The situation for farmers is bleak and we need to find a way to help them.

There has been a race to the bottom and many areas are now at breaking point. The health of our soils is on life support, the biomass of our insect populations dangerously low, the biodiversity of our plants and wildlife is perilous and our farmlands are more like a chemistry lab than an ecosystem.

All these inputs and mechanisation is failing and it is our farmers that are the ones who are taking many of the punches.

Today over 50% of farm business income

depends on subsidy and 64% of farmers earn less

than £10,000 a year.

People’s Food Policy

The trap was set and most of the land owners and workers were caught in it. The ironically names ‘green revolution’ offered the utopia of a chemical driven farm fantasy of endlessly rising yields and complete dominance of nature. It failed to deliver for the communities and land workers most effected. Not only has it decimated our farms, nature and food quality but it has also concentrated power and wealth away from the farmers to a small collection of mega companies.

8 supermarkets holding a 93% market share of food retailing.

In food manufacturing, 6% of

enterprises are responsible for 76% of turnover.

People’s Food Policy

As hopeless as this may sound, I see light on the horizon. The internet is allowing us to create links directly to producers and unlocking the strangle hold of the big monopolistic multinationals. At the same time, social media is allowing us to come together collectively.

This allows us to make connections direct to our farmers and build community buying clubs. I see a future of food buying cooperatives that share the crops with the farmers in exchange for the farmers growing in a more ecologically-friendly way and a community buying from a cooperative that recycles its profits back into positive community projects.

This is all possible today, we just have to acknowledge we have the power to spend our money the way we want. We have agency of our own food system and our communities to create a new food culture that offers abundance for all of us.