Supermarkets

The presence of supermarkets is undoubtedly having a deeply negative effect on our country. Just over 30p of every pound now spent in Britain is at a supermarket. To most, shopping at a supermarket seems a harmless activity, but when one examines the facts it becomes clear that supermarkets have been responsible for the devastation of countless rural communities across Britain, have almost finished off our farming industry and are in fact conning us all.
With the opening of a new supermarket inevitably comes a decline in sales at smaller, locally owned shops nearby, the result is that sooner or later they are forced to close. Roughly two out of every three butchers have gone out of business in the last twenty-five years, but they are certainly not the only ones who have been stung. Supermarkets are killing off butchers, bakers, fishmongers, greengrocers and all independent food sellers at a phenomenal rate, and it looks as though pharmacies and off-licences are next. The Office of National Statistics shows that there were only 23,960 independent grocers in the UK in 2001 compared to 116,000 in 1961. Among other things, the closure of small shops means job losses- and these are not losses that are compensated for with new supermarket jobs. The National Retail Planning Forum has calculated that new food superstores have, on average, a negative effect on retail employment. Its 1998 report said that every superstore opening resulted in a net loss in employment of 275 full-time equivalents. A majority of supermarket jobs are part-time, so the arrival of supermarkets means that many full-time jobs in the local community are replaced by part-time ones.

Researchers at Manchester school of Management have predicted that if current trends continue there may not be a single independent food store left in the whole of the UK by 2050. The implications of this are horrendous; should things continue the way that they are going, Great Britain will soon be a montage of identical towns and villages devoid of any unique character or charm, relying on identical shops selling identical products amid devastated local economies and communities. The Countryside Agency asserts that seven out of ten English villages are now without a shop of any kind. The agency's director Margaret Clark said: 'Villages which lose their shops quickly lose their identities. The residents are forced to move into towns. The danger is that villages will become the preserve of the well-off, and that threatens the very fabric of rural life.' Even the government's own Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions agree; their comprehensive 1998 assessment of the implications of food store developments said: "our research has shown that large foodstores can and have had an adverse impact on market towns and district centres." Because supermarkets use single companies to supply all their stores across the UK with everything from food to printing or clearing contractors, local businesses lose further potential trade. Studies have shown that local communities could be losing inward investment of up to £100 billion every year because of supermarket centralisation. That translates as £2,000 for every person in the country!
Farmers are also losing out; big time. Campaigning group FARM say that supermarkets' practice of underpaying farmers and bypassing small producers has contributed to the disappearance of over 4,500 farms a year, or 12 a day; and Britain's dairy industry is currently on the verge of collapse due to supermarkets forcing dairy farmers to accept less for their milk than it actually costs them to produce it. It is no wonder that on average one farmer a week commits suicide in the UK.

The best alternative to is to reject supermarkets and instead buy locally produced food, ideally direct from the people that produce it. Firstly, buying direct keeps many small producers in business. It cuts out the middleman, and thereby provides farmers and craft food producers with a vital alternative to succumbing to the crushing bargaining power of the supermarkets; you are supporting small farmers, and contributing to the rebirth of local food economies. 2001 report showed that every £1 spent in a Cornish box scheme generated an extra £1 for the local economy, while £1 spent at the local Asda supermarket only generated 14p. So money spent on locally produced food effectively doubles its worth and helps the community, whilst money spent at the supermarket is sucked out of the community and into the pockets of its shareholders. By buying locally you have the added bonus of investing in the health of the planet, because the closer the point of sale to the farm, the fewer miles food has travelled to get to us. It has been estimated that the food in a typical Sunday lunch bought from a supermarket could have been transported 49,000 miles- more than twice round the world! All the planes flying food into the UK, all the lorries driving it up and down the country, and all the shoppers forced into their cars to get to the supermarket mean that the combined yearly emissions from food transport and food shopping trips in the UK alone is greater than the CO2 output of Paraguay, Ethiopia, Georgia or Honduras.
But these are not simply altruistic reasons: they are compellingly in your own interests. Since it hasn't been shipped, stored and carted all over the country locally produced food can be sold fresher, or picked riper, and will consequently be more nutritious and better tasting. On top of this, research has shown that produce brought direct from the farmer, through a farmer's market, farm shop or box scheme, is usually cheaper than similar produce brought in a supermarket. In 1998, BBC's panorama revealed that meat prices at a Grantham supermarket were up to 30 per cent higher than in the Lincolnshire butchers and the vegetables were 40 per cent more expensive than on the high street. Visit www.farmersmarkets.net to find out the location of your nearest farmer's market.
As the government is doing nothing to combat supermarkets and the many problems that they are creating; it is up to us, the consumers to change the way we shop immediately, or see irreversible damage to our towns, communities and the entire country. Act now, save your country, buy local.

Much of this essay has come from:

Joanna Blythman's book: Shopped, the shocking power of British Supermarkets available from Fourth Estate, ISBN 0-00-715803-3

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's foreword in The Organic Directory 2004-2005 available from Green Books, ISBN 1 903998 36 0

Ecologist magazine's September 2004 special report on supermarkets, www.theecologist.org