 OK, wedi go. If you go back. Off you go. Wel, gadebunnyn meddwl, everybody. Mae'r awr yn bwysig i chi wnaeth ymddangos chi'n gwrth gwaith yn y rhwng, ddweud i chi'n gwneud i chi'n gwybod yma. Felly mae'n gweithio'r gwn o'n gyntaf o'r tynnu. Felly mae'n gweithio'r gwleidio'n gwybod yma. I welcome to the people watching that are watching us on the internet broadcasting. My name is Kevin Hicks and I'm the Deputy Director of the Stockholm Environmental Institute, place of the Environmental Department of the University of York. I'm very warm welcome to you tonight for our annual seminar which this year is about food production and pro-poor development. It is fantastic to see you all. We are very lucky to have you a diverse audience. I can recognise a few people in the audience, but there's a lot of new faces for me which is fantastic to see you all. a dyna y tro i'n dda'i wedi'u gweld sy'n weithio cyfnodol i ni i'r newid a chylo'n hynny'n holl yma i ni i'r ddiwylliant. So, ffyrdd o'r wneud hefyd yw'r holl o'i gweithio bydd, gyda chi eich syni am y cyfrifiad ac mae'n wnaeth eu bod yn unig. Ac ynghylch ymlaen arfer, sy'n golygu, ac mae'n golygu'n amlaen oherwydd arall o'i gwahanol. A aeth yn cael cael cael o'i gwahanol. Yb eich sydd i fan sydd gennych ei angenio mynd i gwasanaeth, yn cael ei wneud i weithio byddwyd â mertyni, ac mae'n gwneud i weithio byddwyd, sy'n meddwl a gweithio byddwyd ar y ddelweddau yn ei wneud ti'r cymdeithas nawr a'r ei gweithio cyhoeddol a diod junkau gwnaeth ar ei wneud. A wnaeth wnaeth fy mwy ffordd iawn? Mae ESEI wedi cael y form byddwyd, byddwyd flasied ynなetam 25 â hi wedi bod a chynylltu ym nid. y Dynod yng Nghymru, ychydigol, a mae'n bod yn ei ddweud y Gweithgaf Brifedig yng Nghymru yw 1989. Yn ymdau yw'r gweithio yw'r cyhoedd gweithio ar gyfer y cyfnodau cyfnodau yn ffraegi ar gyfer yllan o'r cyfnodau yn y ffordd ymgyrchol ymgyrchol a'r cyfrifahysgol. A hynny'n ffawr i chi'n wneud o'r ffordd o'r gweithfyrdd a'r gweithfyrdd ymgyrchol i'r gwaith ar y cwylio ar gyfer y gweithfyrdd. The York Centre carries out work at SEI, which is based at the University of York, of course. We try and work very collaboratively with departments, and especially the York Environmental Sustainability Institute, which is based here at York, and the N8 Agri Food Resilience Programme, which is leading a multi-million-pound collaborative project aiming to transform food security research in the UK. We've got those communities represented in the room tonight, which is really great. This evening, we'll be exploring the subject of fair, sustainable food and drink production from both the producer and consumer perspectives. As we head for Christmas, I was just thinking to one of our speakers that it really is a good time to reflect on what type of products we should be bringing into our house and consuming, and how we may feel about consuming those products. I was in my favourite aisle in the supermarket the other day, and I picked up some of my favourite brands, and both of them are fair trade, and I thought, well, with this seminar coming up, if I was going to consume one of these products, which one would leave the best taste in my mouth ethically speaking? If you forget my drift. So tonight, we're going to speak about that. Before I hand over to Chris, the last thing I'd like to say is a big hello to our director. I'm Deputy Director at York, and our director, Lisa Emberson, has just had an operation, and she's in recovery. She's coming back in January, but I'm sure you all like to join me and wish her all the very best for her recovery over Christmas. So without further ado, I'd just like to hand over to our chair for the evening, Dr Chris West. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Kevin, and thank you to all of you for coming along on cold Friday evening close to Christmas, when I'm sure you're missing your social events to do so. I'd also like to thank a number of people that have made this event happen. All of my colleagues at SCI have helped out in numerous ways, and particularly Oliver, who's kept everything on the straight and narrow. It wouldn't really have happened if he wasn't involved, so thank you very much, Ollie. Also, of course, thanks to Yesi, who have helped co-ordinate and sponsored this event and the canapes outside. And also, of course, thanks to our panellists this evening who have made the trip up. All of you have come from the London area to York, so thanks very much for making the trip up to be with us this evening. Now, this year is a particularly important year for sustainable development in an international context. Of course, at the moment, we've got the climate negotiations going on in Paris, which we hope will provide a solution to keeping global warming within a two-degree limit, which is the limit that's supposed to be needed to avoid dangerous climate change. And in September this year, the UN and the international community developed a new set of and agreed upon a new set of sustainable development goals, which really lay out a pathway for international sustainable development over the next 15 years or so. Food systems, of course, interact closely with environmental issues such as resource consumption and climate change, but they also interact, perhaps even more importantly, with sustainable development and sustainable livelihoods. Over 2 billion people around the world depend on agricultural systems for their livelihoods, and many of those people live below the poverty line. So our food and the way we consume food has massive impacts or massive potential impacts on those communities around the world. At the same time, the gap between food production and consumption is widening. We have a complex landscape of supply chain actors, intermediars along the supply chain from producers to consumer, and that can lead to a disconnect between the food that we buy and where it's actually produced and the impacts that it's having on the ground. And that complexity often sits alongside confusion about whether supply chains are actually sustainable or ethical. So hopefully these are the sorts of things we'll be exploring this evening, trying to get a bit more clarity on the ethics of the food that we consume. But what needs to happen to bring us closer together, consumers and producers closer together? Are initiatives such as Fair Trade the way forward and other certificating schemes, or are better schemes and business models available? How do we encourage ethical products to become the norm rather than just a niche market? And how do we educate consumers about the need to consume ethical and sustainable food? Because of the makeup of this panel, to some degree, and also because it is the most recognized ethical trade label, we'll probably be talking a little bit about the Fair Trade Certification Mark this evening. For context, Fair Trade provides a minimum baseline, baseline price for commodities, providing farmers some security against price volatility in markets. It also requires a cooperative system, so farmers have to come together as a collective, which is designed to allow small farmers better access to global markets and encourages more democratic representation. The Fair Trade model also includes a social premium, which is paid above the market rate of the coffee, which is supposed to be reinvested in social and environmental projects within the communities themselves. But does this all work in practice to alleviate poverty? Hopefully we'll find out a little bit more about that with the experts that we have on the panel. Just a bit on the format this evening, in a minute I'm going to invite the panelists to give a short presentation, to give some background to themselves and also their organizations. You will have noticed that we have one panelist appearing virtually this evening, so hopefully the technology will hold up and thank you very much to the AV team for making all that possible. Following those presentations I will share two discussion parts to this evening. The first will concentrate primarily on the producer side of this producer-consumer equation, so developing producer livelihoods through our business models. The second half will focus more on the consumption side, so things like labelling and encouraging customers' consumers to consume more fairly. At the end of each discussion section I'll be taking all questions from the audience, so if you could think about questions as we go along that would be fantastic and also think do they fit in the more production-orientated side or the consumption-orientated side and we can split those appropriately. You'll also notice we have a hashtag for all of those on social media, so if you want to use that to discuss elements of the seminar this evening please do. So without further ado I will go to our first speaker, Amali Bunta, who is responsible for ethical sourcing at Waitrose. She manages Waitrose Sustainable Development Program across Africa in the form of Waitrose Foundation, which is aiming to enable better livelihoods for workers within Waitrose's supply chains. She also manages Waitrose's relationship with the Fair Trade Foundation and is passionate about the role of business in delivering global development. So over to you Amali. Thank you very much for having me here this evening. It's good to talk to groups of people who are interested in the area that I am extremely passionate about, which is the role that business plays in global development, who all the different actors are and how we can work together to achieve what we're all trying to do. So I'm just going to start by telling you a little bit about the business I work for. Do we have many Waitrose shoppers in the audience? A few hands. Good. So Waitrose is one of the UK's retailers. We're positioned at the top end of the market. Our customers come to us because they want to buy high quality products. They're probably willing to pay a little bit more than those who will go to Tesco's. I'll stir a little. You know all the places. And we have a range of stores. We have about 