Food Security is one of the key reasons that Foods We Can Trust is here.
Because of what Food Security means to me, what I understand it to really be and most importantly, how important I believe Food Security to be in respect of everyone – and that means us all.
However, like many things about Food today and indeed pretty much every experience that we share with others beyond ourselves and what’s very personal to us alone, Food Security can mean a lot of very different things. And that difference is already doing a lot of harm.
What does Food Security mean to you?
Before we continue, could I ask you to please take a moment to stop and think about what Food Security means to you.
Is it about the Food that UK Farms produce?
Is it about being sure there is always Food available to eat?
Is it knowing that you will always have a choice of Food and whatever you want to eat?
For you, Food Security and what it means to be Food Secure could be any of these. It could be any of these in a manner of speaking. Or what Food Security means to you could be something very different, and ALL of the options could still be correct!
The things that Food Security can and does mean
It is important that we recognise and accept that different perceptions of Food Security not only exist.
To some, their own view, or what someone else like the Government refers to or considers to be ‘Food Security’ is the only thing that it can be.
Unfortunately, having any fixed or accepted meaning for Food Security can be problematic when there is a version of Food Security that everyone accepts as being what Food Security means, and those who are controlling that narrative then abuse the trust that people place in the understanding those people have of that version of Food Security and then manipulate information, statistics and even the truth, so that it can be said that either you or the UK is ‘Food Secure’, even when you are not.
In a moment, I will talk about the version of Food Security which is the establishment’s ‘accepted’ term.
I will then discuss the version of Food Security that UK Farmers and Food Producers generally think of when they talk about it.
We will then move on to discussing what Food Security should really mean, to everyone.
The Establishment view: If people can eat, they have Food Security
The way that the establishment, politicians and government operate today is built around this idea or philosophical standpoint:
If people can eat, they are Food Secure
Yes, I understand that suggesting this will annoy different people and organisations who are doing great things in the Food sphere. Because very few of us actually believe that as long as people have a meal of some kind, that’s all Food Security is about.
However, if you consider what having a meal of some kind can and regrettably does mean for so many different people in so many different ways today, you will then begin to see how those who really have control over Food policy, have come to think about their priorities and obligation to the Public in this perhaps honest, but nonetheless very unhelpful way.
If you aren’t hungry, you don’t have a problem
It sounds brutal I know, and it really is.
But with the issues that Government is really facing today – and that means the things that are really going on, rather than what the media and the narratives would suggest we believe, politicians do genuinely believe that if everyone can eat, they have done their job – no matter where our Food comes from or the Food we are eating really is.
This means that all the initiatives about healthy eating, encouraging us to eat properly and even the talk about how important our Farms and Fishing are, are really just wishful thinking and it doesn’t really matter to whoever is in power if they come to nothing. Because the only problem for them will be if people have nothing to eat and then everything as we know it stops as a result.
Foodbanks are a very uncomfortable truth
What I have just written isn’t easy to read.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it makes people feel prickly at the thought that so many parts of government, the public sector and all the organisations that are championing positive messages about Food and what we eat, are currently championing a lost cause.
But if you really want to try to get to grips with what the real priority around Food Security for politicians, the government and the establishment really is, then considering Foodbanks and the need for them – which is disputed by many – will soon begin to tell you what that priority is. And it has very little to do with Food and the role that Food does or should play in our lives.
When I was studying at the Royal Agricultural University, I wrote a paper after researching Foodbank use today and compared their role in poverty today in relation to my own experiences of poverty as a child. It’s called ‘Is Poverty Invisible to those who don’t Experience it’, and the full version can be read by following the link immediately below:
The Farmer view: Food Security is about the Food that we Produce in the UK
Whilst Food Security is a much broader set of issues than many realise, the one version of Food Security that is perhaps easiest to understand and relate to is that too much of our Food comes from overseas and outside of the UK.
Please read my last post on Foods We Can Trust ‘Rationing and Health: The Surprising Benefits’, if you would like to explore this view of Food Security and what the risks of being dependent upon Food from Overseas can mean.
However, as you read through the detail of this Government Report, you may note that this figure relates to ‘Food by Value’, which sounds very much like a way of using statistical jargon to make the figure sound higher than it actually is.
Regrettably, this is the kind of language or political double-speak that people in power and authority use, knowing that it is the figure that members of the public will usually note, rather than the words that the figure has been deliberately wrapped with!
During the 2023-24 Academic Year, the figure that I was using for my research, reports and writing was 54%. I found sources that suggested that it was already as low as 52%. I have seen no evidence to suggest that the UK has increased the amount of Food that it produces for our own consumption during that time.
The amount of Food the UK produces and what we would all have available for us to eat in a time of national emergency where the Food Chain was impacted are two VERY different things.
The impact of the Global Food Chain
Because of the way globalism has affected Food Chains and that Food ingredients are sourced and often moved around as they are processed and manufactured to become the Foods that we often eat, it means that very few of the Farms we pass by each day or know of, actually produce Food that we could eat or prepare to eat straight away, if we found ourselves needing to buy from the Farmer direct.
Even if we accept the figure of 58% that the Government has used in its latest Food Security Report, to quantify the amount of Food that the UK produces itself, the actual figure that relates to Food Produced in the UK, that people living in the UK can actually then eat is likely to be much less. Because so much of the Food Produced across the UK goes into Food Supply Chains where it is nowhere near ready for our consumption or is otherwise transported overseas.
The figures being used are therefore an equivalent. Because we have to import the equivalent of the Food that is grown in the UK and then exported or used for other purposes – because that’s how it goes into the Food Chain, and what we actually eat comes back into the UK from overseas.
The reasons that many farms don’t grow or produce Food that is ready for us to eat are many. It may be as simple as the way we eat and prepare Food in the UK means that we don’t like certain cuts of meat. It could be that even though the UK has vastly rich reserves of Fish and Seafood, we don’t actually eat that much of it ourselves and most of it goes to Europe. Or it may be that the wheat and the flour it produces that makes the kind of bread that Supermarkets have made us all believe we all want to see on sale, is most easy to produce when it comes from overseas.
If it sounds confusing, it is. And it helps those who are benefiting from the way that the Food Chain works for it all to be very confusing too!
The bottom line is this:
If we had a crisis tomorrow and the UKs borders were shut down, meaning that no more Food could come in from anywhere overseas, it wouldn’t take long before we all experienced Food Shortages. The Food Producers and Farmers that we have in the UK would have to undergo massive structural and system changes, before they would even be close to being able to meet that need. There is no way that would be possible, overnight.
This is scary stuff I know. But its very real and there are parts of government and other organisations that are researching, studying and thinking about what they call Food Resilience, the whole time.
If you would like to look more closely, here is an interesting link:
(Please note that this is not a recommendation or endorsement)
The UKs Food Security is at MASSIVE risk, right now
If you’ve read this far, you may be beginning to see the picture of just how vulnerable the UK Food Chain is, and that within the Food Supply that we are eating from and have available to us, the priorities of those with influence over the Food Chain are not anything like what most of us would think.
We are NOT Food Secure, anywhere in the UK today.
With global uncertainty unfolding in the way that it currently is, we could easily find ourselves experiencing Food Shortages or perhaps even worse, at any time.
Even supporting our Farmers with the Food Production related issues as they see them is not as simple and straightforward as campaigns like that driven by No Farmers No Food and some of the Farming Advocacy Organisations would suggest.
A successful outcome to any of their current aims wouldn’t be as effective for any of us, as they are suggesting the changes in government policy that they want for themselves would be. Simply because with the if the priorities remain the same, many of the Farms affected by the policies which are in the spotlight aren’t producing Food that would be of any immediate use to us to counteract Food Shortages in a crisis, anyway.
So, what does, or rather, what should Food Security really mean?
What Food Security and being ‘Food Secure’ should mean
To be fair, part of the problem, when it comes to the meaning of Food Security and being ‘Food Secure’, is that the whole subject and all of the other subjects and public policies that the issue of Food Security links to, are VERY complicated. And in many respects, deliberately so.
That’s why it’s very easy to be convinced by any soundbite we hear or read that makes some version of Food Security and what being Food Secure means to someone else, easy to get behind.
If we were to distil Food Security and what it means to be Food Secure into the simplest terms possible, it would probably be something as follows.
Namely that we will be Food Secure and have Food Security when:
Everyone can choose to eat enough of the Foods that are Good for them and that will meet their genuine needs at every mealtime, without any experiencing fear of going without or not knowing where the next meal will come from.
However, even this is open to interpretation.
Food Security will regrettably continue to be vulnerable and at risk for as long as what it means to be Food Secure can be interpreted differently by different parties, in ways that are not actually wrong. From a certain point of view.
To overcome this problem, it is likely that we all need to at least review and, in all likelihood, moderate or change the way that we think about Food Security and what it is to be Food Secure.
With this in mind, the key ingredients that together provide Food Security are that the Food Supply is:
Reliable and NOT under Threat
Available
Accessible
Meets Nutritional Needs and Health Requirements
Affordable
I will now add a little more detail to each, so that they and how they each interact with each other as part of the Food Security equation will hopefully begin to make more sense.
Reliable and not under Threat
Food Security can and will only be achieved when the supply of Food for everyone is not at risk.
If we are Food Secure as a Country or perhaps at the Macro level, the Food Supply cannot and will not be compromised by anything that we and our own systems of governance cannot independently address.
Today, government figures suggest that we are reliant upon at least 42% of the Food that we consume coming from Overseas. That’s before we consider that of the remaining 58%, only a fraction of that figure represents Food that any of us could eat at any time.
IF there were a national crisis and the borders shut down, this would mean that even if two thirds (66%) of the Food We Need were available to us every day, year round, that would still mean that more than 22 Million People in the UK would have to go hungry, if the rest of the population were to continue eating the same meals as they do, today.
However, we also know that even this isn’t the real figure. Because of the way that the UK Food Chain and Food Production works.
The reality is that if we were to experience a real national crisis where no Food from overseas could be brought in, the UK only has enough food AVAILABLE for everyone for perhaps a few days, before Food Shortages would cut in and people of all kinds would start to go without.
Available
We will only be Food Secure when the Food We Need is always available, to everyone.
Being available to everyone means that there is no reason that the Supply of Food can be obstructed or held up by anything that is outside of the control of the person who needs to eat that Food, or the People around them who they know and can trust.
The factors that can make Food unavailable to some are:
Cost
Food is too expensive for some people to be able to afford to eat properly at every mealtime. And the retail values of all the Food we buy today are continuing to shoot up!
To be Food Secure, the Food We Need MUST be affordable in the sense that the price to buy or exchange something for that Food is realistic and the price has not been overinflated by something like greed, profiteering or another agenda of some kind.
Supply
For most of us, the Food we are able to eat today relates directly to the Food that is supplied to the shops, websites or other sources where we buy it.
