclay, has now agreed to review that decision, stating that a new decision will be made in the first half of 2024.

The initial decision was taken despite responses to the government’s consultation showing that the majority of businesses in scope were in favour of mandatory reporting, and 99% of respondents overall. We welcome the government reversing the decision but implore them to take quick meaningful action and make food waste reporting mandatory.

“We’re delighted the new Secretary of State has u-turned on his predecessor’s reckless decision to scrap plans to introduce mandatory food waste reporting for big businesses. However, we cannot allow DEFRA to kick action on food waste into the long grass, yet again. All the evidence supports the case for mandatory food waste reporting. The government’s climate and waste experts recommend it, the impact assessment shows it will result in cost savings, and the vast majority of consultation respondents, including the majority of businesses, are in favour. The time for delay is over – the government must introduce this popular, effective and no-brainer measure to reduce emissions and tackle the scourge of food waste during the cost of living crisis now.” Carina Millstone, Executive Director of Feedback

An estimated 10.4 to 13 million tonnes of food are wasted in the UK annually, equivalent to approximately 26-33% of the UK’s 40 million tonnes of food imports per year. A study from the University of Bangor and Feedback found that halving UK food waste would save approximately 0.8 million hectares of cropland domestically and overseas[iii], which Feedback estimated could produce enough potatoes and peas to feed 28% of the UK population their yearly calories.

Food waste is a key climate change issue, generating about 10% of global emissions. The government’s own climate change experts, the Climate Change Committee, advised that mandatory reporting should be introduced by 2022.

“Our clients are delighted that the new Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs decided to review his predecessor’s decision not to introduce mandatory food waste reporting. His decision must make sense given that all the evidence shows that the costs to the shopper of introducing a mandatory requirement will be massively outweighed by savings which would be achieved by reductions in food waste.” Leigh Day solicitor Ricardo Gama 

On 6 and 7 November we will be in the Court of Appeal for a judicial review hearing of the Government’s failure to ensure its Food Strategy contributed to meeting its carbon budgets.

The claim is being heard after we successfully appealed that the Government’s failure to budget its food strategy towards Net Zero was arguably unlawful under the Climate Change Act 2008 which says the Government must put in place policies to meet carbon budgets. We contend that section 13 of the Act amounts to a continuing duty to prepare policies and proposals that will enable the carbon budgets to be met, as was established by the High Court judgment’s last year into the Net Zero Strategy.

We believe the Government had a duty to adopt measures to reduce meat and dairy production and consumption in its Food Strategy published in June 2022. Advice from the independent body, the Climate Change Committee, states that reductions in meat and dairy consumption are essential to meeting the Net Zero Target. This should have been taken into account, or at the very least reasons for rejecting that advice (as the Government did) ought to have been given.

Tackling emissions from the food and farming sector is key for the government to meet climate targets, because the livestock industry is responsible for about 14.5% of global emissions and, if current trends continue, the global livestock industry will be using up almost half the world’s 1.5°C emissions budget by 2030.

The Net Zero Strategy published in 2021 stated that the Food Strategy would support the delivery of the Net Zero target, but the detail on how carbon budgets would be met in the food system was left to the Food Strategy. It is argued that, in finally developing the Food Strategy, the Government was required to complete that exercise under section 13, an exercise that last year’s Net Zero Strategy judgment found ought to include an assessment of the level of contribution the Food Strategy would make to meeting the carbon budgets and what risks there were to achieving that.

However, the Food Strategy neither addressed the emissions impact of meat and dairy, nor put in place policies for their mitigation.

‘We are confident our judicial review will establish that the government has a legal responsibility to put in place policies to reduce emissions in the food and farming sector. We trust it will compel the government to act on the advice of its own climate experts, who have said time and time again that meat and dairy reductions are required if we are to meet our legally enshrined climate targets. We hope that our case will be the high-water mark for the government’s disregard and denial of the measures it must urgently adopt and implement to avoid climate and environmental breakdown.’ Carina Millstone, Executive Director of Feedback 

During the last thirty years the proliferation of supermarkets across our every aspect of our lives has caused a seismic change in how we purchase everything from food, to clothes and more. At first an exciting time-saving proposition where food could be bought in one “big shop” rather than needing to visit lots of different, smaller shops, consumers embraced the convenience offered by these super spaces. It’s taken a few years for the damage done to sink in. High streets and local shopping spaces have been decimated, with greengrocers, bakers, and other food providers unable to compete with the one stop shop. This has been exacerbated by the expansion of the supermarkets into other territories beyond food. Clothes, household goods, bedding, plants, flowers and more. The smaller businesses can’t mirror the loss leader prices used by supermarkets because they don’t have the same economies of scale. Supermarkets are not rooted in communities, they move to wherever they can extract the most profit – they are not of the people so they can never truly be for the people.