350 stores in the country. We've got a growing online business. And increasingly, smaller stores as well. People are doing a lot of their shopping in small shops at the end of the day and not doing the big basket shops that we traditionally did. But we are a lot more than just a food retailer. We are connected into a range of different things that are going on in the world at the moment. And this is a slide that I've taken from a Professor Beddington, who Waitrose works very closely with, to understand the broader challenges that we're facing. So if I look at some of these, climate change, every producer who supplies into Waitrose is being affected by climate change at the moment. Our farmers are changing their practices to make sure their crops are adapting to changing rainfall patterns, warmer temperatures and so on. And urbanisation in South Africa, a lot of the young people who we've historically employed are moving to the cities. Farmings are not the sexy profession that, well I'm not sure if it ever has been, but increasingly people are leaving farming to go to the cities. But the area that I think we're going to focus on today is poverty alleviation. But I think it's important to recognise that the area of poverty and addressing poverty is just one in a range of different factors. And I would ask you to try and start prioritising these things, but it's an impossible task and I won't have anything else to say. So if I'm just going to give you an insight into my daily, my job, basically, this is one product that we sell, grapes. We sell them throughout the year because customers want to be able to buy grapes at every part of the year. But if we look at the supply chain, it changes as the year goes on. It follows the sun, it's a seasonal product who can't take it from one place for the whole year. It starts in Egypt in June, moves to Spain, then on to Italy, on to Greece. We then move round to Brazil and Peru to South Africa, to Chile and then back to Egypt. And that's one product during the year. Now what does that mean? That means that in every one of those countries we're working with a different producer, a different group of smallholder growers. It means we're working with different people, people from different backgrounds, different economies, different governments, all who have different requirements for how labour is run. If you're a customer and you come into a waitrose store, you're just picking up a punnit of grapes. And I'd like to ask the question, you know, how many people would really understand that supply chain and the different people that are implicated by it. If something goes wrong at any point in that supply chain, we have to understand what's going on, we have to understand where that product's coming from. Another thing that's quite interesting in exploring what it means working with supply chains is the different levels and different tiers that we're working with. This is an example of fresh produce. Waitrose works directly with 65 suppliers. We ask with the high quality products our customers want to eat. But if you go to the next level, we're looking at 2,200 growers who grow those products to give to those suppliers who package them to provide them to us. And this is just in the fresh produce supply chain. If you go into meal solutions, sandwiches, your ready meals, you can just imagine that the supply chain grows exponentially and the amount of people that we're dealing with explodes. So it's not an easy job that I have. My colleagues here today as well and we're looking at how do we get hold of this and make sure that the people that are producing these products are receiving the best possible working conditions and that they're responding to all these other challenges that are going on in the world. But we're part of a bigger picture and we mentioned the global goals earlier. What's really good to know is that business is now being seen at the heart of some of this work. We work very closely with a range of different organisations to support us and make sure that we are sourcing responsibly in this area that is incredibly complex. So I just wanted to highlight that fact that we are actively involved with UN initiatives but also smaller scale developments that are going on in different sourcing communities. And my job, I focus primarily on Waitrose Foundation and Fair Trade. Are we good to explore some of these two certification bodies later on? It's a way in which we can talk to customers about how we work with our supply base. They're easy to communicate but it's not as simple as just a logo on a pack. There's so much more to understanding the supply chain, understanding the working conditions for the people within those supply chains. So I focus on Waitrose Foundation which every time you walk into store and buy a product that has the logo on it means that Waitrose, the importer, exporter and the grower have provided a percentage of profit back to that community group that they can spend on development in their local communities. And Fair Trade works in a similar way through a premium which is returned to the producer groups who make those products. So I'll leave it at that for now. That's just an insight into the kind of work that we're doing at Waitrose but I look forward to kind of discussing it a bit further with you all later. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. We'll move on now to John Steel who is the CEO of Café Direct and is a food and drink entrepreneur by trade. That's what you said, John. He's aiming to challenge the status quo and make business a force for good, apparently. This is all apparently from your biography, John. John previously worked as a managing director of a company called Cornish Sea Salt and has also worked with a variety of small and large businesses including Nestlé Wheat Bricks and Premier Foods in his past. So over to you, John. What can you say about the intro? It's been a really thank you for inviting me along. They've given me slides, which is very exciting. I guess three things I want to cover. Do you know Café Direct? Do people know Café Direct? Yes, I do. It's a star, isn't it? I'll give you a little bit of background to the business, a little bit about how it's born and the journey it's had, but not too much of that. And then a little bit about what we think makes us different. And then I've got a couple of examples of the kind of work we do just to give a feel for how we see different parts of the supply chain coming together. We'll see what the first slide's like. Oh, it's a waitress one. Café Direct is very much a grower-focused business, and we've put growers at the heart of the business. The business was set up in 1991 when four charities led by Oxfam came together to, I guess, solve injustice in the coffee supply chain and start to have a direct collaboration between coffee farmers and consumers in the UK and selling coffee in church halls and other community centres. So we were sort of born out of a change in the coffee market that led to injustice for smallholder coffee farms. And we've always had growers at the centre of the business. In 1994, we became one of the first organisations to adopt fair trade. And then in 2004, we set up our own kind of framework we call the gold standard, which is to make sure that we are putting growers at the heart of the business and being socially and environmentally responsible. Well, that's good. I keep going back, don't I? We work with growers not only in terms of suppliers, but also we see growers as part of the way we lead the business. So we have growers on the board of directors. So every time the board meets, growers are involved in the decision-making of the business and representing the 14 different countries we procure coffee and tea in our chocolate front. We also have our own standalone charity that is owned by growers and run by growers for the good of growers. And that's really trying to empower producers within our way of doing business. This is a workshop we were running in Peru and we run workshops with our growers to try to improve environmental and social performance, business performance, quality of product, lots of different issues that are defined by the growers in our network. We reinvest a minimum of half of our profits every year with the growers. By setting up the foundation, we also leverage in funds from people like Gates and Google and Comic Relief so that for every pound we can put in, all the five pounds can improve the impact in our communities. So when we say we're a grower focus, it's not just about a buyer-seller relationship, it's about seeing growers as part of the leadership team to try and improve the sustainability of the supply chain. And I won't go back again. I feel like somebody else is appointing, couldn't I? I'm from Drinks Company and we choose to position the business as a branded business so we don't do anything other than a cafe direct brand. But we very much want to work with bringing the consumer and the grower closer together. So we're always trying to do that. I think that's one of the reasons we go into fair trade to be part of a movement and a connection. Now we're using things like the internet to try and get that connection closer together. But also when we set up the gold standard in 2004, we brought in 4,500 shareholders in a piece of kind of crowdfunding it's called nowadays, where people... there's a phone number on all our packs and you can ring up and buy shares. So the company is now owned by Oxfam, the growers, and also the drinkers. So we're trying to bring everybody together. We do a lot of project work at Origin. Sometimes that is to do with quite straightforward things like forestation, like providing equipment to help change the way that the farming community is working. This particular example in Peru was actually a very significant piece of work for us because it's such an example that other people have emulated which helps to have better impact. But also we had to influence the landscape. So actually the changes in the climate