Not A Green Budget

While there were a couple of measures in the Budget that could be seen as “Green”, these measures are more about raising revenue than attempting to benefit the environment. The greatest obstacle is this obsession with growth.

The growth of an economy by measuring the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a seriously blunt instrument. Further, even most economists don't understand how or what elements of the economy go towards making up this measure. Put simply, it measures the total earnings of all individuals, the businesses and the government in the country. Now if we were just talking about people, businesses and government departments just buying goods and services then as a measure it would be useful. However as it also measures many negative aspects of life that money get spent on, it fails to show the real state of any economy.

The problem is that if there is a spate of arson, the cost of rebuilding the properties gets measured as does the increase in insurance premiums. This all makes it look as though the economy is growing, as if you lose everything in a house fire say you then have to spend more on refurnishing your new abode. However the GDP fails to measure the losses of the original property.

Looking at an environmental prospective; even shutting down an industry that was heavily polluting adds a paper benefit to the economy as the costs of clearing up the pollution gets seen as a benefit to the economy.

The economists have the same mindset as the people I challenge for dropping litter. The people who toss rubbish in the street, will often say that they are keeping the road cleaners employed.

Therefore the economists and politicians see growth as useful measure but fail to see that a shrinking economy can be equally as good if not better. If the shrinking was due to high unemployment then that would be bad. But if there was a downturn that was caused by the majority of office workers working from home, utilising the internet and telecommunications to do the same work and no longer having to travel to a place of work, the losses would occur in the daily cost of travel for those individuals. While there would be less money spent on petrol that would impact the oil companies and allied businesses, the benefits will also be less congestion delaying the essential journeys, less pollution to cause breathing problems and expenditure on health care.

All this could happen using existing technology, and that shrinking of the GDP would benefit all but a few vested interests.

This is just one example of where a shrinking could be a real benefit to the overall economy. If everyone who can grew their own vegetables, that would mean that there was less money spent in the supermarkets as well as the reduction in the cost of health care from improved diet and better exercise. The trouble is that activities like this, in the eyes of the economists, are not seen to benefit the economy in ways that can be measured.

Staying with the environment, growth in personal transport is seen as good for the economy. As well as greater volume in car sales benefiting manufacturing and the suppliers of the fuel, the conventional economists prospective fails to take account of the costs that go with this. Like congestion extending the time required to travel anywhere, or the effects of pollution on health. In fact these extra costs are seen as benefiting the GDP as more money is spent on these.

It is this drive for growth that is damaging the environment and stopping any real growth in the quality of life.

This method of only looking at the world purely in terms of its monetary value is at the core of most of the problems we have today. Environmentally where the worlds forests are only valued in terms of the economic earnings from the timber, and not in the way that these forests hold back rainwater, preventing flooding and providing drinking water.

Additionally this fixation on growth of GDP means that important tasks in our societies become undervalued. Here in the UK while the cost of childcare is expensive the wages for the people who work in childcare is very low. This leads to people who would be the best people to care for children, will move on to better paid jobs. Yet caring for the next generation should be one of the most valued tasks in life. Yet people who trade in financial derivatives get paid small fortunes even for doing their job badly.

Equally there needs to be a change to fair trade. While the concept of free trade may sound the right way to carry out commerce, free trade is in fact exploitation. It is based upon paying the least you can for any resource and selling it for the maximum price you can get. While that may earn businesses or individuals good profits, it also creates volatility in the market. That is why crude oil has hit record highs yet again. At the time of writing oil is 110 US dollars per barrel while it only costs 20 US dollars to produce. Yet the free market also means that livestock farmers in the UK and the US are struggling to make any profits as it is cheaper to ship in meat from halfway around the world. Even excluding the environmental cost, this free trading creates the situation where the UK and the US are placing themselves at risk of being held hostage over food supplies. If we loose the ability to feed ourselves we are venerable to any number of situations that could disrupt international transport.

Fair trade has the effect of ensuring a stable price, for the farmer and prevents inflation. While it does prevent spectacular profits, it stops the exploitation. Further, by stabilising supply there is less risk of starvation occurring.