There is a small glimmer of hope on the horizon, however. Communities are taking matters into their own hands and reinventing the high street with pop up markets that serve the local community in a way that supermarkets can’t. Indeed, these spaces are often notably where the supermarkets are not. Areas where the communities have been left behind with the boarded-up shops and need to travel to access the amenities they used to have within walking distance. A great example of this, which we are highlighting as part of Black History Month, is the Granby 4 Streets market.

Granby 4 Streets is in Liverpool. Toxteth to be exact. Most people have heard of Toxteth, but usually only in the context of the riots which took place in the early 1980s. There’s much more to it than that. Originally a deer hunting park for the Kings of England, Toxteth has a long history stretching back to the 12^th Century. Today it is a hodgepodge of gracious but dilapidated Georgian and Victorian mansions and terraces, mixed with new build housing; with long tree filled avenues that lead to the city centre. Traditionally it has been a multicultural area, on the edge of Chinatown, housing the first mosque and Islamic centre in England, with Greek Orthodox, Catholic, Quaker and Protestant churches, synagogues, and chapels offering a range of spiritual succour to inhabitants. It’s always been an area settled by people whose heritage included sailors, enslaved Africans and their descendants, and migrants from the Commonwealth . In this space you will find the Merseyside Somali and Community Association, the Liverpool Arabic Centre, the Kuumba Imani Centre, the African Caribbean Centre, and the Islamic Cultural Centre at Al-Rahmi Mosque. It remains the most ethnically diverse area of Liverpool.

The Toxteth uprising took place in 1981, protesting the police enforcement of stop and search measures which unfairly targeted young black men. Buildings burnt, windows were smashed, people were detained. The aftermath saw the stigmatising of the whole area, leading to a severe decline with boarded up shops and houses left to rot. During the 1990s and early 2000s, attempts were made to cleanse the area by demolishing the old Victorian terraces and building new houses to entice a middle-class community into this space, so close to the city centre. The remaining residents of the Granby 4 Streets, which were at this time mostly “tinned up”, referring to the security metal sheets covering doors and windows on the abandoned properties on these roads, came together to form the Granby Residents Association, which later evolved into the Granby Community Land Trust.

They resisted attempts to demolish these streets through community actions – working with artists to paint murals on derelict houses, planting gardens in the abandoned streets and hosting summer markets.  Liverpool is a charter city, which means markets cannot be held without express permission from the council. True to the spirit of Granby, which has always been one of act first, ask for forgiveness afterwards, these “illegal” markets evolved further into the monthly Granby Street Market, held every 1^st Saturday in the month.  Starting as a table sale, outside people’s homes on Cairns Street L8, the market now stretches the length of this road and has around 70 stalls, offering food, bric-a-brac, vintage clothes, and homemade crafts that reflect the diversity and creativity of the community it serves. It is now firmly established within the council’s calendar of markets, with brightly coloured gazebos, art, and music to accompany the browsing public. It is a fantastic example of community in action, taking matters into their own hands to rejuvenate and invigorate their environment. It is Black led, with people who of Black heritage proudly claiming this space as theirs.

What can we learn from this? It’s okay to take a risk, to take initiative and bring your community with you. You don’t always need permission, there is power in taking action. There are great examples of this across the world – look at the guerilla gardeners of Detroit, who faced with their city’s steady decline after the great automobile industries faltered, have reimagined their environment with urban farming, or agri-hoods, in derelict streets.

Closer to home we had Esiah Levy, a young man from Croydon who created SeedsShare in 2016. Esiah grew vegetables in his back garden, having learnt how from his Jamaican father. He saved the seeds and then swapped them all over the world with other gardeners for the cost of post and packing. Esiah passed away suddenly at only 32, but he left an amazing legacy of seed swapping and inspiration that led Edward Adonteng to write: “And for me, like a young black man, looking at someone I can look to and his dedication to his plants, based on what I’ve seen so far, is astronomical to me… Like, he’s my direct inspiration to horticulture. So, when you were talking about his legacy, to me it’s now my duty to spread his name, like the seeds, just spread it.” Esiah came to Liverpool in 2018, to visit The Grapes community garden in Toxteth and share his knowledge about how to seed save. That garden still exists. Food is still grown there; seeds are still swapped.