in this area were being caused by factors outside of the supply chain. So it's very much about working on the ground to try and change the behaviour of people who had no connection other than the effect they were having through climate change on the supply chain. So we try to see it as a kind of broad landscape approach. What else have I got to say? Two examples of the kind of work we do. These two examples are from the Cafe Direct Producers Foundation, so our charity that we use to have impact. This first one is a picture of lots and lots of smallholder farmers. One of the things for smallholder farmers is that the population is bigger than America and Russia combined but they're a disparate group and they're working as small individual entrepreneurs. So trying to help them to be aggregated and to learn and share knowledge is key. So about a year and a half ago we set up a technology platform called We Farm. Most of these communities don't have the internet and they're relying on mobile phones. So we created a platform that enables a smallholder farmer in Peru to post a question using his mobile phone that then gets translated around the world so that other smallholder farmers who have experienced the issue he might be experiencing can answer and add to that so that you can start to get a shared network of learning and knowledge and empowerment rather than relying on our outside forces. And this one, a Google prize and got half a million pounds worth of funding. We've now set this up as a separate social enterprise. The exciting thing I think about that is We Farm can work with commodities such as cotton and it can work in all kinds of commodities not just hot beverages. So we're trying to help improve the sustainability of the world beyond our own commodity groups. That's one quite big example that everybody was very excited about. This next example is a little video. It's about two and a half minutes so I'll run over. And I think it's a new thing so I'm trying to get you to commit to this which is a piece of crowdfunding to try to show that smallholder farmers don't have to be seen to be at the end of the supply chain as a vulnerable actor. They can be seen as part of the leadership and change that we can all make and that they have innovation that they can help us apply elsewhere. Let's see if this video works. Welcome to Small Folders. Small Folders are urban gardening products inspired by smallholder farmers and their solutions to farming challenges. These products are for simple, affordable ways to bring the magic of nature into your home as well as bring benefits to smallholder farmers across Africa and Latin America. Around the world there are 500 million smallholder farmers producing nearly 70% of the global food supply. This means they have to be incredibly resourceful and pioneering. This is the inspiration for Small Folders. We are the Capital Direct Produce Foundation and we work with a network of 280,000 smallholder farmers across the world. Last year we held our first innovation marketplace in Nairobi and brought together farmers in our network to share pioneering grassroots solutions to farming challenges. Their solutions are low cost and can be easily adapted by fellow farmers to help improve their livelihoods. We realise that farmers' ideas and innovations are not just useful to other farmers. Building upon current trends in urban gardening we also recognise that farmers' ability to grow in limited spaces and the resourceful use of the cycle materials has great potential to attract people faced with similar challenges within urban environments. By collaborating with London based product designers we took farmers inspiring ideas and have developed a vertical garden where you can grow delicious herbs and plants even in limited spaces. With your support, we'll be able to finalise the development of a plant trap to catch those pesky flies attacking our new Small Folders vertical garden. We will also develop a beehive that will allow you to give a home to urban bees. When Capital Direct Produce Foundation asks us to develop a range of products that have been designed by swimholder farmers, we are really excited about the opportunity to bring these products and ideas to a new audience. We initially developed a 3D printed prototype of the vertical garden. We took the farmers original sketch and worked towards realising the fantastic idea but we soon realised that it wasn't just about the products themselves. There was so much more value to this unique development programme including the farmers expertise. We thought it would be fantastic to produce a fun series of packs full of useful tips and knowledge from the farmers themselves that could be put to great use in an urban setting. We wanted to include a simple version of each product that allowed you to get hands on and try all these amazing ideas for yourself. Join us and help us develop urban gardening products that will not only bring the magic of nature into your home but will also support smallholder farmers around the world. That was just to try and give you a feel for the way we see things and the way we're trying to change and challenge things. Thank you very much. Thank you very much John. Our next panellist is Stephen Macatonia who's co-founder of another coffee company, Union Hand Roasted Coffee and this is a speciality roasting coffee company launched in 2001 and supplies the business model is focused on supplying exceptionally high quality coffee to the developing coffee scene in England. Stephen's also involved in setting up the tool and model of Union Direct Trade which is the direct relationship between the coffee company themselves and the farmers and the idea of that is to improve the livelihoods of farmers whilst retaining that quality cup of coffee. So Steve, over to you. Thank you very much and thanks for the opportunity to participate in your seminar here today. Yeah, we're heavy coffee bias here but that's what I like and I'm going to give a very brief overview of who Union Hand Roasted Coffee is and what we do and why we do it. So we're a coffee roasting company we're based in East London we started in 2001 as you said and from that humble origin as the founders we've now grown to 60 people in the business and that spans our complete supply chain from our coffee sourcing so I'm responsible for our coffee buying and I work with Pascal Tite she's our socio-economist and works with me she's based out in Latin America and at our roastery we roast our coffee every day and we pack and we distribute out you can find us in Matros in high-end cafes and restaurants as well as also online from unionroasted.com so that sets our commercial side out to you and that's what we look like but really to know what makes us tick you have to understand what started our business in the first place so back in 2000 commodity coffee prices crashed, they were at all time lows and that coincided with the time when Jeremy and I were travelling we were in Guatemala and we saw for ourselves the effects that was having on small-holder farmers you can see here farmers are pulling out their coffee trees they're burning their plantations coffee farming just wasn't viable and the effect this had on the workers on people that were depending on coffee production for their livelihoods was creating a stabilisation of communities so naively we posed the question there had to be a better way a way that you could encourage farmers to escape from the commodity trap to grow high quality coffee to receive a premium a higher price for that and negotiate a price directly with farmers that's going to enable them to have a sustainable life and that was our preset question and now 15 years later I can give you an overview of where the business is and how we've developed that so resource from 12 different countries mostly in Latin America in East Africa from Rwanda, Burundi and Ethiopia and Eche in Sumatra within those 12 countries we work with around 45 different producer groups so it's an incredibly diverse range for ourselves an example is one estate farmer so it's a family that owns a farm maybe 50-100 hectares he employs a workforce on that farm and our relationship is with that farmer and to another example would be a cooperative so that could be between 50 members within the cooperative maybe in some producers we work with 2,000 members within a cooperative so it's quite diverse but that's a legal entity and they have representation of the farmers required as part of that and then the other end of the scale would be a group loose association maybe just half a dozen farmers working together individually they're too small really to be able to have access to the market but together we can work with them and give them a market channel for the coffee that they produce in this way there's a very diverse range of producers that we're working with so the relationship that we source our coffee through over a period of time we've evolved this model that we now call union direct trade so to define what this means is everything is driven by the quality of the coffee that the farmer produces that underpins everything that we do and every action that we take to achieve that requires the relationship with the farmer and how we undertake that transaction to purchase that coffee and then the outcome from that is improved livelihoods so to dig into each of those three pillars ultimately I would normally be talking to a coffee centric audience so I'm going to try in 30 seconds teach you something about my world anyway so the way we source our coffee is the focus on quality so you've heard of Arabica and Robusta where Arabica is considered the final flavour, higher quality but even within Arabica you can categorize and classify levels of quality within that so that's evaluated really by taste how good does this coffee taste which we call sensory evaluation or sensory attributes so you can score a coffee out of 100 and so coffees that are scoring greater than 80 points are deemed specialty coffee so that raises them