Sustainable food? Very important, after the crisis

Also read: Climate stress in the kitchen: tips for a more sustainable diet

The restaurants had barely reopened when they were already packed night after night—if they could find enough staff. Social life started again so quickly that the intention to eat at home more often, in small company, with a basket of homemade sourdough bread on the table, quickly faded into the background. It has all become a bit more expensive, but hey, after two years the brake can be removed, right? Eating, drinking, traveling – and and instead of either or. Many people clearly have some catching up to do.

In the meantime, supermarkets and food producers are at each other’s throats as usual. More expensive energy and raw materials are pushing up prices, but supermarkets don’t want to give an inch to producers for fear of losing customers. Even though they have achieved record turnovers in recent years. An example from this month, at Jumbo, where the dairy shelves remained empty: it was due to the drought that there was less supply of milk, was the note on the shelf. No, the farmers taunted, it was up to Jumbo who did not want to compensate for the higher cost price.

And the consumer? At the time of corona, you sometimes heard people say that they no longer went to the supermarket, as long as they did not know where their food came from and who earned it. But for a moment this seems like a bad time to argue for ‘fair prices’. Life is expensive enough, food has risen in price by 8.5 percent in one year, the summer holidays have yet to be paid, the energy bill is a lot higher – who can afford to complain about too low prices?

More headwind

Attention has shifted from ‘the lessons of corona’ to ‘the consequences of the Ukraine war’. Even if they are partly the same. That war also shows the weak links of the food system: if no grain or sunflower oil comes from Ukraine, the whole world will feel it. But ‘feeling’ is something different in one half of the world than in the other. No bread on the table in Egypt is a different kind of food crisis than having to go back to the supermarket in the Netherlands from the butcher and greengrocer. Hardly anyone in the Netherlands has to eat a sandwich less. It may only become a sandwich from Lidl instead of the bakery – this shift is already reflected in the growing market share of the cheaper supermarkets, says Martijn Rol, sector manager at Rabobank.

The priorities have changed and with them the discussion. Suddenly it sounds that more sustainable food production is a luxury that Europe cannot afford now. This is not the time to switch to organic farming or to create nature for biodiversity: the precious land is needed to maximize production, for food security within Europe.

You can still hear the proponents of sustainability: the Ukraine war alone shows that you can no longer count on (Russian) fertilizers and cheap gas for the greenhouses. And climate change – think of desiccation and rehydration – will eventually also cause economic damage. But the sustainable sound clearly has more headwinds than in previous years.

Suddenly you hear that more sustainable food production is a luxury that Europe cannot afford now

Two years ago, many people talked about a ‘tipping point’, a ‘crossroads’ or a ‘turn of the plot’. As if there was only one direction or outcome imaginable. But if you now talk to analysts, entrepreneurs and thinkers who then spoke, it turns out that things have not turned out so unequivocally. Take Boerschaps, a cooperative for meal boxes. Many existing customers will stay, says owner Stijn Markusse. And there are still new sustainable entrepreneurs who dare to look for that group of conscious, critical consumers and who succeed in doing so, Rol adds.

At the same time, Markusse observes: “Acquiring new customers is becoming more difficult, people have drastically less money.” There are large groups, including middle groups, for whom more expensive groceries now mean the difference between a positive and negative balance at the end of the month and who make different choices. Then you switch from the specialty store or the farm shop back to Albert Heijn or from Jumbo to Aldi. From free-range chicken to kilo banger.

Also read: Sustainable food: ‘The more you immerse yourself, the more you get lost’

No, you don’t have to pay more if you buy directly from the farmer. But time and attention to food also costs something – just mental energy. And if you know to the cent how much more expensive a bottle of sunflower oil has become, or if you have to rely on the food bank, you have other priorities than eating locally, baking your own bread or growing tomatoes on your own balcony.

Splits are not just between groups. You also see it in supermarkets, which on the one hand try to keep their prices low, but at the same time gradually work on shorter food chains, less CO₂emissions and a more sustainable range. And in the end, all you have to do is look at yourself (or the neighbor, if you’re infallible yourself) to see how double it is. One day you obediently use up the leftovers from your farm crate, the next day you get on a plane to southern Spain.

Courgette pie

Cognitive dissonance explains these conflicting choices, says British food writer Carolyn Steel, two years after her book interview Sitopia† At the time, she still saw corona as an opportunity: she expected a growing group of people to take back food production: more vegetable gardens and farmers’ markets, shorter chains, away from industry and world trade. Now she finds with disappointment that most people are “back to business on steroids” to be. People’s behavior often clashes with their conviction: of course we must do something against global warming (later), but after two years you also want to go on holiday to a warm country (now!).

And people may feel the current crisis in their wallets, but not everyone has to make real choices. Instead of buying less, you can always look for cheaper options. Cheaper groceries, cheaper clothes, cheaper plane tickets.

Crises bring out the best and the worst in people, Steel says. “My neighbor brought me zucchini pie during the first lockdown, while people were fighting over a bag of pasta in the supermarket.” But it is difficult to blame individual citizens for conflicting choices. “Don’t underestimate the power of capitalist culture. We were raised with the idea that everything the planet has to offer is free. As if consuming is a right.”

It’s easy to call for less consumption, but for that you need a society with different values, Steel says, in which meaningful social connections, meaningful work and good, healthy food are available to everyone.

You can say that we have ruined the crisis that offered an opportunity for change, the corona crisis. “We suffered too little pain the first time,” says Stijn Markusse. He expects much darker times to come. And that puts pressure on good intentions: whether it concerns your own behavior or agreements and rules for more sustainable food systems. “In the end, the shore will turn the ship, but the question is how often the shore will be shifted.”