Food is not getting to people

Food is not getting to people and too much food processing interrupts the supply chain. Instead from now some people will go hungry, have for years using food banks

which never used to exist.

Food has been marketised,

even our emphasis on eating out is disconnecting us from the sources of food.

Bad health caused by this skewed 'market' is a factor too in the spread of this virus.

Production, doing real things is the most important part of our society not making up imaginary financial products and squeezing profit out of the work of others.

We have just got to the end of the cul de sac

called volume production.

Try to carry on despite the fences or turnaround?

For the last 20yrs the supermarkets have told farmers

..”don’t try to charge more per unit” JUST “produce more units” to raise your revenues.

The result is cows worn out way too young ,

land overworked and soaked in chemical promoters,

a poultry industry that resembles sci-fi.

Consume a bit less,

charge a bit more,retain higher profit per unit

...it won’t hurt.at All.

We need to stop building on Farmland,

no sprawling housing estates, roads, railways, factories, warehouses, theatres etc etc.

We have to stop importing food

that has been produced on land created by demolishing forests,

using all sorts of chemicals,

using labour that is exploited and have no rights at all.

We will have to stop food being transported half way round the world to the UK,

with the pollution and environmental damage that that causes.
AND
We may have to pay a bit more,

depending on our food choices and tastes

and we may have restricted choice when locally produced food is out of season.

The UK has not been food secure for over 200 years.

At present, it produces c. 53% of the food it consumes,

some of which is produced from imported materials.

The UK is heavily reliant on imported foods.

Before Covid 19 came along and when it has gone the biggest demand

on the NHS

comes from diet related chronic ill health -

type 2 diabetes, obesity, heart disease and so on.
Our current farming methods and the subsidy regime

that supports them lead to biodiversity loss,

greenhouse gas emissions and damage to the soil, pollution of water courses and so on.

Overall the system is producing the wrong food in the wrong way.

A post brexit trade deal with the USA is likely to make these things worse as their agricultural practices are even worse than the UK.

There are honourable exceptions of course.

But the system needs to be moved to produce better quality

using more environmentally sound methods.

It will make food more expensive but that is a matter for fair wages -

we need to place greater value on what is important -

long term health and the quality of the environment.

Some 5.84 million people are paid less than the Living Wage,

according to new research.

The latest figure indicates that 23 percent of all employees

now earn less than the Living Wage –

up from 22 percent last year and 21 percent the year before.

Something has to change.

It obviously needs to start with the people at the top

sharing out some of their wealth to the poor sods at the bottom

actually creating it for them.

The workers are treated just as disposable entities

and easily replaced with readily available alternatives at the lowest rates possible.

If the workers had more money

then they could afford to pay not just for the cheapest foods

available at the budget supermarkets.