If we cannot source the Food We Need, the supply is not functioning as it should, and we are NOT Food Secure.
If the only Food Supply that we can Access will provide us with ‘Food’ that isn’t healthy for us or that we can afford to buy (with the money we have available) then that Supply is also NOT Food Secure.
To be Food Secure, we must ALL be able to Access the Foods We can Trust, without having to choose from Foods that are not good for us, as a substitute.
Religion and Ideology
Regrettably, agendas, ideas and even religion can get in the way of us being able to Access Food that is available. Because ideological restrictions can easily prevent some from accessing that Food, because others have made a ‘conscious’ choice.
This is not a matter of saying that anyone who will not eat certain Foods because of a religious or philosophical viewpoint is wrong.
It is merely a fact that many of those same people then influence the Supply of Food around them, because of the choices that they themselves make.
The agendas of other people are also important to consider. In instances such as the political pursuit of Net Zero, the choices that politicians are making and some of the worlds billionaires are using their financial resources to impose, will lead to the supply of Foods We Need being restricted and potentially stopped, only because of the ideas that they wish to pursue.
We will only be Food Secure when no other person can influence the supply of the Foods We Need, simply because they have the power, influence or financial means to do so.
Greed and Profiteering
In my recent book ‘Who Controls Our Food Controls Our Future’, we unpicked the layers of the Food Chain onion to expose just how the Food Chain that brings most of the Food we all eat today, isn’t really about the Food We Eat at all.
The Food Chain today is ultimately all about money, profit and the power and influence that go along with an entire Food System that is being increasingly used as a tool of societal control.
People, Communities and entire Nations can and will only be Food Secure when they have complete control over their Food Chain and Food Destiny.
That means Food being all about the Food and what Food really means to People and Life, rather than the Food Chain being all about money, profit, influence and control, as it is now.
Accessible
We will only be Food Secure when the Food We Need is always Accessible.
Access literally means that we can access the Food We Need for every mealtime and that no matter where we are, what transport we have available, or what physical barriers might be in the way, these factors will never get in the way or stop us from eating as and when we might like or need to.
To put this in context, most of us can access one of the well-known supermarket brands across the UK, either by being able to travel to one of their stores, or by being able to make an online order that will then be delivered to our home or wherever we are, from there.
However, our Food Access is now limited to whatever the stores we are able to access actually sell.
Food Security will not exist until we are able to access the Foods We Need, whenever and wherever we need them to be.
Meets Nutritional Needs and Health Requirements
We will not be Food Secure until the Food that is Available, Accessible and Affordable, also meets all of our Nutritional Needs and Health Requirements – not matter what we may then personally choose to buy, prepare and eat from the Food that is available.
No matter how politically convenient it might be for politicians and the establishment to work on the basis that ‘Food is Food, no matter what the Food really is’ – whether deliberate or not, the truth is that Not all Food is equal in the Food Chain today, and the greater percentage of the Food that is Affordable to everyone, isn’t actually very good for us at all!
Affordable
Whilst we have already talked about Cost and the price of the Food that we buy, there is also a much bigger and perhaps even more alarming dimension to the issue or question of the Food that people can afford to buy. It relates to the issue of the Affordability of Food itself.
If people cannot afford to feed their dependents and themselves for reasons outside of their control that mean they don’t have enough money to buy the Foods they Need, they are NOT Food Secure.
Food Security for them, is unaffordable.
It is very easy for those who can get by each week to look unfavourably upon those who cannot and to assume that anyone who doesn’t have enough money for Food – either for themselves or themselves and their dependents – will have found themselves in difficulty through their own financial mismanagement. Or because they don’t work as much as they should.
Whilst this may of course be true for some, the number which it would be accurate to describe will be significantly smaller than many might imagine.
Indeed, the reason why many people today find themselves short and in need of emergency help like that provided by Foodbanks, is because a significant part of our society does not either earn or receive an income high enough – even for working a full working week – to cover the basic cost of living and to provide themselves with the basic essentials that are necessary today, just to stand still.
In October 2023 I wrote about what it genuinely cost to live as opposed to the rate of the National Minimum Wage and calculated that the difference between what those working a full-time 40hr week on the lowest legal wage and what it would actually cost to live without claiming benefits, help from charities (Foodbanks) or getting into debt, was at least £2.50 per hour or £100.00 per week.
Although the rate of the National Minimum Wage jumped to £12.21 in April of this year, there is no reason to believe that with inflation continuing to push up the cost of living as quickly as it has, that anything is really different for anyone on the lowest wages now.
Just as serious is the reality that life for many today revolves around credit.
Those with monthly payment commitments, including even those earning what many of us would consider to be very good wages, can easily find that a list of monthly outgoings that seemed very affordable at the time the commitments were made, can suddenly become an unaffordable burden. When even the smallest of changes – perhaps to utility bills, fuel or similar takes place, and payments are raised with those higher costs automatically taken from a credit card or bank account.
As food is one of the few things that most of us still pay for, as we go, it is easy to see how the disposable income left for Food and other essentials can very quickly disappear, pretty much as we are all still asleep!
Food Security and Income are inextricably linked
The reality is that Food Security at the personal or perhaps micro level, is inextricably linked with income levels and what it costs to live.
Because government doesn’t priortise the Food Chain and Supply of Food in the way that we all really should, Food has become an afterthought in far too many ways.
No serious steps have been taken to acknowledge and certainly not to make provision for the need for everyone to be able to access and eat enough of the Food We Need, without being dependent upon the help or intervention of others to get by.
Any government that doesn’t recognise and legislate to ensure that everyone who is able to work can earn enough to cover the costs of the basics and essentials they need on a basic wage, without benefits, charity or debt, is not fulfilling its obligations or responsibilities to society at all.
Until the Food We Need is affordable for everyone – no matter how ridiculous in today’s terms that might seem, we will NOT be Food Secure!
Truth vs Truths that serve someone else’s purposes
The Food Security question and getting to grips with Food Security and what being Food Secure really is, demonstrates just how easy it has become for those with platforms and influence to speak about a subject and mean one thing, whilst knowing that to everyone else, what they have said will be heard as something very different.
Both the Establishment (Inc. Government, political, big business in the Food Chain) and the U.K. Farming industry hold positions on Food Security which are arguably right, from a certain point of view or from a manner of speaking.
Both positions on Food Security, either when:
People have ‘food’ or
Food should be produced on Farms in the UK
are both correct.
But they are also only partial truths.
Like any good sales tactic, a partial truth – or a sales pitch that contains an element of truth that they know will make the whole narrative, story or line sound like the whole thing is true – and is often enough to make an argument that is otherwise utterly flawed sound compelling, because we have fallen into the trap of assuming the rest!
So yes, it is certainly correct to say that we all need to eat food and if we are fed, we will not be hungry. But if the food itself isn’t good for us, is unaffordable, could potentially do us harm or comes with strings attached, it will not be Foods We Can Trust.
Equally, if only the equivalent of what we all eat is produced or grown on Farms across the UK, but is nonetheless produced with chemicals or processes that cause harm in any way, or the food grown is itself transported overseas and replaced by food that comes from overseas so that the net equation says we are producing what we eat ourselves, that also isn’t Foods We Can Trust.
Where Food Security is concerned, Farmers cannot be victim and saviour at the same time
It is important to add that I am massively pro-UK Farming. I’m just not pro-UK Farming in the sense that the industry typically functions today.
Farming today is actually part of the Food Problem. Because it has become part of the global model that is causing all the problems with Food.
Farmers understandably want help and support from everyone. But what they really want is for the establishment to change its policies so that the way farming works today stays the same, but just works better – more realistically, but also more profitably for them.
What many in the industry have not recognised yet is that UK Farming is no longer seen as being necessary to an establishment that believes it doesn’t have a problem with the Supply of Food, as long as people are being fed – no matter what they are being fed with.
Meanwhile, the people – that’s us – who desperately need UK Farmers to see the bigger picture and step up in a very different way – will lose out twice as badly if UK Farming collapses and the establishment gets its way!
If you’d like to read ‘Who Controls Our Food Controls Our Future’, a copy is available online HERE.
If you’d like to understand more about the realities that underpin the differences between what we say deliberately or innocently, and what others hear, a read of the very interesting book ‘Words that Work – It’s not what you say, It’s what people hear’ by American Pollster Dr Frank Lunz may be worth your while.
Going round in circles
You may now feel the need to circle back to the ‘as long as people aren’t hungry’ backstop – which is where without good governance and leadership, the bigger Food picture and the importance of Food and the role it should be playing in our lives usually falls down.
We can accept what others tell us. Or we can be clear that we require Foods We Can Trust to be normal life for all.
This booklet runs through the key changes to the way society functions that would make everything work much better for everyone and create a happy, healthy, safe and secure environment for us all.
Our Local Future is here because I’m fed up of listening to everyone who knows this or knows that, wasting valuable time arguing that only they know the next steps we should take.
People who should really know better are focused only on the journey and who controls it. Instead of considering the destination and what the outcomes will be that solve all our problems and create a world and culture where Balance, Fairness and Justice can be experienced by all.
Meanwhile, the constant debates over who or what is to blame; whether problems like climate change and the need for Foodbanks are real; or who is right vs who is wrong are just making everything that’s already wrong exponentially worse.
More often than not, these ‘blockers’ who let their egos get in the way, are the very same people who hear a new idea or proposal and immediately say ‘It won’t work’. Usually, because they only want change for everyone else, IF they can be certain that they will gain in some way, or at the very least don’t believe that they could lose.
Change is no longer a choice. It’s happening around all of us right now. And the difficulties we face are going to get worse before there’s any chance that things will get better.
The unspoken truth or secret ingredient that we all have to accept is that by embracing change that will help to make sure everyone has the best experience of life that they can, we will all end up with a system of governance and way of life that works in every good way that we could possibly wish for ourselves too.
We accept that Today’s World is dysfunctional and broken. But we refuse to discuss, consider or collaborate on solutions and new direction other than what we already identify with or believe we somehow own.
So how about looking at a snapshot of what a world that genuinely works for everyone might look like. With the Moneyocracy that we are all addicted to gone and an entire system built around Authentic Governance fully functioning and operating in its place?
The problems that the World is experiencing today need no further introduction.
The chances are that if you are here, you are already experiencing the problems that People power and influence are creating for you directly. Or you can see and feel how they are affecting others without the ability to change things in some way.
Our Local Future jumps ahead and takes the reader to the key structures, learning and understanding of a society of Tomorrow that has left everything that is wrong with Today’s way of living behind.
Our Local Future demonstrates what overarching Public Policy could resemble, IF We can ever come to accept that Life will be better for Everyone, once we can step aside from everything that we believe to be benefitting us today, but is in fact doing nothing but harming us, whilst offering no benefit to Humanity or The World at all.
