related profiles

Food and agriculture project

As part of Corporate Watch's research remit we are taking a closer look at the growing corporate influence on farming and the food chain. Visit the GAFF (Grassroots Action on Food and Farming) website or click on the links below to read articles from the Corporate Watch archive.

New

A Rough Guide to the UK Farming Crisis May 2004
The UK farming industry is of vital importance for the production of our food. On top of this, farmers are entrusted with a number of other responsibilities. They are expected to care for and manage the land in a way that promotes wildlife and preserves the landscape; they are expected to produce food which is safe, hygienic and 'natural'; they are expected to treat their animals humanely; and they are at the hub of the rural community.

Farmers have taken a battering from environmentalists, and from the public in general, for not carrying out these responsibilities as well as they should. Much of this criticism is justified. However, this report argues is that it is not entirely the farmers' fault if they have failed in these undertakings. The problems that surround the farming industry are very largely attributable to one elementary fact which is beyond the farmers' control.
Read the pdf version (500kb)...

AgriCultured January 2004
Case study of farming lives and increasing corporate power in
agriculture. Hear the personal accounts from farmers in Oxfordshire.

National Farmers' Union (NFU) July 2003
One of the most important bodies with influence over our food and countryside the NFU has close links to government and business.

Features

Checkout Chuckout!
A D.I.Y. guide to stopping supermarket developments html and pdf
There is also a short version available here.

The countryside alliance
Voice of the Rural Dispossessed?!

The Great Local Food Scam
Newsletter 3- May/June 2001

Tackling the farming crisis - together
from Newsletter 2- March/April 2001