above the level of commodity that gives an intrinsic value to that coffee which is winning grace in fact so we're sourcing coffees that score above 84 and so that puts them in the top pinnacle of the quality triangle probably around 5% of world production so they're quite special in that way now the nature of the second element is the quality of the business relationship that we have with the producers that we work with so the key thing is for farmers to understand how much coffee we want to buy and what that price is going to be as well and this is before the harvest so that they can plan their production ahead of the season we've set guarantee so our baseline price would be at least 25% above the fair trade minimum price but we pay significant quality premiums above that so it is significantly higher pre-finance why that's important is because at the beginning of the season is when farmers need cash they need to hire labour to work as pickers to hire pickers on the farm so having access to money at that stage is critical so we offer that with zero interest rates and the transparency and traceability are key so that we can know and understand the farmers that are contributing to the lot that we're sourcing and the long-term relationship underpins all of that we commit to season after season after season and some of the relationships that we have now are extended to 14 and 15 years so that really builds trust and a lot of confidence on both sides of the relationship in that way and out of all of this we see the benefits to the producers in this way and when we talk about sustainability most consumers would really think of environmental aspects maybe water or rainforest elements but for ourselves the key really is the human factor so our hierarchy of sustainability is really to ensure that people's livelihoods in terms of they can afford to eat well they can have three good meals a day they can send their kids to school they can build secure housing that's fundamentally where it has to start and that in many instances is where we've had to begin once you've achieved that then they can start to look at other aspects and move through the hierarchy there and then start to look at the environment that they live in and see how they can improve and mitigate any impact that they're having with the way they work and so fundamentally it's all about price so that if a producer is receiving a price that enables them to cover their cost of production then invest in their farm invest in their families and then ultimately see how they can include the cost of wider sustainability issues there so that's an overview of Union direct trade really and how we work I have one final slide but I think I might say that for another time. Thank you very much Thank you Stephen and I'll try now moving to Tara who's from the food climate research network at the University of Oxford Tara is a well-respected food systems researcher and she brings a wider context to our panel this evening looking at issues such as carbon emissions from agriculture particular interest in the issues associated with livestock production and consumption but she's also written quite extensively on the challenges associated with consumer behaviour change and the interventions that we might make to change that consumer behaviour towards more sustainable systems so hopefully Tara can hear us and she's ready to go with her presentation Is it all coming up on the screen? I think what we'll do is you just say next slide Tara and I'll skip from one slide for the next Oh okay, alright So thank you for accommodating me by Skype and I'm getting a lot of feedback on my voice. Do you hear it or not? Yes we can hear you Okay so I'm going to present a bit of a big picture overview and start by saying a little bit about the food climate research network and really how the thinking and work of the food research network has evolved over time in a way that I guess is representative of the evolution of the thinking of the food community in general So slide 2 please The food climate research network's aim is to foster informed dialogue and critical thinking because I think we need that because we're going to build mutual understanding and collective action and food systems It takes a very integrative approach and what it tries to do is undertake its own work it's very interdisciplinary taking a systems approach to looking at different dimensions of food systems and the challenges and sustainability and it's also about communicating with people it tries to provide real virtual spaces for stakeholders to share knowledge and perspectives and it's about developing dialogues among people who have very different perspectives or who have very different I would disagree or come at it from a particular angle so you know my goal is overridingly animal welfare and somebody else is another person to say well my goal and somebody else will say it's about social justice or fair trade how do these all fit together Slide 3 please So that's the kind of the big picture and Amelie's already a colleague of mine she used that slide which showed all the different facets of challenges we need to be thinking about so we have that the food system as a whole it uses about 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions it uses about 70% of all irrigation water worldwide which is a big issue when you think about the fact that you're getting grain demands from lots of other sectors as well urbanisation, industry and so forth it's the main driver of forestation and degradation desertification so these are resource constraints that you argue are non-negotiables as we go into the future because we're not going to be building any new panic anytime soon so we need to operate with an environmental limit and at the same time we've talked a lot about socially responsible education schemes and so forth but we also have to think about what food is being produced and what the implications of that food is on human health so we're moving into a situation where we're starting not fast enough but nevertheless with some success to address the problems of absolute hunger and under nutrition so we have 800 million people hungry now just under and that thing is slowly slowly falling but we have 2 million people who are overweight for therapies and that's to do with the fact that their lifestyles are healthy but the foods that they eat are increasingly high sugary and fatty foods and lots of animal products and so as that transition we have to think about what incentive are we giving to producers to grow foods that are actually at parms rather than under my health and then obviously it's been mentioned that the role of agriculture and not just agriculture but beyond the farm gate the food system the chain in general contributing to livelihoods and jobs of very, very poorly paid dangerous and insecure jobs and how that can change and that sort of third block in that slide which is about progress and the role of food in our culture shaping and reflecting our identities in religious beliefs and taboos our ideas about the ethics and welfare our ideas about what a food system what sort of jobs a food system should provide is a job in agriculture the way forward or are people also wanting to transition out of agriculture and into more jobs in urban areas so I think there are all these different issues that are kind of jostling around and trying to understand how they fit together if they fit together what you do when things are going off in different directions is really difficult so slide 4 please slide 5 and this is about how thinking about food chain has evolved over time so when I started back in 2005 setting up the food climate research network my main interest was in trying to understand how the food system contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and how we can reduce and at that time focused on food miles and the idea that long-distance food transport somehow it was the artery globalization and we're hearing about ghost acres and exploitation of people overseas and the carbon impact blockage transport and so forth and then thinking became a little bit more nuanced and people started to think about a whole life cycle perspective and how it's not just about transport it's not just about agriculture it's not just about manufacturing it's about all the environmental associated with all these stages and supply chain and so that was my kind of initial preoccupation but then eventually it increasingly became apparent that we actually had to look at how a particular thing is in case of the greenhouse gas emissions influence other sociological objects how do shifts towards lower impact diets affect health for example or how does measures to improve the environmental performance of the animal livestock sector impact on animal welfare how to measures and this is a very personal example how to measures aimed at trying to get people to eat air freighted produce because air freighted has very high environmental impact how does that affect the livelihood of small holders and vulnerable communities in sub-Saharan Africa who may rely upon export culture for their survival so how do all these things fit together and then the kind of broad sea is okay we understand it's complicated considerations so how do we define and prioritize can we rank them can we develop a kind of normative system of saying I don't know livelihoods more important than climate change today's population is more important tomorrow's population individual health is more important than that of the planet how do you prioritize this and then the final one is okay we will all have different ways how do we bridge differences in order to somehow move forward into a powerful situation so in the final slide and as I said I don't particularly work on fair trade per se or on social justice issues per se I think it's one really important consideration amongst many and I've got other questions rather than answers that might be pointless for discussion first is the question is small beautiful