(no subject)

[Guest guest]

we reap wot we sow

 

of course..if he plants seeds from those apples, he won't get the same apple

tree..but

 

 

Published on Tuesday, March 16, 2004 by the Guardian/UK

The Fruits of Poverty

The Wealth of Supermarkets is built on Monopoly, Exploitation and Restriction

of Choice

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0316-10.htm

 

by George Monbiot

 

Every year the list is the same, but every year it still comes as a shock. Of

the 10 richest people on Earth, five of them have the same surname. It's not

Gates, or Murdoch, or Rockefeller, but Walton. They are the heirs and trustees

of the supermarket chain Wal-Mart. And between them they are worth $100bn.

Considering how the media fawns on the ultra rich, we hear remarkably little

about them. Perhaps this is because their position is rather embarrassing. The

company that enriches them trades on the idea that it is the friend of the

common man and woman, distributing rather than concentrating wealth.

Over the past 20 years, two world-shaking social transformations have taken

place. The first, the effective collapse of the proletariat as a political

force, has been well documented. The second, the disappearance of the petty

bourgeoisie as an economic force, rather less so. The near-elimination of the

small

businesses supplying and running the retail trade is in some ways as

consequential as the withering of organized labor in heavy industry and the coal

mines.

The global monopolization of the sector has destroyed the livelihoods of tens

of millions of small proprietors and their employees. But, because this

workforce was dispersed, the effects are rather harder to see.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to buy some fruit trees. I traveled to the

world's most unprepossessing center of biodiversity: Langley, on the outskirts

of

Slough. In the first half of the 20th century, most of London's fruit and

vegetables were grown round there. The farms were supplied by specialist

nurseries, which ensured that Britain possessed a wider variety of temperate

fruit

trees than any other nation. Two weeks ago, only one of these nurseries was

left.

In the 1940s, JC Allgrove's kept a thousand varieties of apple tree. It is

still listed in the directories as one of Britain's great growers. But I was

among its last customers.

Since the owner died two years ago, the business has been run by a volunteer,

Nick Houston. " There are bits of ground here where no one's been for 20

years, " he told me. Recently, scrabbling beneath the ivy that now covers the

orchards, he found an apple he had never seen before. It was a Baumann's

Reinette:

the horticultural equivalent of a Fabergé egg. " But I had no idea which bloody

tree it had fallen off. " Somewhere in the nursery there should be two

varieties - King Harry and St Augustine's Orange - that even the national fruit

collection doesn't possess, but he hasn't been able to find them yet. The land

is to

be sold. Nick will salvage what he can and run a business of his own, under

the old name, to try to keep the rare breeds growing.

He gave a one-word answer when I asked him what had happened to the business.

" Supermarkets. " Today the apples they buy are landing three miles from JC

Allgrove's. Heathrow's first runway was built on strawberry farms and orchards.

From the air, you can still see derelict greenhouses and the parallel lines on

the land where fruit trees once grew. Richard Cox, the man who bred the

world's favorite apple, is buried beside St Mary's Church in Harmondsworth,

which

will be flattened if a third runway is built at Heathrow.

The superstores have used their buying power to force the world's farmers to

compete directly with each other. Yesterday I spoke to a fruit grower in

Gloucestershire, who told me that to stay in the game he must sometimes sell

Coxes

for as little as 57p a kilo, less than his cost of production. The superstores

then sell the same apples for between £1.60 and £1.80. They can buy them for

even less from Chile, New Zealand and South Africa, where labor is cheap and

the farms huge. This would present no threat to the growers here, had the

superstores not used their political power to ensure that fuel costs stay low,

and

the docks and airports keep expanding.

These companies are now strolling over the battlefield, dispatching the last

of the wounded. A few days ago, Verdict Research published a report on the

takeover of Britain's cornershops. The big chains have moved into the suburbs,

where they are closing down the competition. " Now smaller retailers can no

longer hide in the neighborhood, " Verdict reports. " A major shake-out is

inevitable. "

Wal-Mart, which owns the British chain Asda, is now the biggest company on

Earth. In the last financial year it took $245bn. It is successful partly

because it is one of the most ruthless employers in the western world.

In the US its sales clerks made an average of $13,861 in 2001, almost $800

below the federal poverty line for a family of three. It is reported to have

told new employees how to apply for food stamps so that they don't starve to

death. In November, the police found hundreds of illegal immigrants working as

cleaners in its stores. Some of them claimed that they were obliged to work

seven

nights a week, without overtime, insurance or benefits.

By forcing down the prices of the goods they buy, the superstores encourage

even more repressive conditions in the companies that supply them. A recent

study by Oxfam documents the systematic abuse of workers in the factories and

farms that the superstores buy from. The Waltons are so rich because others are

so poor.

Beside this, the destruction of our horticultural diversity looks trivial.

But both are manifestations of the same problem. As the superstores capture the

market, they shut down all our choices: about where we shop, what we buy, who

we work for. This, of course, is what all monopolies seek to do.

We might have hoped that governments would treat them as such. Indeed, there

was a time when they did. In 1936, a federal anti-trust act was passed in the

United States to protect small shops from the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea

Company. But governments were braver then.

In Britain, the Office of Fair Trading and the Competition Commission seem to

spend their time devising new excuses. They continue to insist, for example,

that big stores and corner shops are separate markets. Tesco might sell 25% of

all Britain's groceries, but it owns " only " 6% of the convenience store

market, so it should be allowed to expand in that sector as it pleases. Last

month

the Office of Fair Trading admitted that its voluntary code of practice, which

is supposed to protect farmers from the excessive power of the superstores,

is not working. By way of remedy it proposed " more research " .

In response, the MPs Andrew George and David Drew are launching an early day

motion in parliament today, calling for a legally binding code of practice and

a supermarket watchdog. But Tony Blair seems to be as frightened of the

superstores as he is of the tabloid press.

Nick couldn't find me any of the rarest varieties. He sold me an Adam's

Pearmain, a Charles Ross, a Sturmer Pippin and a Cornish Aromatic. I would have

bought the names even if the trees weren't attached to them. If they survive my

clumsy handling and produce fruit, I will regard every apple they produce as a

minor act of insurrection.

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004