References

https://www.granby4streetsclt.co.uk

https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2019/11/05/food-community-detroit-garden-agriculture

https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/sowingroots/sowing-roots-esiah-levy/

“From the standpoint of the grower, the greatest defect of slavery lies in the fact that it quickly exhausts the soil. […] As Jefferson wrote of Virginia, “we can buy an acre of new land cheaper than we can manure an old one.”  

Capitalism and Slavery (Eric Williams, 1944) 

‘Sankofa’ is word of the Akan people of Ghana used to convey the idea that there is wisdom in looking backward to move forward. Sankofa is often represented by the minimalist symbol of a mythical bird, with its feet pointing forward whilst its head reaches backward to retrieve a treasured egg behind it. In January Natalie Lartey used the term to open our session on Reparations at the Oxford Real Farming Conference. It seems apt to re-engage with the concept for Black History Month given the challenging public discourse those who care about people and environment must now confront daily. We are desperate to know how to get out of this doom spiral, and I believe that a more careful study of Black history holds lessons for us all. 

New inspiration has rarely felt more desperate. Whether we should do away with our legal commitment to uphold human rights, and the degree to which it is ok to let Black and Brown people drown in the English Channel are serious political questions today. Credible plans with broad support to tackle climate breakdown and biodiversity loss are being abandoned. Corporate profits are greater than ever, while those who rely on wages, salaries, benefits, and state pensions to live are left with an increasingly grim menu of realities to choose from. And yet, we could all be forgiven for questioning at this time whether there is need to dredge up horrors long past, when there so many horrors in our present?  Why search for tears when it is hope that is missing? In my view, to see these two drives as being opposed is to miss the fundamental benefit of engaging with history. We must do this because the process allows us to connect our humanity to that of others. We gain an opportunity to reaffirm our values, reveal new avenues to act, inspire renewed perspectives on what we should be aiming for, and gain a better sense of the power we already hold. This is key for organisations as much as it is for individuals.  

Feedback campaigns for a food system which is good for people and planet. In doing so, we often find ourselves working to hold corporations and policy makers to account for decisions which are demonstrably harmful or working with communities and activists to pilot alternative ways of doing things. Increasingly our daily reality and that of our peers is of a world where winning the argument counts for very little at all. Policy consultations appear to have little impact on decision making processes. Historical malpractice appears to present no barrier at all to future profits.  

Bringing Black History into the fold helps to debunk the idea that we ever successfully civilised agribusiness. There is an unbroken tradition, stretching back through colonialism to antiquity, of elites holding profits in higher regard than human lives or ecosystems. The transatlantic trade of enslaved Africans is uniquely responsible however for embedding the perverse economic logics we are now left grappling with within the food system – wasteful and polluting production methods, disposability of racialised people and the ecologies they rely on, the subordination of agricultural production to commodity markets, and malnutrition in the context of systematic overproduction. 

In August 1962 Eric Williams, an Oxford educated academic, became Trinidad and Tobago’s first Prime Minister having led the country through the post-WWII movement for independence. His work Capitalism and Slavery is one of the first historical analyses critiquing the presumed moral character of Britain’s abolitionist and emancipatory achievements. Systematically, his work outlined evidence that the abolition of the slave trade was only possible once it was clear doing so could hurt the sugar production of the competing colonial powers of France, Spain and the USA. As the world’s foremost trafficker of enslaved Africans, Britain could starve them of labour.  

He also paints a similar picture around the time of emancipation. Excited by the prospect of investment opportunities in the new republics of Abya Yala / Pindorama (The Food Sovereignty movement’s preferred names for the South American continent), free trade proponents pushed for the liberalisation of trade policy, breaking the Caribbean slaveocracy’s monopoly on the British sugar market. Unable to compete with lower costs and beset by rebellions and uprisings from enslaved Africans, and an organised nexus of abolitionist and free trade lobbies in the UK, profitability collapsed for the West Indian Interest, along with their resistance to emancipation.  

Once we dare to look beyond the rousing mental image of a morally triumphant Wilberforce, we are left with some stark realisations. The value of Black life, or indeed almost any life, has yet to be accepted as a valid basis to proactively and systematically curtail harmful industry. The oft cited fact that it was the enslavers and not the enslaved who were compensated is typically used to underscore viscerally that there is unfinished business on the matter. Yet rather than an aberration, this bargain should be seen as the core of the situation.   