From the Old World, which you may recognise as your today, we learned that The Elites were happy to destroy humanity.
The lives and the wellbeing of other humans were overlooked, so that the ‘few’ could maintain their position and an obsession with what they believed to be an indefinite flow of increasing profit and material gain. All considered obtainable without cost of any kind to themselves.
Money, material wealth and the influence and power that came with it were considered of more value than anything with true or real value, such as People, Community and The Environment.
Events and circumstances were created by The Elites and those controlling governments to enable profiteering, wealth creation and increased control over everything.
This wasn’t a conspiracy. It was the natural pathway of greed, an obsession with material wealth and the ignorance it fosters.
The circumstances that were deliberately engineered included wars, an environmental crisis and many other information-led events.
These events were justified by manufactured excuses and developed as narratives and a reliance upon the role of mass media to build stories that were accepted by the masses.
Yet these narratives were at best no more than partial truths with the wider and objective truths deliberately left absent, so that the real truth was almost always obscured or hidden from the view of the majority.
Whilst presented as being in the best interests of humanity with many goals, aims and agendas that sounded very plausible, many of these narratives and created stories promoted progress as the only option.
The narratives overlooked the certain reality the answers to mankind’s problems had already been demonstrated, tested and proven, and existed within historical working knowledge and understanding of the way that humanity works and nature functions wherever we might be around the World.
A healthy and motivated respect for People, Community and The Environment is notfinancially profitable for those who place material wealth, power, influence and everything that goes with it before anything else.
This basic but unassailable truth forms the basis of the blight that had for too long troubled and caused disharmony and unfairness for all humankind.
If you really want to get into the realms of understanding the flaw that has created so many of the problems that we have, why it has become near impossible to fix them, and why too many of us seem to let the problems of others pass us by – even though we would hope for better from others if we were to experience the same; It is because we always want more.
More money, more wealth, more power, more influence, more acknowledgement, more of the things we like, more popularity, more time to do what we want, more people to agree with us, more love, more sex, more deference.
It doesn’t matter what it is outside of us. We all want more of it.
Even when we’ve got more of it than we could ever need or even hope to use.
We have learned from the Old World that by living lives prioritising what we want as if it’s what we need, simply because what we want appears affordable in monetary terms, we condemn many others to being unable to afford what they need, with the outcomes that many experience want, in whatever form it may come.
Whilst the process, impact and consequences were hidden from view for so many, Wealth Inequality and what was known as The Wealth Divide was created from little more than the selfishness and greed of the few, which was supported and encouraged by all those who aspired to be like them.
We recognise that ignorance, blindness and the absence of awareness of the impact of our actions upon others does not and will not excuse those actions.
We therefore place our Self Awareness, Self Awareness of the Person and therefore Awareness of Others as key to maintaining a fully egalitarian model of society within our Principles of People, Community and The Environment.
Within the Old-World System and Money Based Order, the needs of Businesses and Shareholders were considered more important than any kind of human, community based or environmentally focused need.
Business, commercial activity and profit were therefore prioritised before anything else.
Driven by the accumulation of wealth, profiteering and the greed of The Few and those who aspired to be like them, words like ‘growth’ and terms like ‘GDP’ were presented as key measures for solving social problems and reducing reliance on government support such as welfare and benefits.
This manufactured narrative supported the concept or economic ideology of Neoliberalism which was embraced by the West around 1971.
Neoliberalism in led to Globalisation and the cultural acceptance that business and finance was and always would be more important than most people.
We have rejected this approach to business, economics and finance as a model for a fully functioning society.
The relationships between people of all kinds now thrive on the foundation of Putting People First before all things as part of the Three Principles of People, Community and The Environment.
NO business has needs which supersede the needs of The Community.
Any type of business or organisation that is essential to the safety and security of all Members of The Community is run and maintained as a Social Business with The Community as the only Shareholder.
The Old World taught us that Progress and Progressivism are one dimensional.
Whilst guarded by those who championed it, the failure to accept that progress can as easily mean appearing to take a backwards step or that progress can be as multidirectional as moving in the directions of three hundred and sixty degrees, obsessive leadership and activists failed to appreciate the damage they inflicted across every part of life.
Their error was to depend upon the misplaced belief that discarding history and experience by constantly pushing forward and calling it progress, often meant going backwards in the sense of how outcomes and experiences for others are formed.
We do not see failure in anything.
We acknowledge and appreciate the benefit of experience.
We know that returning to what has been shown to work – no matter how simple, is much better than believing that change and progress can only be achieved by rejecting the old and by embracing further specialization and the new.
We celebrate the tried and tested, and do not pursue change, just so that the process of change can provide evidence of action or ‘progress’.
One of the hardest and most difficult lessons to accept from The Old World was why the way money worked, the financial system and all of the devices, rules, laws and processes that had been created, changed and developed to allow it to function in the way that it did.
We learned that the Money and Financial system (known as FIAT) was the keystone or foundation of what to those who controlled it was nothing more than a game.
Games have no real consequences for those who understand that they are just a game.
What made the Money and Financial system that The Old-World Elites and the Few had championed so dangerous and so very damaging for the majority of people, wasn’t that those in charge knew it was all a game.
The real problem for Humanity and the World itself was that like most computer games that you will know of, this Monetary and Financial system also had a cheat code built into it.
When this cheat code was used, in the form of creating money out of thin air – as it was increasingly as time went on, the cost of that cheating – as in any simulated game – was massive and disproportionately damaging for all the people who still believed that this heavily manipulated system was real.
At the end of the Old World, those in control and benefitting from the system could buy whatever they wanted, whilst the buying power of the money those who were poorer possessed evaporated and those in control and ‘gaming the system’ just printed more and more.
We do not accept that money or any form of currency has anything other than a practical function.
We prohibit any form of communication, action or activity that has the potential to create, maintain or promote the idea or belief that money is anything or can be anything other than a system of exchange, a tool of exchange or a temporary method of transferring or exchanging value between transactions.
The Old World was obsessed with identifying what was ‘normal’.
It was increasingly believed that control of any narrative of what was ‘accepted’ as ‘normal’ could then be used as a weapon to make others ‘wrong’.
Normality or what is normal isn’t the ‘accepted same’ that many within and abusing others using the Old-World system thought.
Normal or ‘Normality’ is the experience of being within the state of Personal Sovereignty for the Person or Being, accepting that peace and happiness is something that is only within the power and gift of that Person, alone.
Every so-called democracy within the Old World failed because of the overuse and reliance upon hierarchies.
Hierarchies created the distance that came to exist between those who governed and the governed.
We learned that the distance created by hierarchies and the absence of contact between public representatives and the people they represent served only to create insulation from reality and real life for leaders.
We also learned that as this distance and insulation increased, there was also a collective failure to realise and understand that such distance creates dysfunctionality across any form of legislation or within any of the systems or services that serve the Public. As they were led by leaders who had effectively disenfranchised themselves from a population that increasingly felt left behind and ignored.
We learned that the point of power within a system of Authentic Governance is the People themselves.
We created and maintain a system of Authentic Governance that reflects this understanding.
Authentic Governance prevents the systematic abuse which was so prevalent within the Old-World systems of government.
The Majority rule by ruling together as a majority, within a system run by and for The Community, in the most localised and democratic form.
The Old World taught us that no matter the level or reach of the power and influence that its system conferred, even the smallest taste of it would be intoxicating enough to make those with responsibility for others lose any sense of genuine humanity.
Self-interest and the related diminishing awareness of others corrupted them to believe that what was in their best interests and what would be in the best interests of others were one and the same or exactly the same thing.
It didn’t matter whether it was related to politics and politicians, business, finance or any of the supranational organisations and bodies that appeared in from the Second World War era and into the early part of the 21st century too.
‘Leaders’ lost sight of what having responsibility and influence over the lives of others really meant.
Those governing and with influence over those who governed lost sight of their responsibility to the public and the vulnerable, and what it necessarily demanded of them.
They behaved as if the decisions they made could be made and actioned without fear of consequences – even when it became clearer and clearer that the ills facing all societies were the long-term consequences of every self-serving decision that they had ever made.
We have created a system of Authentic Governance that removes the ability of any Person to put their own interests or those of a particular group first, before those of The Community itself. Thereby keeping the entire system Authentic and true to everyone, whether they have power, position or influence of any kind, at any level or not.
The one true religion of the West and therefore by default, the entire Old World was Money and the accumulation of wealth, power and influence that were inextricably linked to it.
Many still disagree with the suggestion that every part of life was coin operated.
But it doesn’t take many moments of objective thought to understand and appreciate that money was the driver of everything; that money was the basis of our entire value system, and that as such, we have all been citizens or constituent parts of a Moneyocracy.
Arguably the greatest and most destructive force for any society is the misplaced and deliberately engineered belief that money creation, profit and economic growth are the key measures upon which success and happiness of the population can be measured.
What we now recognise as The Old World and its ‘System’ revolved using flawed, self-serving economic ideas such as MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) and Neoliberalism as their core for over 50 years.
More wants more isn’t just a saying. More of everything became the aim behind every driver in life and spread like a disease amongst us all.
The adoption of the FIAT money system and devices such as GDP as a measuring tool, all within the period around 1971 heralded the acceleration of every problem that a money based order or ‘moneyocracy’ creates at the social level.
Over time, the entire world was reset to function on the basis that money was the only priority and therefore the only basis of real value – often without people realising or being aware that was how every part of life had become governed.
This anomaly was only possible because of the beliefs that were created about money and the value system that surrounded it, at the inevitable cost of true and meaningful values which have People, Community and Environment at their core.
Every ongoing and apparently unsolvable problem within society in the Old World was created by the obsession and addictions surrounding money and wealth accumulation, with the flow of every part of business, legislation and thought process eventually bending to this pathway and the one directional flow of money towards those who already have much.
The workings of the Old-World system were reversed with governance switched from Top-Down to Grassroots-up.
The direction of all business has been switched from wealth creation to the prioritisation of People, Community and The Environment.
This switch was necessary as the pathways of Money and People, Community and The Environment are mutually exclusive systems or ways of living, with only the System adopted in Our Local Future able to provide Balance, Fairness and Justice for everyone.
In the Old World, AI was at first introduced over a period of years up to 2023 in forms based primarily on the use of Algorithms that left users without any awareness of their presence, other than the speed of responses within e-business and search engine use.
With openly direct and interactive forms of AI being introduced to public use from 2023, the true depth and direction of commercial use became transparent. As did the misuse of related narratives to spread fear amongst those using digital technology.
The failure of the governing classes to regulate the use and application of AI came at cost to Society which reached well beyond the financial.
The key drivers of AI misuse were as follows:
AI was rolled out to support the survival and aims of The Old World moneyocracy.