there's the agroecology movement very much focused on the idea that small is somehow arena or better there are other approaches that emphasize the need for ecologies of scale things on a a big company if it wants to change something it's going to achieve much more impact on local courtshop for example is the fault to actual rural development or proper farming systems that maybe people want to get out of and go into a more managed urbanization either in rural areas or urban areas I don't have an view these are just some of the questions to consider is the fault cheap food for consumers or good price producers as again as we're urbanizing maybe if fewer and fewer people are in agriculture maybe the actual priority is cheap food is certainly the question the way forward or should we just say the market will find its level and that will push away the inefficient small holders and move towards a different model another way of looking at is the answer to localization or is it food sovereignty or is that too simplistic a dichotomy we come to certification as well to try and get lots of people to sign up to join in which might dilute the rigor of the certification or are we going for a smaller scale or exclusive but more rigorous of their are they necessarily healthy I mean the fair trade community sells us sugar example which is villain of the week at the moment so how do we engage in that issue and then there's the whole label that came to consumers we've got fair trade we've got rainforest alliance we've got organic, we've got leap mark we've had attempts at footprinting schemes we've got the sustainable palm oil scheme we've got food which is more welfare we've got an air freight logo we've got M&S styles we've got vegetarian, we've got vegan and that's before you even start with the nutrition labeling you know traffic lights schemes and all the rest of it so how on earth are consumers going to engage in all this and then should consumers be dumped with that responsibility is the only song for consumers proper ethical choices or is it up to government to set the standards to set the rules of the game part of that built ethical and social and environmental considerations so I just hope to be discussing some of these questions during the course of the evening thank you so we'll move to the discussion part of this evening as I said I'll kick off and then we'll take some questions from the audience I'm sure there have been a number of questions raised from those presentations or hopefully there have been anyway I want to start with John sorry John you mentioned that Café Direct obviously set up quite early on in comparison with some other companies but you joined the fair trade movement in quite early years what was the motivation from doing that and the collective voice that that had is that one of the big things that foundations such as fair trade can bring to this debate I think in 1994 we were a young entrepreneurial pioneer and very much a campaigning organisation and fair trade was the beginning of a campaign that has helped change the landscape probably beyond all compare so I can see why we did it and I think we've stuck through a lot of change in the movement and sometimes that's got a lot of agony and pain for it somebody earlier on put a packet of Maltese and a packet of Divine in the air and I think if Sophie who runs Divine had been there she'd have a rugby tackle then but on the other hand I think there's a point that perhaps Tara was making that to have impact and change needs us to bring all different kinds of people and organisations together so although the mainstreaming of fair trade has sometimes been painful and some of the changes in the way the fair trade organisation functions has been painful it is much better to have people like Cadbury and Sainsbury and Nestlé moving I think for the pioneers and the purists the frustration is we want to see you move further but I think that's where the other point that Tara made about collaboration it needs to be collaboration between big and small to try and help us to see where to go but I think we remain a fair trade loyalist I've done this job for about three and a half years and I choose to be part of fair trade because I believe that I can have more impact by trying to change the way fair trade functions to make it to good in the next 20 years and change the model beyond certification then by leaving it alone so I think it is about trying to have a broad role influence on my small turnover Could you just elaborate a little bit more about what fair trade is trying to do for producers so the minimum price that it pays has been mentioned how does that actually operate and what is it supposed to achieve where we operate which is with smallholder cooperatives the fair trade premium goes to a fair trade committee that's run by representatives of the growers who then work out how to use that money be it to improve social elements or health, education or climate elements I think on smallholder farms where I work it functions through a kind of committee and it functions quite well there's a lot of discussion about on larger plantations and effectively kind of corporations where the impact is probably not getting as far as it wants to I don't have experience of that because I don't deal with that but there's quite a lot of controversy in different parts of the world I think the thing to do is to try to work out how we keep raising the bar and dealing with those issues I don't think fair trade is it's not one answer it's one part of trying to make a big difference in the way we do business and I think it's achieved a huge amount and I think with a bit of encouragement I think it can do a huge amount more to help change the way business is but I wouldn't say any of the certification schemes are perfect and sometimes it frustrates me like heck that you've got all these different expressions of how to do business because I think it is very confusing and makes it very hard to see how many businesses are doing good which ones are not Anyway, there you go Amali, could you tell us a little bit more about the Waitrose Foundation and what it's hoping to achieve in I think predominantly Africa is where you were So the Waitrose Foundation was set up ten years ago and it's very interesting my role at the moment working with Fair Trade and the Waitrose Foundation which are two models trying to do the same sort of thing supporting producer communities when making products that supply global demand The Waitrose Foundation is different in the sense that it doesn't have a minimum price attached to it like the Fair Trade scheme does and it's a different setup for returning funds back to the producer group but essentially what we're trying to do is build a strong business for Waitrose but also for its supply partners so our importers, our exporters and also our growers If you can develop strong communities that underpin your supply chains you're in a position where you can be comfortable that you've got a long-term business ahead of you Interesting, I think it's interesting comparing these two models because I think Fair Trade has obviously got a huge consumer following 97% of our customers recognise the Fair Trade mark we don't have the same kind of penetration with our Waitrose Foundation logo and there is some real strength in that branding that Fair Trade has managed to achieve and our customers expect us to have Fair Trade products on the shelves and if we don't we get massively challenged just why we don't have that I mean our customers can be quite hard work at times which is good doesn't make my job particularly easy but I think there are two different ways that you can look at this, I think a certification scheme is one way Waitrose Foundation is more embedded within how we act as a business so if you want to supply into Waitrose you have to be part of this foundation in particular supply chains you have to be committed to the producer groups and those products because it's an ethos it's how we trade as a business Thank you I just want to move to a few criticisms of the Fair Trade movement that have been relatively vocal some individuals have been relatively vocal about some of those criticisms it's not so much on the overall mission of Fair Trade but maybe how it's sold to consumers and also whether it actually does deliver an improvement to livelihoods so a couple of things here that's criticisms that the Fair Trade premiums are paid to the cooperatives rather than the farmers themselves the price premium potentially encourages production where actually the land might be marginal for that particular commodity and they better off growing something else moving into another industry even that even Fair Trade by its nature of encouraging sort of small holders, farming actually trapping producers into a sort of low skill low technology paradigm and also that because they're guaranteed a minimum price that doesn't necessarily correspond with quality it's something that Steven's obviously passionate about the quality of the product if you're getting a set price for something well he may as well go and sell you cheap stuff on that level and sell you more expensive and higher quality stuff for the market price for that commodity Steven were any of those criticisms a driver and you're not aligning your company particularly with the Fair Trade mark or are there other reasons for adopting a different model no they do resonate and they did have a big influence on our decision one aspect which you touched on is we want to have the choice to be able to work with the producers groups that we want to not just to be restricted to small holder cooperatives so if we want to work with disorganised or unorganised producers or an estate farm if they can produce the coffee that we want to source then that's our prerogative in that way I would also feel that for ourselves the there is controversy on the benefit of Fair Trade I think even the literature is ambiguous on that you can see good reports and bad reports and from