This is where Williams’ opening quote, of Thomas Jefferson’s 1793 letter to George Washington comes in. Although the word “slave” appears nowhere in his letter, Jefferson was explaining the core of plantation racial capitalism to his friend, the first President of the United States: It was more profitable to acquire a new patch of land and then exploit the dispensable bodies of enslaved Africans, (who would quickly exhaust the land after a few seasons crops), then move onto a new parcel and yet more newly trafficked African bodies, than think about caring for Black lives or bringing life back to the soil. Thus, racial capitalism ruthlessly put financial gain above the care of their fellow living beings (be they African human beings, Native American human beings or the creatures maintaining the health of the stolen soil). 

Two hundred and thirty years later, with its capacity to destruct life increased by a century of fossil-fuel derived agri-chemicals, capitalism has still not acquired the ability to embed a respect for life into its systems of governance. Instead, many in society consider themselves post-racial – having grown adept at interpreting historical alignments of interests – as with abolition and emancipation – as proof of a universal rejection of barbarism by former colonial powers. For both the individual and organisations like Feedback then, there are clear challenges levelled. Can we reduce our vulnerability to the allure of false narratives by striving to hold the fullest picture possible? Can we find where our sector has inherited a disregard for life, and in particular Black life? And by rejecting ahistorical narratives, can we become more effective in finding the sources of hope we are so desperately in need of? 

It is in this work that we find the cure to the pervading sense of futility. This is where we can reveal what systems need to rebuilt or restored, the relationships in need of repair, who should be expected to bear the cost. Moments like this helps us find ourselves amongst the chaos and underline where we, specific organisations and people with valuable strengths and particular experience, are needed. Tomorrow does not have to be even more bleak than today. All it takes is a small amount of courage and the commitment of some time. 

Over the course of October and beyond, we’ll be working to reveal our Sankofa inspired reflections on the unacknowledged roots of Feedback’s work within Black History. We will strive to be courageous even where this proves harder than we might expect. Our attempts will not be perfect. They may not even be satisfactory. But this work is everybody’s to further and so we will do our best to play our part.  

As EU Member States prepare to decide on the recast of the bloc’s Gas Package, new analysis by Feedback EU shows that proposals to ramp up biomethane production to 35 billion cubic meters (bcm) by 2030 from its current level of 3.5 bcm are both unrealistic and risk locking in dangerously unsustainable agricultural, land use and energy practices.

Biomethane, which can be produced from a wide variety of feedstocks ranging from manure to food waste, is often presented as a “green” alternative to fossil gas by its industry proponents. However, as our analysis shows, the use of most of these feedstocks at the volumes proposed comes with significant downsides and unintended consequences such as encouraging more livestock production and food-feed-fuel competition.

The findings show that the production target of 35 bcm biomethane by 2030 set out in the current legislative proposal comes from a report authored by the biogas industry. Its ‘Gas for Climate’ report significantly inflates a target recommended by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre and independent experts, which concluded that only around 24 bcm of biomethane could be produced sustainably by 2030.

“This appears to be a textbook case of corporate capture. It’s deeply shocking to see that the European Commission has ignored the assessment conducted by its own experts and is flouting the evidence by setting an unrealistically high biomethane target. At best, this target will be unachievable, at worst it will lock in dangerously unsustainable agricultural, land use and energy practices and could be an environmental disaster in the making. Member States must reject it or face unintended consequences which will impact on the EU’s ability to meet its climate commitments and food security over the coming decades.” Frank Mechielsen, Director of Feedback EU 

Feedback’s analysis also draws attention to the problem of methane leakage: a recent meta-analysis of 51 previous studies has found that methane emissions from the biogas supply chain are twice as big as estimated by the International Energy Agency (IEA). This means that currently the amount of methane released relative to total biogas production is higher than for fossil gas. It is therefore crucial that the Gas Regulation legislates for continuous emissions measurement and enforcement of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission prevention along the whole supply chain.

“Our analysis shows that the 35 bcm biomethane target in the current legislative proposal has been poorly thought through and fails to take into account the best expert advice. It will do nothing to improve energy security in the EU and will inevitably drive unsustainable practices in the farming and energy sectors. We acknowledge that there is a niche role for anaerobic digestion of unavoidable organic waste streams, but to be truly sustainable the volume of biomethane produced will need to be much smaller than envisaged by the gas industry.” Karen Luyckx, the technical advisor who conducted the research