The news (thanks to Wicked Leeks) that Nestlé are using Wildfarmed regen-grown flour in their KitKat bars highlights the problem of not having a National Food Strategy and leaving these things to the private sector. Why not certified organic? Regenerative agriculture is self-regulating, so they can do what they like, and it boils down to whether you trust the brand values of the businesses involved. With their long, extremely questionable track record across many fields of the food industry, few would trust Nestlé and, for all their good intentions, for me, the jury is still very much out on Wildfarmed flour. With both, it’s all about marketing – which isn’t always exclusive to good intentions but, for cynics like myself, does tend to muddy the waters.
As Wicked Leeks quoted: “…is being adopted by the food industry, just as organic was two decades ago…” Apparently, and slightly worryingly, Wildfarmed’s ‘sharpest insight’ is to have established a brand rather than another certification scheme, because that is what will change consumer behaviour.
The rewards could be rich, but are we running before we can walk? With no legally recognised definition, ‘regenerative’ also allows pragmatism and farmer-by-farmer flexibility. But, as Gould rightly warns, “it is a bug the moment the term becomes a marketing asset, because a word that means everything eventually means nothing. The danger is not this partnership [between Nestlé and Wildfarmed]. The danger is the tenth or hundredth partnership, where ‘regenerative’ has been stretched across so many products, at so many inclusion rates, that a shopper can no longer tell the difference between a farm that has transformed its soil and a logo that tested well in a focus group.”
Personally, I’d call that a rather generous interpretation of the trustworthiness of ‘free-market marketing’. If private-sector food businesses were always seen and used as an unbiased force for good, maybe we could trust them, but fiduciary duties to shareholders and top management, amongst other things, preclude this from happening. Even if they didn’t, what’s good for Peter isn’t always good for Paul, and we need an unbiased, all-seeing umbrella organisation to look at the big picture.
Andy Burnham has expressed a desire for an all-encompassing food policy, and The Food Foundation has organised a letter, signed by a hundred or so of the high and mighty in the food business, including the CEOs of Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Aldi and Waitrose, calling for a Good Food Bill. That’s 60% of the UK grocery market but, hang on, that would also mean it’s 60% of the UPFs, sugar- and caffeine-based energy drinks, biscuits and confectionery, etc., etc. They’re also the ones who have been screwing their suppliers for the last fifty years, so they wouldn’t be at the top of my list of people to come up with a ‘Good Food Strategy’. It feels on a par with asking turkeys to vote for Christmas or crocodiles whether we should drain the swamp – but we shall see.