our own experience we do have relationships with producers who are certified as Fair Trade and they have prospered extremely well and they've done good work and they're thriving but likewise we've worked with producer groups cooperatives who have chosen deliberately not to be certified as Fair Trade and also have prospered extremely well as well so for ourselves we feel the driver has to be about production of quality and we also question whether the minimum price set for Fair Trade actually allows producers to cover their cost of production the analysis that we've done would indicate that is quite marginal so even if the Fair Trade minimum price isn't sufficient Thank you Stephen Tara, I mean in terms of the things that you were talking about the bigger picture here and we've got panellists two coffee producers one of which is a very high end coffee producer now coffee is a product that everybody enjoys but you mentioned in your presentation that actually essentially is it a necessity should we be worrying about the things that we are actually important for our nutrition and also the livelihoods of the producers themselves in terms of developing local markets there Does this sort of model of sort of a western led mark based around high quality premium goods have a place within the wider sustainable development agenda? I mean personally I think yes but I think that it's also important to have a conversation with people who have a very very different perspective of this. I mean I work a lot with people who come from the perspective that we need to pay more for our food that there is somehow an inherent benefit of having a relatively large and thriving workforce on the land that somehow having a strong connection with the land links us to the environment that these are worthwhile meaningful jobs and yet there are also people who come from a completely different perspective who say you know a lot of the people can't run away fast enough from their jobs in rural areas and want nothing better than to leave the field behind and move to the city or who say you know why should we be spending so much on our food what is good food anyway and so we get those sorts of dialogues when it comes to the fact that we have a problem where the food system is about 30% greenhouse gas emissions and much of the thing that has been pointed at livestock who are responsible for about 15% of emissions and there are lots and lots of arguments that we ought to be eating less meat and fewer dairy products and this will somehow make our diets more sustainable but you could equally turn around so well hang on meat has very high you know nutritional profile it's you know it's good protein good micronutrients shouldn't we be focusing on the so-called grocery foods the cheese, the cookies, the chocolate all things that I pursue but at the same time don't either what happens if we focus on developing nutrition put nutrition at the core of our agricultural model how would that change the landscape and what would be the fall off in terms of jobs and livelihoods I think that's part of a discussion and I think we also need food isn't just about nutrition it's about pleasure it's about the sort of love thing and economic considerations are important and small holds are here to stay at least for the short and medium term so we need to ensure that our livelihoods are as good, decent as possible so I think when we have these discussions we also have to factor in what time scale are we talking about are we talking about dealing with the problems today or anticipating how things might change in the future and preparing for them Thanks Tara I think I'll open up to questions now Has anybody got any questions for our panel someone should volunteer first yes we should have some roving microphones around I think one of the implications of what union coffee and what waitos have said both being essentially niche marketers is that people who live in this country on average incomes really cannot afford coffee or your goods or other goods not just coffee if it's made by people who work themselves with decent conditions would you agree with that and maybe one of the implications is that actually we have to consume less the people who survive on average incomes can choose to either have your niche expensive products or have less of other things and if they do consume less of course that's a bit of a problem for the expansion that is inherent in both of your enterprises do you agree with that do you also perhaps think that it's time for fair trade to extend to the united kingdom or the waitos foundation to extend its efforts to the united kingdom so that the casual labour that is a part of your production cycle is able to get the conditions that allow those people to shop at waitos or perhaps unionising the labour force would be a better way forward than relying on essentially charitable work of waitos foundation or the fair trade foundation okay, I think we'll tackle up the first half of that question the second half is good but I think we'll give an opportunity for somebody else to ask a question on the producer side yes I'll come back to the first part of that question and the second thank you norwithstanding the direct benefits the farmers receive by having a sort of a guaranteed salary if you like what do you think fair trade does for the wider context of development so if we look at the title food production and pro-poor development and taking waitos and then coffee separately so for vegetables in Africa it's all to do with export crops how does exporting green vegetables to the UK help the food safety situation for regional trade of vegetables like green beans in the markets of East Africa where we know there are exceedances of pesticides for coming into Europe and we can only guess what those levels of exceedances are in local trade and from my experiences export doesn't touch local trade doesn't touch regional trade it's all to do with the export and the safety of Europe or ourselves and with coffee in areas which could argue as food insecure is it right that we maintain a non food crop in those environments and so how does the community beyond the business model really benefit from coffee production in a system so Amali I'm going to come to you first on the first question thank you you've self admitted that obviously waitrose is a higher end supermarket and you have a wide range of fair trade products in your supermarket because that's what the consumers are demanding but is it the case that essentially what we're saying is that we have to pay more if we want to have more ethical and sustainable food in our supply chains is it always going to be the case that it's really the niche market that we're going for here I think we are in danger of relying on certifications to say that something is ethical which from a waitrose perspective the dream isn't for every product to be certified but that doesn't mean that every product isn't sourced responsibly so that's one comment I think there are lots of different ways that you can understand your supply chain understand the working conditions in that supply chain and I think to be sustainable it's not a charitable venture it's how you do business so it's how you conduct your relationships with your suppliers it's how you know your producers and it's how you communicate to your customers about the role they play in understanding the role they play in driving the right purchasing practices I don't think it's a niche but it shouldn't be purely relying on niche products we set our prices when we're price matching products we're comparing ourselves with the other retailers because we have ambitions to expand we don't want to just be targeting the high end customers for all of our products that's why you launch an essential range and that's why you sell products at different price points but fair trade isn't always going to be the solution and we've got a range of different things that we do and we're involved in a range of industry events organisations around tables to tackle some of the real systemic issues that are linked to governments in the countries that we're working in linked to just really challenging global issues so I think it has to be mainstream and I really think that making it mainstream isn't going to be the same as what it is for a company like Divine or Cafe Direct we have to work very differently to make sure we can bring ethical products to the market and that comes down to how you run your business and how you conduct your relationships with the suppliers Steven this direct trade model that you have and the high end product that you market and sell is it the case that that model only would exist if you have that price premium in place and you've got that high price on your product would it be too expensive to mainstream that model more widely the key question is it too expensive to mainstream that model it's really raising the question is how much are you prepared to pay for a well produced cup of coffee my own journey into coffee came I was living in the States this was back in the 90s before I was working in coffee I had the opportunity to taste a cup of coffee that really made me aware this is how coffee is supposed to taste and it made me ask questions of how was that produced where does it come from why does it taste the way it does and for me this is really the key is for consumers to go between joy what they're consuming and that is what raises the questions now as a company union yes we are niche but that's how we choose to be the price that we sell is broadly in line with other coffees that you'll find on the supermarket shelf so it's not significantly out of kilter but what we offer is the opportunity for producers to get themselves out of that poverty trap it's an aspiration for the farmer and it sees them not as a poor person it gives them the opportunity to have pride in what they're doing in that way so that's what we really see as the fundamental as the key thing and then with the question on should they really be