'Super'markets, Mammon Says All Is Well I think I have finally reached my limit with supermarkets, the giant food conglomerates now control 75%+ of retail food sales in the UK, they crush competitors, use dubious and immoral tactics to win more share of the market and they are not even very good. When we have traveled to Paris and Barcelona in the last couple of years I have been overwhelmed by the markets there. Huge displays of fantastic looking fresh fruit and veg, fish stalls with dozens of varieties of fresh fish, freshly baked breads releasing their wonderful yeasty aromas, hanging displays of meat, game and charcuterie that have me drooling. Then you go to a market here, and often you get the rather sad displays of items rejected by the supermarkets, fish stalls that offer farmed salmon, smoked haddock, cod and a few defrosting exotics, and our idea of charcuterie ? Black pudding or hugely overpriced, water filled glazed hams. Recently I decided to start using Fairtrade products here at Ilkley Golf Club, now I would like to go a step further and start sourcing more local products, using smaller suppliers and taking my trade away from the massive multi-nationals. This has to be done carefully of course, I still need to make a decent profit and I need to ensure that my own job and those of my staff who rely on me are not endangered by my ongoing social / moral stance. I'm hoping though that with some assistance from he committee we can change over nearly all of our purchasing to smaller, independent suppliers. In some areas this will obviously entail price rises, nobody can compete with the likes of Tesco on bread, milk and other items that are sold as loss leaders (or KVI's, Known Value Items). We are price capped at the club, prices are determined by the committee and not by me, so I will have to do a bit of persuading in order to show people that a few minor price rises will actually be beneficial in the long run. I have been feeling more and more anti-supermarkets recently, after a number of questions to my local Tesco were ignored completely I began thinking why am I giving them so much trade if they obviously don't care at all what I think ? Then, I picked up a copy of Felicity Lawrence's 'Not On The Label' at last months Bookcrossing , combined with reading Eric Schlosser's 'Fast Food Nation' this has just about turned me off fast food and supermarkets altogether. I worry about the implications my purchasing power have on other people, am I keeping immigrant workers in conditions that could easily be described as slavery, right here in the UK, just because I buy bagged salads from supermarkets ? Am I helping to keep workers in Kenya, Nigeria and the Caribbean in poverty because I buy trayed vegetables or cut price bananas ? Can I be at all comfortable with the fact that thousands of tons of fruit and vegetables are trashed by the food giants (for not being up to dubious 'visual beauty' standards) whilst millions starve in the third world ? No, it keeps me awake at night worrying about it. You remember how we all laughed at Daily Mail stories of insane Brussels legislation for minimum length carrots and straiter bananas ? Well the supermarkets are doing this right now, if you are contracted to supply five tons of 100cm carrots next Tuesday and your carrots have deviated from the contracted length, you might just be going bankrupt mate. We all went to the continental market in Ilkley last weekend, fantastic foods, salami's, rillete, pates, cheeses, breads, it wasn't cheap, but it was all good. It all looked and tasted like real food. In France they would probably laugh at this idea, a touring market selling real food, but their government brought in laws to regulate the supermarkets 30 years ago, they still have a craftsman baker, a master butcher, a greengrocer, cheesemonger and fishmonger in every town, they still understand the importance of the raw materials. So here I am, trying to do my bit again. That bag of rocket from the supermarket, it just turns to ashes in my mouth when I realise that some poor soul from Portugal, Brazil or Morocco has spent a ninety hour week picking it, getting well under minimum wage, being charged NI and Tax even though they are working illegally, and then having most of the remainder of their wages taken in 'rent' money by the gangmasters. Go Farmer - buy direct from the farm in the UK Feastnet - smaller producers cutting out the supermarkets