AI was used primarily as a profit generation tool
AI was secondarily used as a social control tool
The primary method of progressive social control in the Old World was the deprogramming of wider humanity using internet and AI based technology.
The processes used, both intended and symptomatic, removed or blocked usual cognitive processes and the ability of humans to learn, analyse and conclude independently in the course of a generation.
This attack on executive function and therefore Personal Sovereignty began with the arrival of smartphones and tablets and not in early 2023 as the narrative was widely accepted to make everyone believe.
Unregulated AI is recognised as being anti-human, anti-equality, anti-environment and anti-freedom. It is therefore considered a threat to People, Community and The Environment.
We recognise that the benefits of AI are only available to mankind under strictly controlled conditions, supported by Key Skills for Life training that is provided on an ongoing basis.
We reject any form of public policy based on fear or design which is focused on wealth accumulation for any specific person or group.
The implementation and maintenance of Sustainable Living Practices has addressed all ‘green’ issues that were being misused and politically manipulated in The Old World.
The elites and governing classes of the Old World engineered the centralisation and gradual destruction of genuine local food production, local food chains and the infrastructure to support it.
Globalisation went one-way in every direction, using devices such as The European Union and The Common Agricultural Policy, whilst leaving a hollowed-out core across society where happy and healthy live built around People, Community and The Environment had been.
Productionism was considered to be good. Because the narratives told Farmers and Food Producers so.
Yet it supported the massive rise of consumerism which opened the door to all the myths and narratives then created to suggest that globalism was good for everyone. Sadly, the only part of the Globalisation story that was required to make sense was the suggestion of the lowering of retail cost.
Unfortunately for those of us directly effected, lower prices made little sense when businesses, jobs and communities were lost and people began being unable to afford what consumerism offered them to buy. But the real-life cost was something that the majority of us would never normally be encouraged to see.
Productionism, in all forms of food production, focused on the use of chemicals and processes that over time destroyed functional capacity and soil health of significant areas of land.
As genuine land and soil productivity levels lowered, this allowed the elites the opportunity to create new narratives suggesting that traditional forms of agriculture were out of date and no longer required.
Worse, the ‘accepted view’ gave the impression that the production of naturally grown foods, grown and produced by independent farmers, small businesses and community enterprises could no longer be relied upon to meet the public need.
The prioritisation of greed, profiteering and control was the true driver of every narrative that was created to undermine healthy and sustainable food production and harvesting.
The greatest travesty of the whole story of centralisation, globalisation and productionism in the food chain was that every step of this ‘progress’ made the foods that people ate less and less healthy, and less beneficial in every way conceivable to society as a result.
We recognise that our Food Security is built upon the workings of an entire food chain which functions as an ecosystem within itself.
Our Food Chain is predominantly localised with the majority of Basic and Essential Foods available from local supply chains year-round.
Our Local Future and New System functions with a people-centric approach to all areas of life, including Our Values, Lifestyle, Business & Economy and Governance.
Our Three Key Principles are:
People
Community
The Environment
The Person and their Personal Sovereignty and how we value each other Person and their Personal Sovereignty is at the heart of everything.
We recognise that it is only through the systems and workings of a people-centric Community, operating as a fully functioning ecosystem with its relationship with The Environment considered to be a critical part, that a truly Happy, Healthy, Safe and Secure platform for life can exist.
A System that provides and maintains a framework of Authentic Governance that is Balanced, Fair and Just for All.
Locality and a fully Localised or Locally-centric Systems are recognised as A Public Good.
Local supply chains promote and allow transparency.
Transparency is the only effective way to encourage and solidify trust and accountability.
Trust and accountability are essential in building a system of Authentic Governance which focuses on People, Community and The Environment.
The circular functions of a fully Localised System operate and are maintained reliably based on the Principles of People, Community and The Environment in all things to deliver what is in the best interests of all.
The Public Good is the Standard or Benchmark set for our system of Authentic Governance.
We have different Public Goods that cover parts of life where access and availability to Basic and Essential Foods, Goods and Services must be assured.
Each Public Good contributes to the existence of a Framework upon which our System of Authentic Governance is able to function at its best.
Every Public Good recognises the role and contribution of any person, business, organisation and their respective action, agendas, activities, use of resources, ownership and use of property for their positive impact and consequence in benefitting The Community.
A Public Good functions to maintain the existing level of achievement of Our Three Principles of People, Community and The Environment or to develop or enhance them further.
A Public Good may not be changed, misrepresented, ignored or bypassed for any reason.
A Public Good has superseded all regulations, laws and practices of The Old World which relate to or have any relevance to it.
A Public Good is a practice required by The Community.
These are The Public Goods of Our Local Future:
All forms of Agriculture, Fisheries and Home Growing which are exercised to provide for the priorities of People, Community and The Environment are considered A Public Good.
The Authentic Governance System (TAGS) is A Public Good.
Basic Essentials for Life are A Public Good
The Basic Living Standard is A Public Good.
Essential or Basic Foods are critical for a Healthy, Happy, Safe and Secure life and are considered to be A Public Good.
Housing and the provision of housing for all is A Public Good.
Key Skills for Life are A Public Good.
The Local Food Chain is A Public Good
Locality is A Public Good
The provision of any service provided using Natural Resources is considered to be A Public Good
The provision of News and Community Information is A Public Good.
Social Learning is A Public Good.
Sustainable Living is A Public Good.
Transport for the purpose of meeting need and therefore necessity is considered to be A Public Good.
The Community expects that every Member of The Community will live the best life that they can, based upon the experience, enjoyment and benefits of Personal Sovereignty.
The conditions which enable Personal Sovereignty require that each Person experience a happy, healthy, safe and secure life, within a Balanced, Fair and Just System.
We recognise that it would be incorrect for the Community to hold such expectations of any Member of The Community, without The Community itself taking every step necessary to ensure that every person is fully equipped to exercise the full freedom of Personal Sovereignty.
The Community is therefore obliged to ensure that the Governance, Frameworks and Systems that make the existence of Personal Sovereignty possible are continuously maintained, in order that the very same opportunities and therefore the very same expectation can be directed at everyone alive today as well as those who will follow us in the generations yet to come.
People, Community and The Environment are Our ThreePrinciples, which are Our Priorities.
Together, as a Community we promote, encourage, maintain and ensure Personal Sovereignty for all People.
We prioritise what we need. Not what we want.
We recognise Money and Currency as a tool and nothing more.
To achieve Our Priorities, we have, maintain and seek to improve a System of Authentic Governance that is built and functions around a Local, Circular Economy, which involves Everyone.
Making decisions on behalf of, for the benefit of and in the best interests of the majority are not easy for anyone.
Many of the decisions and choices made by politicians and those with responsibility and influence in the Old World fell into a trap of their own making, which was to believe that they could dictate a whole series of decisions relating to public policy.
A decision made today would be taken on the basis of anticipating the outcome and consequences of its impact, when nobody has either the control over the circumstances of following decisions in the future, nor how the free will of others and the unfolding of events would take place, that are outside of Everyone’s control.
Making Policy this way is akin to lying and is certainly dishonest in every way. And the situation and consequences for us all were often made much worse by the lies, cover-ups and narratives that were then created to cover up the outcomes of poor decision making when it inevitably all went wrong.
We make fully informed decisions in the moment. In the here and now. Based upon everything we can be sure of at that moment in time and what the impacts and consequences will be for People, Community and The Environment, in addition to any existing Policies that the decision will affect.
This is a key tenet of Authentic Governance.
This is encouraged throughout society as a healthy and productive way to approach our lives and one that promotes and furthers our Personal Sovereignty.
Genuine, unrestricted Freedom is attained through Personal Sovereignty.
Each Person is Free to Think.
Each Person is free to act and behave as they wish. Unless their actions or behaviour compromise or have the ability to compromise the Personal Sovereignty of any other Person or Group of People.
Any action or behaviour which advantages one person or a group of people through the creation of disadvantage to another Person or group is considered to be morally and ethically incorrect.
The creation, existence, maintenance or modification of any law, legal device or regulation which may be used to suggest or disadvantage any Person or group is also considered to be morally and ethically incorrect.
What is right and correct for all People, following the Principles of People, Community and The Environment, irrespective of anything which may differentiate them from others, is the foundation upon which Our Local Future operates and is maintained.
Personal Sovereignty underpins the true meaning and benefit of The Community and Members of The Community coming together in recognition of Our Common Cause and The Public Good.
The Freedom to be, to exist, to choose and to act may not be compromised by any person or organisation. Unless the action of The Person or Individual has or is likely to compromise that same right to Freedom of any other person or organisation.
The point of value for every person is their soul, mind or spirit. The core essence of the Being which cannot be seen nor discerned in any way that differentiates one person or being from another.
The point of value is universal and considered equal for every Person or Being. Regardless of any discernable or perceivable difference.
Thought is the basic and essential function of the undifferentiated Person or Being.
Thought represents the one true Freedom.
No person may be punished for their thinking, nor the reflection of that thinking when shared openly in public forum and without intent to harm or compromise the Freedom to be, to exist, to choose and to act of any other Person or group.
The state of Personal Sovereignty may only be supported by parents during infancy, childhood and youth. Or when a person is incapacitated for any reason. Or during a period of incarceration, when it is accepted that the Right to Freedom beyond thought has been compromised by those actions which have compromised the rights of others and The Community.
The purpose of all work, employment, business, industry and The Community itself is to support, sustain, improve and maintain happy, healthy lives for Everyone as we all contribute to prioritising People, Community and The Environment.
Work and employment are only considered to be a part of a happy, healthy, safe and secure life for all Members of The Community.
Work and employment are NOT the purpose of Life.
Work and employment are a key part of supporting Life.
The Community recognises and celebrates the role, contribution and importance of all working roles and types of employment.
The only kind of deference given to a Person within the context of any trade or profession is that as recognised by the remuneration structures set within.
The contribution of the individual is recognised in relation to the impact of that contribution and its related benefit to The Community and no more.
We accept and live on the basis that we can only trust those who we know, see, meet and are freely able to interact with in daily life.
Whilst we recognise the value of digital devices as tools to enhance and support life, we reject their use as platforms of influence.
The Community recognises that Locality and Local Living offer the best environment for healthy, reliable and trustworthy interaction and as sources of information,
Our Society functions successfully by recognising that being able to trust those who have the power of influence over others is key to everything across The Community.
We therefore reject any form of ‘remote’ guidance and have developed a System of Authentic Governance which ensures that every decision that made by others than can influence our lives and the Basic and Essential requirements to live in a Happy, Healthy, Safe and Secure Way are taken by People we can access and know that we can trust.
As a culture, we do not encourage the transfer of wealth between families, unless the transfer of a business or property will be of benefit to The Public Good.
Our System of Authentic Governance, prioritising People, Community and The Environment provides the surety that Members of The Community can sustain themselves independently in every way.