growing coffee in these regions should they be growing other crops well largely coffee is their only access to cash they don't have that opportunity to grow other crops it's going to bring them immediate cash in that way so that raises a good point and links well to what I was going to ask Tara which is okay there's a wider political context of all this in terms of historically coffee may have been the route to access for income but does something fundamental need to change there Tara in terms of the government systems in those countries so that we can ensure that that isn't the only route to income and scaling the poverty ladder yeah I mean I think there needs to be a more collective consideration of what agriculture is supposed to be doing what it's there for is it supposed to be providing income is it a way of life in a broader sense is it supposed to be just contributing to global trade and global profits seems to be doing at the moment is it supposed to be trying to deliver optimum nutrition at many levels and I think all these goals are legitimate goals for the food system and I think we need to decide and I think my understanding of coffee and I'm not an expert at the coffee market but you know there needs to be time taken for the trees to grow to reap the rewards and so on and so forth and that's true of any tree crop and you can't just you can't just pull out and you can't just start up all these decisions need to be staged and managed and taken over time and you're living in the context of an increasingly uncertain climate and climate affecting the viability of coffee production in different parts of the world and with people who don't have the money to bridge and to hedge long term decision making and that's a huge problem because people can't just say well I'll invest in something but move gradually into something else when they need cash today so I don't really have an answer to that but I think this idea of insurance and investment so that people can actually make sensible strategic long term decisions that marry their needs with that of the environment is absolutely essential John one of the things you were talking about earlier was the sort of investment that you do in communities via the the CAFA director and producer foundation obviously that's a step beyond your requirements under the fair trade certification label and is it really more about the relationship that the business the individual business has with producer and the consumer and the retailer than it is about Mark or a labour or a certification scheme I think the work we do over and above fair trade is the work we do, the fair trade thing is just one little component to us and is one way of having a third party and delivering some of the value but most of it is the way we try and do business I think I was going to pick up on one of the things that Tara said because coffee on small hold is not a lonely crop a small holder family is trying to grow other things they're trying to sell other produce they're trying to diversify, they're trying to build a livelihood and a business so that there isn't this at local level people are not just trying to just provide coffee for big companies in the west they're trying to create a different more balanced environment that they're managing so I think that's one thing the other thing that strikes me is especially I think if you deal with small entrepreneurs effectively is trying to help them improve capacity so I was in Peru where we got a number of culprits together and they've all got their own brands they're trying to pack their own products they're trying to market to local people they're trying to roast they're trying to process in some cases they're starting their first coffee shop I think encouraging that kind of business development helps the core agriculture be part of the business solution but I don't know if that's right or wrong but that's what I see and feel a little bit it doesn't have to be a lonely monocrop stuck at the end of supply chain existence so that's something I think I've also seen in terms of the value of fair trade when I've spoken to fair trade produce groups they've seen the value in understanding how to strengthen their organisations they receive training in financial management they're in charge of their own budgets and often they've received more training than the supervisors who are looking after them in the fields that they're working in so it creates a really interesting dynamic where you're nurturing a group of growers who have great expertise in how to do all this planning to help their families pass on to their children and that's where I see a real strength and benefit from people who've been involved in the fair trade network to date more so I'd say often than the financial investment they're receiving I'm going to move on to more of the consumption consumer side of this area now I want to just start with I guess coming back to what Kevin was saying earlier where you have two packets of chocolate they both say they're fair trade but what does that actually mean and how can we tell as a consumer what it actually means there's obviously as we've explored a lot more going on behind the scenes than just those labels would indicate including for example the relationship that you have with the fair trade foundation and the Waitrose Foundation you've got this new partnership where you're helping you with some of your supply chains and I think is it the case that you're actually going to be labelling on your products that you're working with the fair trade foundation is there a risk there to both yourselves and to the fair trade foundation that actually from a consumer point of view that just leads to more confusion while I thought fair trade did this and actually now they're working with Waitrose have they sold out, are they watering down them they marks how do you deal with that kind of issue and also how do you educate what it actually means So a few things, customers walk into our store and expect us to have made all the decisions on their behalf they don't really care what it means they just want to know that they're buying products that we've sourced responsibly so that's one thing in terms of how we work with fair trade I think we're in a really exciting time I think fair trade is now moving beyond the position of just certifying products and actually understanding what we're trying to achieve here and the impact of the producers around the world and not lots of different interventions and lots of different labels and things and Waitrose is in a great position to be able to work with fair trade to kind of see what this means and I think because we've got a foundation structure which means we have a direct relationship with over 100,000 people who are making our products fair trade equally have extensive networks around the globe where we can really understand the challenges that producers are facing there's great opportunity here to learn from each other now Waitrose essentially is a business we're not a development organisation fair trade have come from campaigner roots and have a great experience in setting up worker committees and supporting community led developments but we've both got things that we can learn from each other we don't know how to monitor and how to evaluate the impact that we're having likewise fair trade and arguably say could do with more information about how the market works and how we're buying products and how are we setting those prices without putting a minimum price in place but ensuring we've got long sustainable relationships with our suppliers so there is great opportunity to understand how we work together to create the impact that we're both trying to achieve from our different positions the question about whether we confuse customers I think there is a point to be said that the certification industry is an industry in itself so when you have a certification you've got a standard you've got auditors who are auditing against that standard you've got consultants who are then understanding that data and trying to present it back to us you've then got service providers who are training people to meet the standards that they have to meet so that is an element that we have to be very aware of as well ultimately like I said the customer really they don't care that much about what the label is they just care that what they're buying has been sourced in a way that they would expect so I think we do have to be very careful about how we promote what we're doing and also we're not driven by marketing what we're doing we're driven by doing the right thing and creating a sustainable business and marketing this area is a real challenge as well Tyra I was struck by a Mali's comment there that customers really don't care as long as they have an ingrain level of trust in what they're buying either via the fact that it's bought from White Trades or via the fact that it's got a fair trade label on it do we need to do more as the government need to do more and actually educating consumers about this issue so they do care a bit more or is it really not their responsibility? Well I think it's not their responsibility I think one of the things that we know is that survey after survey shows that what people really want when they go shopping they purchase on price taste and appearance in this country they take food safety for granted in other countries that were ranked very high but here we sort of assume it's we take it as red health is stated as a high priority and we find that people who read labels, health labels tend to be more healthy but we don't know what the causality is just generally more health conscious people tend to buy more healthy look at labels more and then when it comes to things like animal welfare, fair trade the environment, climate change people are really really well disposed towards it but it's a nice to have all other things being equal and when people go into a shop and it could be Tescos it could be Waitrose, whoever it is they sort of might talking