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Polytunnel vision Of all the counties in England that are afflicted by the blight of polytunnels, it could be argued that Herefordshire, where we live, is worst hit. Hundreds of acres are now under plastic, in some of the most picturesque parts of the county, including the Wye Valley AONB. Even this supposedly protected landscape is not sacrosanct when business and profit are involved.
So let’s examine what polytunnels are all about. That they are an eyesore goes without saying. That they desecrate our glorious landscape is undeniable, even to some of those who support their use. That they represent everything that is wrong with British agriculture is certainly a moot point. But who is to blame?
Because Herefordshire is traditionally an agricultural county, it is easy to point the finger at the farmers and growers, but they will fight their corner passionately and tell you that all they are trying to do is to make a living. Would any one of us want to deny them the opportunity to make a living? Of course not. We all want and need to make a living.
Another argument you hear is, “Well, it’s the price we pay for cheap food.” This is a common platitude which has found life in our culture by feeding on one of our major misconceptions: the fact that we actually want cheap food. Perhaps it is time to deconstruct this particular urban myth.
Most of us have to be careful when it comes to spending money, and everyone loves a bargain. This is a fundamental human trait. In the same way that we take delight in finding something unexpected whilst beachcombing, we love a bonus when we are foraging in the High Street. Something extra, something outside the norm. The pleasure is in the surprise. So we react positively to price reductions in the shops, but we do not demand it. Who knows this better than anyone? The supermarkets. They know that no one can resist a bargain.
Supermarkets compete with each other for customers. It doesn’t require a degree in logic to understand that, in order to poach customers from its rivals, any given supermarket will plug into our bargain-hunting instincts and offer us price cuts and savings. The biggest retailer on the planet, Wal-Mart (owner of Asda) has grown to the size it is simply by undercutting all competition. Every Asda ad on our TV continues to drum the message home: “You will save more money at Asda than anywhere else.”
How is it possible for our supermarkets to sustain such a price war but still show truly fabulous profits? The answer, in a word, is exploitation. Supermarkets exploit their suppliers. The bigger they get, the easier it is to do so, through economies of scale, the promise of big orders as a hook for suppliers and then the threats if a supplier starts to whinge about being squeezed on price.
One side effect of this type of exploitation is that eventually only the most ruthless and aggressive suppliers can stay in the game. These suppliers then have to dance to the supermarkets’ tune. If the supermarkets demand x thousand tons of strawberries, and they want them from April to October, those willing to meet these demands are also willing to do absolutely whatever it takes. The result? Agri-business, a sprawling sea of plastic, despoliation of the landscape, environmental pollution and 40-tonne trucks crashing through our quiet lanes.
So, should we blame the supermarkets? That would be easy – we all profess to ‘hate the supermarkets’. They are indeed monsters, the commercial equivalent of Japanese Knotweed, consuming all before them in an environment devoid of resistance. But we condone it. Most of us still end up driving to the nearest superstore for what we need. Like sheep, we just follow each other around the shopping aisles, returning to our vehicles with bulging bags, containing, no doubt, at least one item that we didn’t want, seduced by the bargain price tag. So is it our fault then?
The answer cannot be a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’. The supermarkets, in defence against a bad press, insist that everything they do is ‘in response to public demand’, which makes it look like ‘our fault’. But this is not the case. We certainly respond to the price-cutting offers in supermarkets, but we do not demand that everything is cheap, any more than we demand that our vegetables are perfectly shaped or that strawberries should be available from April to October. The truth is that everything a supermarket does is done to undercut its rivals, pull in the punters, increase its profit and thereby impress its shareholders. We, the gullible public, have just been taken along for the ride and we’re only just waking up to what has happened along the way.
What has happened is that capitalism has finally mutated into the predator it was always going to be. What underpins the whole of our so-called ‘developed world’ is an economy based on greed and envy. Much wants more, and everyone wants what the other fellow’s got. It is a philosophy of materialism generated by nineteenth century economists who pursued ‘economic growth’ as the highest of all goals. Growth in this context is limitless, and has no definition of ‘enough’.
From the simple concepts of trade and commerce, our Western economy has developed into a world run by a handful of global corporations, omnipotently powerful yet emasculated by the greater power of their shareholders to demand bigger profits and increased dividends year in year out. These corporations will do anything to stay at the top. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is as important to them as their bottom-line profit. Everything else is just incidental. Driven by greed and fear, they exploit, subjugate, desecrate and despoil all that should be precious in order to make those half-yearly announcements that ‘profits are up’.
In the end, therefore, polytunnels in Herefordshire are just another boil on the surface of a planet sick from abuse by an avaricious species that doesn’t know when to stop. It could be argued that we are all culpable, but to call everyone a sinner is no solution. That is not to say that no solution exists, but it will require a total rethink of the way we behave. It will require a reversal of those erroneous and outdated economic ideas that have led us down the road to ultimate self-destruction. It is, as they say, a big ask.
However, every journey begins with but a single step, as Chinese philosophy is so keen to tell us. And our new journey has already begun. Everywhere around the world there are people who say that this madness has gone on long enough. They are turning their backs on the ideology of ‘received economics’ and beginning to work things out for themselves. We can all do the same. If we don’t want polytunnels covering our green and pleasant land, we should withdraw our support for supermarkets. If we don’t want global corporations ruling our lives, we should withdraw support from them too.
Easier said than done? Certainly. Very easy to say, incredibly difficult to do, considering that we are effectively locked inside an economic bus with a jammed accelerator that is heading for the precipice at frightening speed. But if no one does anything, change will never come. If, however, one person changes something, another person might be influenced to do the same. How far would that influence have to travel before it meets another one coming the other way?
The power is with us – the people. This is the underlying principle of democracy. If the people do not like the way things are run, the people truly have the power to change it. If we do not exercise that power, no changes for the better will happen – and we will have only ourselves to blame.
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