The greatest inheritance is the provision of learning, the sharing of experience and the freedom that any person or being can attain from their ability to think freely and be fully aware of and open to their Personal Sovereignty.
The climate has changed, is changing and will continue to change, no matter whether humans impact the process or not.
We understand and accept that the greatest threat to The Planet and therefore to People, Community and The Environment was moneyocracy and humankind’s material wealth-based obsession with the unnecessary use of non-replaceable natural resources to meet created want, rather than simply meeting genuine needs.
Every Member of The Community practices Sustainable Living.
Sustainable Living is A Public Good.
Every system that we use, create or maintain exists to support and further the best interests of humanity, through the Principles of People, Community and The Environment.
Sustainable Living requires that we use natural resources sparingly, and only in circumstances where alternative sources or resources of energy or raw materials cannot be obtained.
Every form of private business, social business and activity that can be completed by Members of The Community is carried out locally within The Parish area.
We only grow, use and share what we need.
We do not encourage luxury consumerism or living.
Practices such as Planned Obsolescence are prohibited.
The unnecessary use of resources to enable, facilitate and promote working practices such as the transfer of employment, manufacturing processes or growing food, where such practices are carried out as a choice only for the benefit of private interest is prohibited.
We encourage manufacturing using naturally sustainable resources.
We Recycle, Reuse, Repair as a cultural norm and consider it to be A Key Skill for Life.
We Prioritise Basic Essentials across all Goods and Services.
Our Principles of People, Community and The Environment; Our culture built around Authentic Governance and the System that supports have all been developed to provide and promote a genuinely People centric way of life.
Whilst the way life works in Our Local Future keeps environmentally negative influences to the minimum for all Members of The Community, there will always be those who feel unable to participate in life and living in ways that might be called ‘normal’, or within the framework of expectation that we have.
The community recognises the value of each person or being at the undifferentiated level, which surpasses and extends beyond the material.
We do not aim nor try to ‘fix’ any person who cannot take part in societal structures in a normal way, unless their actions are either a direct threat to or have already harmed Members of The Community.
Homelessness is NOT a crime and is not treated as such.
We accept that homelessness can be the direct consequence of a life choice, as well as being perhaps the most challenging outcome that can arise for anyone experiencing difficulties in life that most would hope to avoid.
Our only requirement of anyone who is homeless at any time, is that they respect and do not bring harm to the Personal Sovereignty of others and act with respect, care and consideration towards Community Infrastructure and the services provided to them through Community Provision.
Businesses are encouraged to provide opportunities for people seeking a new start who do not wish to be defined by previous occupations, the qualifications that that they already hold or because they have exercised The Right to be Forgotten.
Each Community provides Homelessness services either directly or collaboratively with adjacent Parishes and often provide ‘Homeless Pods’.
The key approach of Communities to Homelessness is to assume nothing. Expect nothing beyond a respect for People, Community and The Environment, and to see any form of voluntary participation in what The Community can offer as a bonus.
What many have long failed to appreciate is that religions and belief systems have always been used and abused by the world’s elites and their equivalents as a tool of social control.
Religions and manipulative belief systems use fear of the things we do not know or understand to adjust, modify and subjugate our behaviour. All the time using the unwritten understanding that those at the top of any specific hierarchy are ‘special’ or that they have a ‘special relationship’ with whatever lies beyond life, and that they and only they have access to the real truth of whatever is or might be going on.
As the world has changed and the control of the information that informs people in a way that allows Everyone to think for themselves, religions and belief systems that do not encourage freedom of thought have either collapsed or have had to resort to ever desperate forms of spreading fear and the need for societal control in order to survive and to be seen to thrive.
Money or the Moneyocracy of the Old World was a religion or belief system just the same.
A rich mixture of learning for the masses, the failure of their own bogus systems, and the damage many of these systems of control were doing to humanity, the environment and the world, brought into question their existence and ability to continue in power in every form.
As the systems within these systems lost their control or relevance, ever more desperate measures were employed to attempt to control people, primarily through their behaviour, ultimately with the aim of destroying the freedom of thought.
Freedom of thought has always been the greatest risk to those who can only lead and succeed when they believe they are in control.
The One True Freedom of this world and the experience we know as life, is Freedom of Thought.
Freedom of thought is the ability for all of us to make the decisions, choose the choices and take the actions that will ultimately make sense of why each and every one of us is here and experiencing the lives that we have on the planet.
The elites and governing classes of the Old World failed to respect this and created the circumstances where increasing numbers of people around the planet simply had no way of being able to learn the rich tapestry of lessons that any and every life has the power to teach everyone, in relative to that life and its circumstances forms.
It is accepted that each person or being has their own direct, exclusive relationship with God, a Higher Being, Source or Spirit.
Any deviation from this relationship is a matter of choice for that Person or being that
NO other Person, Group or Member of The Community holds the right to question or influence, beyond the acceptable framework of parental care.
There is no Community or State Religion.
We maintain, champion and defend a secular Community culture.
Our Community culture can be defined as being aligned with Christian Values.
No Religion or Religious Practice may disrupt, influence or dictate matters within the Public Realm.
We do not accept that any Religion that uses fear, control of any kind, or that seeks to subjugate any person or being to achieve its aims is ‘peaceful’.
Personal Sovereignty is considered supreme to all systems of belief and nothing can supersede this.
Any form of submissive behaviour of any person to any Religion or Religious Practice is an infringement of Personal Sovereignty. Unless the individual’s participation is a clear and definable voluntary choice.
No form of permanent contract or arrangement exists where any Religion or Religious Practice may maintain or retain any form of hold upon any person involuntarily and ends immediately.
No Religion-based law, regulation or obligation may supersede the Community Governance Framework
Spiritual and Religious direction is a Personal Choice for every Member of The Community and is respected as a matter of Personal Sovereignty.
We encourage everyone to explore their own pathway or journey to belief through understanding and achieving Self-Awareness which is A Key Skill for Life and is supported by Critical Thinking, also taught as A Key Skill for Life.
We accept value in all pathways in the sense that a Personal Belief System and the place of Personal Sovereignty within our System of Authentic Governance are not mutually exclusive and compliment each other when respected as such.
As religion and belief systems have been misused as a tool of control throughout their existence, any ‘spiritual pathway’, or belief system that encourages independence of thought and understanding has often been actively blocked, through removal from records, scripture and doctrines, with punishment for continued participation ranging from ridicule to the most severe we can imagine.
Spiritual sciences or practices have often been misinterpreted as being purely tools of divination, prophecy or ‘fortune telling’, and this interpretation has not been helped by many proponents and speakers having chosen to prey on the vulnerable by abusing their understanding and knowledge, or the ‘skills’ they may have used.
It is by exploring belief that we improve our understanding of others and develop the dynamics of relationships which are most beneficial to us and to The Community as a whole.
We accept the use of narratives and storytelling only as metaphor or in the allegorical sense where they can be used to encourage and promote understanding.
We do not use narratives to create, manipulate, misdirect or replace understanding.
Each Member of The Community who has open access to news and the supply of information at any level is considered able to conclude and determine for themselves and able to discern appropriately.
We do not hide the truth with alternative truths at any time.
Essential or Basic Foods are Critical for a healthy and happy life and are considered to be A Public Good.
Accessible
Affordable
Nutritious
Grown and produced locally
Grown, processed, transported and supplied as locally as possible
Grown and produced using natural processes
Grown and produced using sustainable, traditional, regenerative, rotational and mixed farming methods without insecticides, pesticides or chemical fertilizers
Are subject to nothing more than ‘traditional’ or ‘by hand’ processing measures
Do not contain additives, manufactured preservatives, flavourings or enhancements of any kind
The most discernable characteristic of Essential or Basic Foods is that they typically resemble their original (harvested) form on the plate, or that form in which they exist after ‘traditional’ or ‘by hand’ processing.
ALL homes are required to have adequate food preparation, storage and cooking facilities.
The safe handling, preparation and cooking of Essential and Basic Foods is a Key Skill for Life and is taught as such.
It is considered to be the responsibility of the whole Community to ensure that every Member of The Community has ready and ongoing access to adequate supplies of Basic and Essential foods available to meet their needs.
Luxury Foods include all foods which cannot be catagorised as being Basic or Essential.
Luxury Foods include processed foods, ultra processed foods (UPFs), synthesized foods and any foods which are not visibly identifiable with their origin or original form.
Luxury Foods cannot be considered as Basic or Essential on the basis of labelling, on description or advertising of any kind.
Luxury Foods are A Lifestyle Choice.
No Basic or Essential Foods nor ingredients made thereof, may be used for the production of Luxury Foods unless there is a surplus after all local provision and trade with other Parishes has been met.
The supply of Basic, Essential Foods is as important as the air that we breath and the water that we drink.
The unspoken truth that whoever controls the supply of food has the power to control everything that a society does was massively abused by the elites of The Old World.
A Local, Fully Transparent and Circular Food Chain ensures that control of Basic and Essential Foods is kept and maintained within the hands of people who we know, who can be trusted, and is treated as The Public Good that it is.
Within a system of Localised Economies and Authentic Governance, the Food Chain is at the heart of The Community.
Food is as essential as the air that we breathe and the water that we drink. Yet meeting this Essential Basic need for life is the only one that we all need to apply effort and planning to each and every day.
We cannot afford to trust or trade away that trust in any way. Because our ability to live, to be free and to have happy, healthy and productive lives depends on the quality of the food that we each put in our mouths.
All food is produced as locally as possible, with the shortest journey times and with the minimum amount of processing or preparation from harvest to the front doors of our homes.
Where possible, farmers and food producers sell to other Members of The Community direct, through their own shops or delivery rounds.
Groups of farmers and food producers often work together within local cooperatives, run as social businesses, which themselves provide shops and deliveries, whilst helping to make Basic and Essential Foods accessible without unnecessary additional cost.
Home growing is also an important part of the Local Food Chain and Members of The Community are able to make surplus food available to others through the Local Marketplace Exchange.
The priority use of technology in Food Production is Food Safety and Good Working Practices.
Keeping the Food Chain Local allows Members of The Community to be more involved in farming and food production and we do not encourage the use of large-scale machinery where this is not beneficial to the ecosystem which is The Universal Parish.
Transparency and therefore trust is an essential part of Local Food Production.
Everyone is encouraged to participate in Home Growing as a minimum and Food Production is considered to be a Key Skill for Life.
ALL food growers, producers, processors and suppliers are required to provide Essential and Basic Foods within their business model.
Food supply prioritises Essential and Basic Foods to The Community at all times.
‘Specialist’ Luxury Food suppliers do not exist.
Food Production is undertaken ‘commercially’ by Agricultural and Fisheries Businesses (Farms and Fishers) within the Parish area, and domestically or privately using the process of ‘home growing’ within each household.