Fair trade not only applies to food, when applied to all areas of commerce the consumer gets a better standard of product that's safer and lasts longer. The manufactures also get a better price, leading to better wages and less environmental impacts. Less resources wasted, Less energy used, fewer good transported around the world.

We need to start looking for alternative economic solutions. For example if everyone who is unemployed were provided with an allotment to grow some of their own food, we would reduce the cost of unemployment. However, I am a realist and know that most of the unemployed would not make the effort.

Just as I know that no government will really start to tackle climate change until we have the levels of the seas rising.

The Myth of Cheap Food

Before Christmas on the BBCs Farming Today, I heard a discussion about the fall in prices that hill farmers were getting for their lambs. The reasons for this are a complex collection of problems, but while I risk over simplifying the factors, they are; the increased cost of feed, the oversupply from imports, and the restrictions caused by the outbreak of Foot and Mouth.

With the restrictions on movements that the outbreak of Foot and Mouth caused, farmers were not able to move the lambs off of the hills, even when the sheep had eaten all the grass. Some farmers were able to provide supplementary feeding, but this was not always possible either due to cost or lack of feed. For these hard-pressed farmers the cost of feed was and is important as lambs are only selling at market for five pounds (Eight Dollars US) in extreme cases. The average price has been lower from twenty-eight pounds (Fifty Dollars US) per lamb to fifteen pounds (twenty-eight Dollars US) per lamb. That obviously reduces the income of farmers who are making very little to start with. Incidentally we also had two hundred and fifty thousand lambs slaughtered in what the government called a welfare cull. An oxymoron if ever I heard one.

So with falling prices at the market we the consumers are getting cheaper meat? Using misinformation the major supermarkets increased prices for lamb. This brings me to what I heard on the radio. One of the farming groups looked at the price of the cuts of meat from the lamb and by reconstructing a lamb from the cuts of meat they worked out that the average price of the meat was about five pound fifty per kilo, ten times the price the supermarkets were paying for the carcass. That also represents an increase of nearly twenty percent on the price that consumers are paying.

So I carried out the same exercise and again after Christmas to ensure that it was not just a hike in price for the holiday season. I found the same prices myself.

Environmentally, this is a disaster. If farmers can no longer stay in business we lose the custodians of our landscape. The countryside only looks the way it does because of the way those farmers manage the land. Further, particularly on the hills, it is only because of grazing that the habitats for much of the wildlife exists.

In the past and I am only talking ten to fifteen years ago, subsides meant that farmers could only afford to farm the hills by overstocking the hills, this lead to large-scale erosion and environmental degradation. Fortunately the way support was paid was changed and this dramatically improved the situation and reversed the problem. What the supermarkets are doing will destroy ten years of hard work.

Additionally the way that the supermarkets protect their margins by dictating to farmers the price they will pay for meat, means that farmers can only make farming pay by increasing the number of animals on any farm and reducing the welfare standards for the livestock. Most farmers do care about their animals, but farmers are often forced to cut corners to make farming pay. The supermarkets know this but hide behind systems that are supposed to ensure welfare standards.

If we look at chicken as an example, where the birds are regularly feed antibiotics to grow faster and fatter, this practice has caused antibiotic resistance and has major implications on human health. Further, having large concentrations of any animal in a small area creates pollution. Farming always used to be exemplars of recycling, as nothing was waste it all had a use on the farm.

Had farming and particularly factory farming had to pay for the pollution it created, then food prices would double at least. Yet we still have to pay for this, indirectly by higher water bills and higher taxes. Also as the supermarkets will utilise anything that can be considered food, take the example of mechanically recovered meat, while they make billions in profit, they are poisoning our children and us.

While that trolley may be full of cheap food from the supermarket there is a hidden cost.





My gratitude to Fran Purdy for the kind permission to use her magnificent picture of the Ewe and Lamb taken on the Yorkshire hills, her website can be found at www.pbase.com/jenga