Appendix
Supplementary information
Retailers will be able to volunteer any information they have on the following, which may be used as case study material in RTTT communications:
- Activities and policies which ensure that primary producers who directly or indirectly supply your company receive an adequate price for their produce, i.e. that covers the cost of production and a reasonable return to producers’ capital and labour.
- Activities (training, incentive structures etc.) to ensure long-term relationships between specialist supermarket buyers and suppliers.
- Activities to encourage supplies from small farms and co-operatives, including technical and organisational support, smallholder-friendly quality assurance schemes
Relation and trade-offs with other modules
Local
The encouragement of smaller scale and family farming, for instance by encouraging and sourcing from small co-operatives, is an integral part of promoting local sourcing of regional products.
Workers
Labour standards in the supply chain, including plantation agriculture, are covered by the Workers module. The Workers module may extend its benchmarking to codes of practice applied to the smallholder sector in subsequent years.[49]
Nature
A potentially serious trade-off between terms of trade and nature conservation arises with the application of standards for farm biodiversity and sustainable agriculture. Standards and associated farm assurance schemes may be scale-biased andregressive instruments with relative higher costs and complexity—especially in determining conformity to technical regulations—falling on the smallest operation. There are concerns that standards are accentuating prevailing inequalities, and excluding small firms and producers from participating in market growth, marginalising small-scale primary producers or entrepreneurs. It is for this reason that the Nature module asks whether retailers provide any support to these producer suppliers to help them to develop and implement the farm environment audits (and plans), financial or otherwise.
Animals
Note that competitive pricing of meat requires live auctions, which adds to the number of animal movements. If supermarkets instruct their abattoirs to source animals with a maximum of two movements, then the trend towards sidelining auction markets and undermining competitive price discovery could be worsened.
References
Baines R et al. (1999). Implications of food assurance on UK primary producers. RICS Research Conference ROOTS 99.
Blowfield M and Malin A (1999) Safeguarding the African smallholder. NRET Working Paper 4. Available at www.nri.org/NRET/safegd.pdf
British Independent Fruit Growers’ Association (1999). Submission to the Competition Commission, 10th November 1999. BIFGA, Staplehurst, UK.
Borghesani WH, de la Cruz PL and Berry DB (1997a) Controlling the chain: buyer power, distributive control, and new dynamics in retailing. Business Horizons 40(4) 17-25.
Borghesani WH, de la Cruz PL and Berry DB (1997b) Food for thought: the emergence if power buyers and its challenge to competition analysis. Available at www.antitrust.org/economics
Competition Commission (2000). Supermarkets: a report on the supply of groceries from multiple stores in the United Kingdom. Report #Cm 4842, 10 October 2000. 1220 pages. Available at www.competition-commission.org.uk/rep_pub/reports/2000/446super.htm
Dobson P (2002a) The Economic Effects of Constant Below-Cost Selling Practices by Grocery Retailers. Paper prepared for UK Federation of Bakers. Available at www.bakersfederation.org.uk/Dobsonreport.pdf
Dobson PW (2002b) Retailer Buyer Power in European Markets: Lessons from Grocery Supply. Loughborough University Business School Research Series Paper 2002: 2. Available at www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/bs/research/2002-1.doc
Dolan C, Humphrey J and Harris-Pascal C (1999). Horticulture commodity chains: the impact of the UK market on the African fresh vegetable industry. Working Paper 96, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex UK. Available at www.ids.ac.uk/ids/index.html
Food Standards Agency (2002). Food Labelling: Country of Origin. Available at www.foodstandards.gov.uk/foodlabelling/policiesandregulations/originlabelling
Fox T (2000). Supermarket Squeeze, in Tomorrow magazine, September/October 2000
Kinsey J (1998) Concentration of ownership in food retailing: a review of the evidence about consumer impact. Working Paper 98-04, the Food Retail Industry Centre, University of Minnesota USA.
NRET (2001) Applying codes of practice in third world countries—what supermarkets can do to help. Available at www.nri.org/NRET/supermarkets.pdf
Oxfam (2001). Bitter Coffee: How the poor are paying fir the slump in coffee prices.
Reardon T et al (2001). Global change in agrifood grades and standards: agribusiness strategic responses in developing countries. International Food and Agribusienss Management Review 2(3).
Schroder B and Marks N (1996). The Retailer-Driven UK Food Industry: Structure, Performance and Implications for Australia. Australian Agribusiness Review - Vol. 4 - No. 2 – 1996, Paper 4. Available at www.agribusiness.asn.au/review/1996V4No2/96Schroder.htm
Tallontire A (2001). How corporate policy can improve market access for smallholders: the example of the fresh fruit and vegetable supply chain. Paper presented at the IIED Conference Equity for a Small Planet, London, November 2001
Vorley B (2003). Food, Inc. Corporate concentration from farm
to consumer
www.ukfg.org.uk/docs/UKFG-Foodinc-Nov03.pdf
Wrigley N and Lowe M (2002) Reading Retail: A geographical perspective on retailing and consumption spaces. Arnold, London.
[49] NRET Theme Papers, especially #3 ‘Implementing Codes in the Smallholder Sector’