All forms of Agriculture, Fisheries and Home Growing which are exercised to provide for the priorities of People, Community and The Environment are considered A Public Good.
Food Production is itself taught as A Key Skill for Life.
Food Advertising is only permitted to raise awareness of Businesses, Social Businesses and Community Providers that sell or provide Basic and Essential foods either in pre-cooked or ready to eat forms.
Basic and Essential Foods are A Public Good.
We do not accept profit-making for some as a valid excuse for compromising the health, nutrition and wellbeing of all.
Luxury and non-Essential Food Advertising is therefore prohibited.
We consider it responsible and a part of life to Recycle, Reuse, Repair.
We reject ‘throwaway’ culture as unnecessarily expensive and unsustainable and encourage maximum use of all clothing and related items.
Every Community has access to at least one Clothing Library, usually run as a Social Business, that offers access to clothing for special occasions, events and changes in circumstances that might require access to otherwise unaffordable items.
Clothing Repairis also considered to be a Key Skill for Life and is taught as such.
No person may hold, possess or own and form of property or wealth that will not be used for the purposes of meeting their own basic or essential needs, unless to provide for the operation of a business which contributes to meeting the Basic and Essential needs of The Community.
The Basic and Essential needs of any Person include the provision of Basic Essentials to family and dependents.
Smoking or vaping in any public place is prohibited.
Smoking or vaping in any place, location or position where any person can be involuntarily affected by smoke, vapour or fumes of any kind is also prohibited.
Smoking or vaping is not prohibited but is considered to be an antisocial activity.
Social Care are the functions of support provided by The Community, through Community Provision for the Person, where that Person’s ability to exercise their Personal Sovereignty fully has been compromised for any reason.
We consider social care to be a natural support process primarily provided by people and their families with secondary support provided within the umbrella of Community Provision.
Charity is Not only a financial transaction or donation.
We consider all charity work conducted to provide support to People, Community and The Environment to be Community Provision.
In Our Local Future, Charities of the kind widely known in the Old World only exist where a cause exists which does not contribute to The Public Good.
These charities run solely from donations and on volunteer time from outside Community Contributions and do not attract financial support from The Community.
Every Member of The Community contributes 10% or the equivalent of their working week to Community Contributions. (This is usually half a day a week)
Members of The Community may make additional contributions of time or money beyond this voluntarily.
Any not-for-profit organisation that sells goods or services of any kind is classified and operated as a Social Business.
It is accepted that The Community has both the obligation and responsibility to equip each and every member of the Community with the Key Skills for Life and Social Skills necessary for them to function independently and with independent thought to a level or standard where and appreciation of ethical and moral boundaries will be prioritised where either an impact or consequences may exist for others from any action they might take.
The aim is to provide the tools. But not the programme, nor the ‘software’.
We recognise that the most important lesson for all people is to learn about and to develop themselves in the most effective and appropriate ways possible.
Self-Awareness is the most important tool for every person to be equipped with, so that they are fully enabled to exercise their own Personal Sovereignty.
Being able to exercise Personal Sovereignty fully is recognised as the most beneficial education goal for the benefit of the community in all things.
We therefore prioritise the ongoing development of Key Skills for Life and Social Skills above all forms of academic and experiential or vocational training, which directly benefit as the result of this approach.
We recognise that everyone has different learning styles and that for children and young people, these can be broadly described as taught or academic, and practical or experiential.
Education is split between three Priority areas within Our Local Future.
The Community benefits by focusing academic learning at all levels on children and young people who are academically inclined and are able to fully apply themselves to this style of learning.
All levels of academic education are funded by The Community and no educational establishment may accept payments or sponsorship of any kind from commercial business or governments outside of our National Boundaries.
We do not expect everyone to participate in a full programme of academic learning, simply so that their progress can be measured.
The Community benefits from applying a broad based, practical and experiential approach to learning for children and young people who are practically orientated or unable to apply themselves within a style of learning that is predominantly abstract.
We have full 7-year apprenticeship programmes for experiential learners that begin at the age of 14 years.
Social Learning provides Members of The Community with all of the Key Skills for Life required to support their journey towards and to maintain Personal Sovereignty.
Social Learning is built around a guideline framework without a fixed detailed syllabus.
We actively encourage grandparents to create added value during periods caring for grandchildren when they can share their knowledge and experience directly.
Social Learning is otherwise provided by Members of The Community through Community Contributions.
Members of The Community who have experience of the areas of life that can be shared for the benefit of others and The Public Good are able to commit their Community Contribution time to teaching, coaching and mentoring Social Learning and may voluntarily give additional time.
Our system of Governance is based and built upon the basic principle that every decision made by The Community will always be the right one for every Member of The Community, based upon what is known to decision makers at the moment that decision is taken.
We run, operate and facilitate a democratic system based on the accepted principle that the most reliable and robust form of democracy is the most local and most accessible to the Members of The Community.
We operate a fully transparent system of democracy and governance.
Decision makers must not only be accessible to every Member of the Community; they must also be known to them too.
Members of The Community are actively involved in the selection and management of Politicians, who we recognise as Community Representatives.
The Authentic Governance System (TAGS) is A Public Good.
Each member of The Community is actively involved in the selection of candidates for election as Community Representatives to The Community Meeting.
With Political Parties and any agenda-led groups prohibited from involvement in Community Governance, each Community selects an election list which will be at least 120% of the number of Community Representative Seats at The Community Meeting.
The Community Meeting selects representatives for the District and Regional Meetings which then select representatives from their number for the National Meeting.
All Local decisions are made at Community Meeting Level, with District, Regional and National level decisions being differed where collective agreement has been reached that it is appropriate for them to be so.
The People we know, The Community in which we live and work and The Environment in which we live our lives are the core of our existence and are therefore all we can trust and rely upon.
The structural unit or universal ecosystem model in which our society operates is known as The Universal Parish or Uniparish.
The Universal Parish is named after what were previously known in the Old World as Parishes in the UK.
The former UK Parish represented the lowest or most localised tier of (Local) Government as part of the formally Top-Down, Hierarchical System of Government
Our society functions with The Universal Parish, Parish or Uniparish serving as the central or key structure of society, business, community and governance
Within our System of Authentic Governance, all structures of Governance, Community Provision (Public Services), business or other are considered subservient to The Community itself.
This is why only Social Business models may exist ‘across borders’ so that no interest other than that of The Community and collaboration between Communities may be prioritised.
The Universal Parish is as self-contained as it can be.
‘Business’ interaction between areas is limited to meeting Basic and Essential needs that cannot be met within the Uniparish itself.
We reject hierarchy as the basis of societal structure, whether in terms of civic governance or any other organisational method.
We believe that leadership can neither be guaranteed nor relied upon from any formal role or position, whether publicly or privately appointed.
We value experience and the accumulation of knowledge above job titles or platforms of any kind.
We have a level, egalitarian approach to the way all societal frameworks operate and encourage the use of natural leadership where respect for the ability of those able to lead as part of the community, rather than having any need to be recognisably elevated above other members of it is neither necessary nor required.
Whilst basic hierarchies are necessary in some circumstances, these are accepted as being rare and as such very much the exception rather than the rule.
Everything within our societal structure is decentralized.
Our System is built around Locality.
Locality is key to good lives, happy and healthy living and a system for life that works to prioritise People, Community and The Environment in every way that works in a fair, balanced and just way for all.
We all have a shared interest in the future of Humanity, the World and The Environment that provides for us all today, and which if cared for and respected, will be able to continue providing for Our Local Future and Everyone’s Tomorrow.
Collaboration and working together to deliver outcomes that serve the purposes of every Community from the Parish upwards does not require the surrender of political or decision-making power.
World affairs are a matter for all Members of The Community and are discussed as part of Community Meeting business.
We reject all objectives which serve to centralise power and control, or which are created to enable the accumulation of wealth or circumstances that will be more favourable to some communities or nation states over others.
What was previously known as The Public Sector is now known as Community Provision.
Community Provision exists to create and maintain the environment and services necessary to support a culture built around People, Community and The Environment by providing services which are our collective responsibility and meeting need beyond the resources and responsibility of our own basic and essential needs and supporting us with those at times in life where we may not be able to meet them on our own.
The number of Members of The Community employed in either full or part time positions within our system of Community Provision is maintained at a minimal level and restricted to the key roles that are deemed essential for purposes of continuity.
The majority of roles and working capacity are met through Community Contributions.
Community Provision reaches across the administrative and technical functions of Local Government, Health and Social Care provisions and what were also previously known as NGOs and Charities.
As Members of The Community, we all accept that we share responsibility for the upkeep, maintenance and furtherance of Community infrastructure, services and everything that we have access to or the services that we can use in the Public Realm during our lives.
It is therefore a requirement that every Member of the Community contributes actively to the upkeep, running and development of the infrastructure and services that together, we provide as A Community.
All working people are required to contribute the equivalent of 10% (TEN percent) of their working week or the equivalent thereof either directly to the provision of Local Public Services or Charity Provision.
This requirement of participation in the delivery of Public Services or Community Provision is known as Community Contributions.
Community Contributions provide the greater part of the public sector workforce and civic administration.
Community Contributions offer everyone the opportunity to experience roles that may help with career choices at any time of life, and everyone can request the opportunity to work within specific roles so that this experience can be gained.
Community Contributions roles are otherwise allocated on the basis of the skills and experience that each member of the community possesses so that the contribution made will be of the most benefit possible to the whole community.
Primary responsibility for ALL Public Policy is that of each Community Meeting or Uniparish Council.
Laws, Regulations, the Legislative Frameworks they sit within and every key decision that makes Our System of Authentic Governance work is generated at Community Level.
Decisions on Public Policy are therefore developed at Community Level and made at the Grassroots, with their impact and dissemination operating Grassroots-up, rather than Top-Down as previously in the Old World.
This System of Authentic Governance ensures that decisions are made and can only be made by Public Representatives and Decision Makers who fully understand the implications, impact and therefore the potential consequences of everything they do when representing other Members of The Community.
We do not impose any form of taxation upon productivity, effort or success which has contributed to The Public Good.
Taxation is placed upon luxury goods & services, property, standing wealth, unearned wealth accumulation, rental earnings and the benefit to the person, business or organisation from access to Community Assets, Infrastructure and Resources.
We implement a Flat Tax system.
The rate of Flat Tax is 10% (Ten Percent):
The Flat Tax is calculated from the value of existing assets and added to the value of luxury goods and services at point of sale.
The Community Meeting places a charge levy against the benefit from access to Community Assets, Infrastructure and Resources.
No form of Tax Reduction is allowed to be used as an incentive for any purpose
Work is a necessary part of a good, Happy, Healthy, Safe and Secure life and a good life cannot exist without part of it being work.
The function of AI and Technology is to improve life; NOT replace it
The speed with which AI devices and technology operate led to the widely mis held belief in the Old World that AI had become fully sentient.