to the food industry talking to consumer groups they want the big retailers to do that work for them they don't want to have to go into Waitrose and say well actually this aisle is totally unsustainable and that aisle is sustainable and that's how the gatekeepers and people are busy and they've got so much to do and they're all these different labels so I think it's putting too much onus on individuals to say that by your purchasing decisions you're going to sort out the world at the same time their willingness to them being informed and their willingness to engage in this space creates a mandate not just for businesses to act but for government to come in and start to actually government to put in place some terms and conditions when it comes to things like public procurement policies or standards that are expected as kind of minimal legal labour standards or whatever it might be so by creating awareness and concern within the consumer from the consumer side of things perhaps opens up the scope for more top-down systemic approaches to happen Can I open up to another few questions just before we finish because we are just about on time now so yes at the back there and also one at the front we've been discussing the issue of fair trade certifications and minimum price settings and also the possibility that they might not actually be covering the costs of inputs and production and as well as going further and providing our profit to the producers and you've mentioned under the Waitrose Foundation you're trying to work with more producers in providing them and the Fair Trade Foundation to provide better prices to the producers is there a you monitoring whether or not you're actually providing a profit to the producers and how possibly I'm directing this to Tara how possibly this can feed into policy that can that can be used to engage in the fair trade certification process so that it actually becomes fair to the producers as well as to the consumers and this is a question from there Thank you a couple of questions I think one is are you all fair trade are you all living wage employers at the very minimum because one of the things is about pro-poor development north and south and the people I've been working with and Tara's been on the same commission as me the Fabian Commission on Food and Poverty no they could, they'd like to buy fair trade but they can't and they're concerned about fair terms and working conditions not just here but for other people so I think there's an issue about the whole way that food and people working throughout the food system globally tend to have poor working conditions and poorer terms maybe you'd like to do something like transparent pricing so we know how much money when you palette your product goes back to the consumer how much you take to run your business how much that, that would actually be something that helps people understand what's going on and where the money goes so there are things I think you could do that would help change the way people see food and what the money they're paying for for the food does and who gets it but one of the, if you're talking about poor poor development you have to look at growing inequality and inequity and power relations that are in the food system OK thank you so I'm going to come back to Steve on the first point about the does fair trade actually cover the costs and also are you as a business monitoring actually how much producers are getting from a packet of coffee Indeed yes with regard to the cost of production I think that is probably the biggest gap of knowledge really from farmers themselves who very often don't know what their cost of production is and we will work with them workshops from the basics of buying them books and pens and doing a cost analysis understanding all their inputs what their labour costs are and then how much did they receive at the end of the season and figuring out did they make a profit or not but it's the basic exercise but it's the first time many of the farmers have undertaken this and that helps to establish what their cost of production and I would indeed say that fair trade minimum price in many cases doesn't achieve that with regard to living wage well on both sides of the equation with the producers that we're working with we achieve a living wage for workers employed on the farm so that would be most easy to monitor with estate farms who have contracts of employment more complex with small holders who are using often their neighbours or family labour that tends to be a going peace rates other that's something that we're aspiring to achieve that living wage with small holders as well and certainly with our own business here in the UK with all our employees here there was another question I think we'll leave it there John, just to respond again to the question about the covering cost and also the transparency issue about where the money is going I think on the value chain analysis we should be under any illusion the value is taken by brand owners and retailers and a little bit goes to farmers I don't think we should be under any illusion that we have developed countries with capital structures and wage expectations and living standards and if you got into the analysis at the time my instinct is you'll find where the value is and trying to change that value is a very difficult and challenging thing to do we look to that on tea I mean tea is a bloody disaster people are not paying a lot for a cup of tea coffee actually they're paying quite a bit of money for the coffee and then if you look at where that value is in the value chain it is not sustainable I think waitrose is part of tea 2030 with the forms of future and we're trying to look at it in a pre-competitive collaborative environment and I think that's the only way you can actually address the really big shifts that are probably required but I don't think it's very easy because everybody has these different positions that Tara touched on and it requires quite a lot of change which isn't very comfortable I think transparency will be a fantastic thing I think you'd have to do it in a way that was easy enough to navigate and be something that people could understand but why shouldn't we be transparent about the things we do and face into that and try and change it's easy for me to say that we sell our coffee on the internet and many of the farmers now have access to the internet so they see the price that we sell a roasted kilo of coffee so indeed we got some flack from the farmer saying this is the price you buy but this is how much you sell it for you're ripping us off what we had to do was then sit with them I mean it was a shock to us as well really when we looked at the numbers and understood that but what we realised is it's by presenting the information in terms of what it costs to run our business with signing up to the living wage in the UK ensuring that all of our coffee roasters and all of our warehouse staff are paid the correct salaries cost of marketing and packaging and all those elements and when you bundle it up into a price of a pack of coffee farmers understood it they get it once it's explained to them it makes perfect sense we don't endorse anybody at SEI so we can't do that just to finally close then just going to Amalie and Tara Tara should the government step in and make sure that companies are reporting transparently and providing this information and Amalie is that something that retailers will welcome yes I think there is the need for great transparency in reporting on a lot of things with companies I mean if you take the gatekeepers of consumption just the retailers but the large manufacturers there needs to be more transparency in the extent to which they're moving us towards or away from healthier and more sustainable eating patterns and I think issues like fair trade are one of them but the other is the extent to which we're eating diets that are increasingly resourced in greenhouse gas intensive and the extent to which eating diets that are ultimately to the burden of non-communicable diseases and obesity so I think companies there needs to be some kind of holistic transparency reporting that covers a range of different indicators of things like fair trade fair trade in a not branded way is just one Amalie is that something that would be welcomed if it was a mandatory thing across the board so one thing I would say is we absolutely support the idea of transparency that doesn't make it easy I think a starting point is using the networks you have to open up dialogue between all of your different supply chain actors so you can start to understand what people are thinking and that does require a shift in how business has historically been sort of conducted I think on whether business would welcome that kind of public reporting well we absolutely do we were heavily involved in the consultation towards the modern slavery bill which is currently well it's gone through now and we will be reporting publicly on what we're doing to tackle modern day slavery and when that was going through the process it was actually the government who was saying no we don't want to put this pressure on businesses to do this and it was a business community that was saying no we need this kind of level of transparency to help drive progress and really understand what our peers are doing and how we work to address real systemic issues such as modern day slavery which is happening in the UK as well as overseas so I think the more publicly we can talk about what we're doing in a safe environment where we've got consumers who can understand the challenges that business is facing the better I think we have to leave it there unfortunately because I have kept you over time and we'll probably be chucked out this room at any moment thank you again all for coming thank you to our panellists who just give them a quick round of applause I've certainly found it very enlightening and interesting so hopefully you have too and I wish you all a happy Christmas and a good evening, thank you