The below is one I posted last night, in response to an Hereford Times reader's letter response to the HT's 'Buy British' campaign.
 |
| Hereford Times: It's apple season, so let's buy British! |
Dear Letters Editor
Writing regarding the importance of buying locally sourced food, Elizabeth Gwynne points out that packaging of th supposedly ‘farm fresh’ produce for a cauliflower she bought in a country shop was labelled ‘Country of Origin: Poland’ and notes, “Presumably the wages of those working on the land there, producing mushrooms, are so low that despite the costs of flight etc, the UK business people can still retail at a profit.” (Letters, October 15.)
Julian Day Rose’s book ‘In Deference of Life’ gives a detailed analysis of such trading practices with a special focus on Poland. Before Poland exited the Warsaw Pact, Polish farming served local communities, yet Poland’s debt crisis on exiting the Soviet empire led to a restructuring of the Polish economy. 'Structural adjustment’ directives of the International Monetary Fund, and the ‘bail out’ terms of the World Bank and European Central Bank and their economic principles were culpable. A reviewer writes: “Rose is critical of Europe’s subsidy system and the way it pays per hectare regardless of farm size, favouring big farms. He goes to the heart of what it means for farmers on Europe’s new industrial frontier – Poland – describing his personal battles to stop small farmers there being driven out of business...
A reason
there are so many Polish workers in the UK, as a Social Researcher and
‘critical friend’ of the EU told me, is basically because of what the
West did to the Polish economy as it leapt to the West.
Yet
there is or was more hope for a small-scale and local future for
farming in the UK by remaining in the EU than by the vulnerability
associated with Brexit, a nonproportional electoral system and
‘"whatever next?" terms and conditions’ — especially post Covid-19
lockdown! The Head of the World Bank now says, “[P]eople, even the
world’s poorest and most destitute, are required to pay their
government’s debts as long as creditors pursue claims.. In the worst
cases, it’s the modern equivalent of debtor’s prison.” As Nick Dearden
of Global Justice Now writes: "If the head of the World Bank can call the global financial system a ‘debtors’ prison’ anything is possible."(2)
I believe international co-operation and democratic transformation from within trading blocs is key.
Notes
(1) https://www.ciwf.org.uk/philip-lymbery/blog/2015/05/book-review-in-defence-of-life-by-julian-day-rose
(2) https://newint.org/features/2020/10/14/official-global-economy-debtors-prison
No comments:
Post a Comment