This false sentience was deliberately used as a tool of fear and manipulation, obscuring the truth that the capability of AI is based purely on its ability to process and draw upon massive volumes of information which are nothing more than records of the past.
All technology using AI, connection of any kind to the Internet, to the Cloud or to a third-party device, computer or remote source of any kind must have a dead man switch that can be operated locally and without remote intervention.
Where such systems provide services supporting the provision of Basic Essentials for People, The Community or The Environment, a fully functional parallel system that can operate without AI, without connection of any kind to the Internet, to the Cloud or to a third-party device, computer or remote source of any kind must be ready to seamlessly take over – ‘at the flick of a switch’, at all times.
Cost is not a valuable consideration and systems that do not rely upon digital technology must always be prioritised where the provision of Basic Essentials for Members of The Community are concerned.
The rejection of digital technology and preference for using human orientated systems and processes instead of installing or running both, is the only acceptable form of cost saving in business activities relating to the provision of Basic Essential Foods, Goods and Services.
The Right to be Forgotten is the opportunity that each Person has to ‘walk away’ from their existing life and have all records cleared, to be given a new name and identity, and to effectively have a ‘new start’.
To exercise The Right to be Forgotten means leaving everything behind and ‘start again’ in a new place, with no ties nor contact with anyone or anything from the person’s ‘past life’.
TheRight to be Forgotten is a significant step as it is viewed by The Community as an irreversible restart which is equivalent to the administration and processes that otherwise follow death, including the permanent surrender of all wealth and property, including academic qualifications.
Every Person has The Right to be Forgotten once during their Lifetime.
The total of active money whether physical coinage or in digital forms cannot be varied or influenced by any person or organisation other than The Community itself, either through The Community Meeting or through the Local Market Exchange.
The total value of active money and currency in circulation is directly proportional to the number of persons within The Community at any one time.
The total value of active money and currency in circulation is attributed directly to the ability of every person to contribute to the Local Circular Economic Model which exists within the Universal Parish system at any one time.
Different values are attributed to Members of The Community, as Levels of Economic Contribution.
They are as follows:
Children (Non-working age)
Young People in training
Adults
Adults (Non-working)
The value attributed to the presence of Members of The Community varies only:
Upon Entry or Exit from The Community (Birth, Death, moving in, moving out)
When the Level of Economic Contribution for a Member of The Community Changes
In Our Local Future we operate a predominantly Local Circular Economic Model.
The key elements of Our Local Circular Economic Model are:
Creating and maintaining a richly rewarding life experience for all Members of The Community by making everything important to a Happy, Healthy, Safe and Secure Life available within the Local Area.
Maintaining a culture where Members of The Community understand and appreciate the value of everyone’s role
The System of Authentic Governance
Focusing on Transparency and Trust
Keeping control and decision making is in the hands of Public Representatives who we can all access and Trust.
Keeping access to the Basic Essential Goods and Services open and secure for all Members of The Community
Sourcing raw materials within the Parish area or as nearby as possible
Using the minimum amount of Transport as possible
Using the smallest number of input points within every part of the Supply Chain
Using Technology ONLY where it can improve working conditions and output
NOT using Technology to replace jobs or complete any task that a Member of The Community can carry out
Focusing on jobs and occupations as a tool for life; not as a reason for it
We accept that the true purpose of money and currency is a Medium of Exchange.
Within our System, it is also normal for Goods and Services to be directly traded for other Goods and Services in circumstances using Bartering, where the use of money or currency as a unit of exchange is not necessary, or would encourage the addition of unnecessary costs.
The concept of Fair Trade is quite literally that we all trade as fairly and considerately with each other as we can, ever mindful that our shared Priorities are People, Community and The Environment.
Each District or Parish area has its own Local Market Exchange.
Local Market Exchanges are functioning Marketplaces based at a location which is central to the District or Parish Area.
A Local Market Exchange provides a Marketplace Trading Floor which is available both on and offline.
Within a Local Market Exchange, the core aspects of trading are always conducted in person and no forms of trading software or AI are authorised for use.
Local Market Exchanges operate and act as a conversion system and trade money for goods/services, goods/services to goods/services and goods/services to money.
A system of minimum value is set and revised by The Community Meeting for all Basic and Essential Goods and Services.
Any form of trade intended to raise or lower the value of anything deemed Basic and Essential to Members of The Community or The Community itself are prohibited.
Anything that can be traded can be handled by a Local Exchange.
It is a requirement that All Basic and Essential Goods that are not retailed by local small businesses and services that have been Licensed by The Community Meeting are traded through the Local Market Exchange.
We practice Locality Economics within The Universal Parish Principle.
Each Parish or Area operates and functions as its own Local Circular Economy
The Universal Parish aims to produce and supply all Foods, Goods and Services which are Essential for all members of the Community to live independent and self sustainable lives.
Basic and Essential Foods, Goods and Services that cannot be provided within the community are imported from other Communities where those Basic and Essential Foods, Goods and Services are in excess, primarily in Exchange or in Trade for any excesses of our own.
Money or any form of financial transaction is only used within this system of intra-community exchange where Basic and Essential Foods, Goods and Services cannot be exchanged directly between Communities.
All communities are expected to run and maintain a neutral balance sheet.
Life IS Our Economic Model.
Economics and ‘The Economy’ are functions or side-effects of a way of living or ‘system’ that prioritises People, Community and The Environment.
The unwritten, deliberately engineered cultural priority of the Old World was for some to be able to earn whatever they wanted at cost to the meeting the basic needs of others.
The disparity caused by disproportionately excessive wealth for some could only be maintained by increasing the level of cost to all others.
The whole process, underpinned by greed, only worsened over time, with the gap widening between the haves and the have nots.
Disproportionate wealth and earnings lead to the accumulation of Goods and the control of Services that under the control of those who want them but do not need them, leads to the inevitable situation where want either swallows up that which is needed or makes it inaccessible to those who need it.
The legitimisation of greed which drives and furthers the balance previously known as Wealth Inequality is now considered morally and ethically incorrect.
It is considered essential to The Community that Every person has the resources necessary to live Happy, Healthy, Safe and Secure lives by independent or self-sufficient means.
In Our Local Future, the ability of each Member of The Community to meet their own needs IS Everyone’s priority.
We created, adopted and maintain The Basic Living Standard to ensure that the Local Circular Economy and Universal Parish Model facilitates balance, fairness and justice to ALL Members of the Community, enabling them to enjoy Personal Sovereignty as part of Happy, Healthy, Safe and Secure Lives.
The Old-World failure of The Minimum Wage, The Living Wage and well-meaning concepts such at the Universal Basic Income required a radically different approach to address the existence of Poverty, which the capitalist, money-based order or moneyocracy of the Old World created and maintained.
Poverty is not real to those who don’t experience it.
Legislation to address poverty related issues had existed in England (The United Kingdom) since Tudor times and the rule of Henry VIII in the form of The Henrician Poor Laws.
With a very notable drive in the movement towards tacking poverty in the 19th Century, what seemed to be the silent acceptance of the eternal question ‘How do we tackle Poverty once and for all?’ never went away.
This was at no time more apparent than in the post-Covid period (2020-24) when both Conservative and Labour Governments in the UK failed to recognise the difference that existed between ‘technical’ acceptance that Poverty exists and the ‘experiential’ knowledge that Poverty is very real.
A cultural acceptance or shibboleth existed that ‘For some to be wealthy, it necessarily followed that many others would be required to be poor’.
Yet the reality was that those either controlling, driving or supporting this cultural anomaly were accumulating wealth to levels of disproportionate excess that could never be spent or used in a way that was based only upon personal need.
Furthermore, the process of investing to gain further did little more than accelerate the process of Wealth Inequality that they would then not accept as being real, for reasons that they had themselves created and used their position to legitimise.
Poverty has a 360-degree network of consequences. Not just for those suffering it. But also for the whole of The Community as a whole.
Whilst the processes and even the legislation that enabled and continued to facilitate the Poverty problem into the mainstream were legitimised and framed in law, not one act at any time in the pathway of history that led to Our Local Future was in any way morally or ethically correct.
Man cannot have two masters. Just as an archer cannot pull two bows or a jockey cannot ride two horses and it became inevitable that the entire system would have to be reversed, redirected, reformed and reestablished in order that the moral and ethical requirement that each member of The Community can live Independently and in a self-sustaining way be recognised as a natural right. One that any civilised society must not only recognise as being A Public Good, but also work continuously to maintain.
The Benchmark that every part of our Local Economic Model centres upon is the requirement that every Member of The Community be able to earn enough for a week’s work that will enable them to cover all costs necessary to live a financially independent and self-sufficient life that meets all Basic and Essential needs without the requirement for benefits, charity or debt.
In Our Local Future, all Businesses and Organisations exist to support, enhance and maintain life for People, Community and The Environment.
All Businesses and Organisations are required to prioritise The Basic Living Standard and the provision of Basic and Essential Foods, Goods and Services that each and every person is entitled to access within the Universal Parish Model.
All Persons are entitled to receive a wage for a week’s work that enables them to secure the Basic Essentials that will enable them to live independently without the need for to receive welfare or benefits, charity or to have recourse to debt.
Basic Essentials for Life are A Public Good and include:
Basic and Essential Foods (Which typically resemble their original form on the plate)
Basic and Essential Clothing
Basic and Essential Hygiene Products
Basic and Essential Housing
Basic and Essential Utility Supply
Access to Basic and Essential Transport
Access to Basic and Essential Communication
Universal access to Basic and Essential Healthcare and out of work support are also considered to be A Public Good.
Businesses may operate a branch system across a Region or District, where it is beneficial for the community for them to do so.
No business may operate, license or subcontract their business activities beyond any one Region.
Businesses may work or partner within cooperatives across Regions for the purposes of providing a universal supply of Basic and Essential goods and services to all Regions, Districts and Parishes.
All Businesses must hold a valid License to Operate, issued by The Community Meeting of the Parish where the Business Premises are located.
It is a requirement that ALL Internet Business is conducted in the same manner as any business which is offline.
All forms of Social Media are considered to be an online Business and are required to operate as such.
Privately owned Businesses may only offer goods and services directly to domestic or retail customers.
Business to Business (B2B) activities must be provided by Social Businesses.
The size of any Privately owned Business does not exceed that of what was formally known as an SME in The Old World (Small to Medium Sized Enterprise).
Business models that provide business to business services (B2B) are Social Businesses and operate as cooperatives with the Parish or Parishes of any District being collective ‘shareholders’ in ownership and therefore decision-making responsibility.
Companies may be Limited by Shares, but Shares may not be owned by any person who does not hold a direct working interest in that Company.
No company or organisation that provides any essential goods or services may be owned by any person or interest of any kind non-resident or with interests outside of the Region where that business is based.
The Shares of any Limited Company do not yield dividends and Company earnings beyond the apportionment of The Basic Living Standard Wage, costs and reinvestment are attributed proportionally to staff fairly, where such margins exist at the end of the Calendar Year.
The person or being may only prioritise themselves in thought as they exercise their right to Personal Sovereignty.
Whilst it is expected that the Self-Employed will earn an appropriate premium for the effort or commitment made and any level of risk taken, the aim of all Businesses is the furtherance of The Public Good.
No form of business may exist purely for the purpose of financial wealth creation or profit-making.
As such, no business may exist that does not grow, manufacture or supply Basic or Essential Goods or Services.
Profit is considered to be a happy consequence of having satisfied customers and a job well done.
All outward action and interaction is conducted with The Public Good and the Principles of People, Community and The Environment.
Social Businesses are non-profit making organisations which are run as efficiently as possible for The Public Good.
Social Businesses are typically present where Basic and Essential Goods and Services cannot or are not provided by Private Businesses.
Social Businesses are required to provide all Business to Business (B2B) Services and these may not be provided by Commercial or Privately Owned Businesses of any kind.
All Natural Resources remain under the stewardship of the community at all times.
All Natural Resources are a Community Asset.
No Natural Resource which meets the Basic or Essential needs of Members of the Community may be owned by private or commercial interests.
No Natural Resource which meets the Basic or Essential needs of Members of the Community may be sold, let or leased for rent.
Natural Resources that meet Basic and Essential needs must be delivered at cost.
The provision of any service providing Natural Resources to meet Basic and Essential needs is considered to be A Public Good.
Services providing Natural Resources to meet Basic and Essential needs are required to be Social Businesses and may not be provided by any privately owned company or organisation at ANY TIME.
The provision of News and Community Information is A Public Good.
News and Community Information is a Social Business.
Every Parish provides its own Local Media Platform which prioritises Local News from within the Parish area, before that of the District or at National level.
Local Media Platforms are run by key employed staff alongside others making their Community Contribution.
ALL Members of The Community are encouraged to contribute via one or each of the media methods used each year and the success of Local Media Platforms is built around Citizen Journalism.
Advertising on Local Media Platforms is universal and may not be targeted at any sub-group of the users or any specific users of that platform.
Any media business that is privately owned is required to make its interests and focus fully transparent to users and operate in the same way as all other commercial or privately owned businesses.
It is recognised that online interaction and activity in the Old World led to behaviour modification that then began to affect the offline world.
Online Communication, online relationships and online behavior are required to reflect ‘real world’ interaction, social etiquette and cultural frameworks.
Good Online Communication is considered to be A Key Skill for Life.
No digital system may exist that provides a function or service that cannot be replaced or carried out by a Person, with or without non digital tools or assistive management systems.
It is a requirement that all AI systems can be overridden through human intervention, locally, at any time.
The use of Smart Phones, Tablets and hand-held technology devices is regulated and may only be used for educational purposes for Members of The Community under the age of 21 years.
The use of AI is universally prohibited for any form of training, education or other online learning.
Digital watermarks must be present and identifiable for all AI use in digital creation of any and all kinds.
AI management systems for machine technology may only be used under human supervision.
AI may only be used as a tool to enhance or improve human working practices.
AI may not be used to replace any human working role.
Technical mechanisation of any kind may only be used where sufficient manpower is not available.
AI may not be used to make any judgement or decision that has the potential to affect the quality of life of any person, group or other.
Transport for the purpose of meeting Basic and Essential need and therefore necessity is considered to be A Public Good.
Our primary method of personal transport is walking, secondarily supported by the use of bicycles, battery powered cycles, mobility carts (where appropriate) and public transport.
We do not encourage the use of any form of transport that is not intended or designed only to meet Basic and Essential needs in a practical, comfortable and safe manner.
Working and workplace interaction are considered to be a positive and encouraging environment for social skills and the awareness of others.
Most businesses are located locally to homes as part of the Universal Parish System, and it is considered normal to attend the workplace when it is in the best interest of The Community and The Public Good for any business to have their staff present on site.
For those Working from Home where facilities exist for workers to be present on site, no form of expenses is payable from the employer.
As most businesses are local and therefore accessible on foot, by bike or with a short journey by public transport, it is not considered normal for anyone to commute to their workplace using a car or vehicle of any kind.
No person travels to a workplace outside of their Parish area unless they are specially trained or experienced in that role and have not had adequate time to move home.
Where any person is required to fulfill a role ‘outside of area’ on behalf of their employer, all travel time is considered as working time and all accruable expenses are reimbursed by the employer.
No employer may provide any form of pay structure that includes any accruable expenses.
For a long time, I’ve been concerned about Food Security, The Food Chain and the way that the role of Food seems to have been deliberately dismissed, as if Food is not something that is essential for everyone to consume, each and every day.
I wasn’t aware that a common theme was emerging as I began writing a series of eBooks that started with Levelling Level in early 2022, and has now spanned 8 or 9 different books, essays, and blogs.
Food is so much more than being about what it costs. Even though our culture expects and encourages us to think about Food that way.
However, Food isn’t all about Farms, Food Production and the Economy either. And I have been saddened as I have watched the growing issues surrounding UK Food Production and specifically the UK Farming industry. Not because I don’t agree that our Farmers need help. But because none of the issues surrounding Food are as they appear, but everyone continues to believe that treating them as if they are, is how all our Food-related problems will be solved.
The Food Chain should be at the centre of everything. And if we were treating the importance of what we eat in the way that we should be, the way that we live and the way that we experience life would be much better than what we are living through right now.
The Growing Food Crisis
Farmers, like many others with absolutely nothing to do with Food Production who will read this, are victims of a growing Food crisis that many of us don’t even realise exists.
Everyone is being affected in different ways.
This growing Food crisis isn’t directly to do with Farmers Inheritance Tax, building on green belt land, covering productive agricultural land with solar farms, any one of the seemingly endless issues in the News causing upset, or anything you are likely to find from an internet search around foods, farms, climate change or the environment. Although it will certainly flag all sorts of stories that will be viewed by different people, differently.
These Food-related issues are all important in very specific or subjective ways.
But there is a much bigger issue at the heart of all of this that we need to consider carefully before any of the solutions that we can come up with can really work.
The real crisis about our Food and what we eat each and every day, is this:
We take Food for granted.
We take Food for granted. Not just in terms of the supply of our Food and the misplaced confidence we all seem to have that Food will always be there, on a supermarket shelf or ready to be delivered. But more significantly, because we rarely, if ever, give real thought or think consciously about what it is that we actually eat and what the ‘food’ we treat as being a normal part of our lives contains.
Yes, you may have immediately thought something like ‘It’s not that I don’t think about it. It’s just not worth it because what I eat is always about what it costs.’ And you certainly wouldn’t be alone if you did think this.
However, this and the many other thoughts and different perspectives that might be triggered by touching on this question certainly reveal or open the door to a rather uncomfortable truth: We have all allowed or just accepted that the food we consume is not as important to everyone as it should be.
The importance of The Food We Eat
Let’s be clear. Food is as important as the Air that we breathe and the Water that we drink.
Yet because the results of eating food that isn’t good for us aren’t in any way as immediate as they are if we breathe bad (or oxygen deficient) Air, or drink Water that is contaminated in some way, we really have become dangerously indifferent about the Foods that we eat.
Perhaps the easiest reason to be dismissive (or excuse not thinking consciously about our Food) is the idea that as long as we are not feeling hungry, nothing else matters when it comes to what we eat.
Yes, people do eat whatever food is available, that is accessible and fits with their lifestyle and think that if it has all been financially affordable, then as far as what they eat is concerned, that really is all there is to worry about.
We cannot and should not blame anyone for feeling that way. They are supposed to.
Regrettably, accepting the status quo and all the messaging that goes with it, without question can have and for some already has had life-changing consequences.
Mental health issues, physical health problems, obesity, compromised longevity and the many offshoots that shoot out in every direction of life are just the issues already affecting millions of lives because of the Food that we eat. And that’s before we begin to consider what our relationship with Food should really be because of the impact that it has or will have in so many other ways across our lives too.
Changing Minds Changes Lives
The importance of the Food we eat is something that we all have in common – whether we like it or not.
Once politics, idealism, religion, profiteering and other agendas and self-serving ideas are removed from the Food Chain, We are all the same. We all have the same essential needs.
We are all human beings with the same need to consume Foods at every mealtime that are genuinely good for us.
Eating properly and eating well should be normal for all of us. Just as it once was, before an endless list of apparently compelling reasons began to grow, peddling what sound like compelling stories like the one that says, ‘Good Food is too expensive to eat’.
The reason stories like these become the accepted truth is because Good Food being expensive to buy IS the experience that some people genuinely have. An apparent problem that someone else always seems happy to provide a solution to that only really benefits them in some way.
If the idea that we cannot afford good food, as opposed to the reality that we cannot afford the cost of not eating well in so many ways sounds conflicted to you, you are certainly not alone. And thinking differently about ALL of the Food that crosses our lips and that we consume at every mealtime really is the start of a Food Journey that has the ability to fix so many different things that aren’t working well for us today.
Please join me on the Foods We Can Trust Food Journey
I’m writing about this today, because I have just launched a new website and social media channels to begin a discussion, information sharing, signposting and awareness raising ‘Food Journey’ that I have called Foods We Can Trust.
Foods We Can Trust really should be a name that immediately speaks for itself – and it does.
But ‘Foods We Can Trust’ also triggers many different thoughts, feelings and suggestions that always being able to eat the right Food for us is no longer something that the world we live in today can enable us to do.
I’m about to begin posting about Foods We Can Trust, and I hope that as someone who eats Food every day, you will join me along the way.
If once you’ve visited www.foodswecantrust.org, you’ve had a look around and you feel there is something more you could share that might help others – even if its just a recipe for making a great meal out of Foods We Can Trust, or tips on how and when to Grow Your Own, please do get in touch.
Let’s all share this genuinely important Food Journey together, as it may give us an opportunity to help everyone else who values Foods We Can Trust too.
Creating a New, Independent Food Chain Assurance Scheme, then using it to begin a Farmer and Consumer led Revolution in UK Food Security and Production
‘Food From Farms – Guaranteed’ (3FG), is an idea, or rather a set of ideas that have the potential to begin a conversation, then a process which will enable farmers and food producers to take back control of their own destiny and with it, the independence and autonomy that any business should legally be entitled to achieve.
The 3FG concept itself is responsive to the wider disconnect that many across related industries now feel.
Growing frustration and anger with the Red Tractor Scheme is indicative of the loss of control that farmers and food producers feel, with many now questioning a future where public policy, rules, regulations, laws, standards and direction itself, seems so out of touch.
Red Tractor itself is perceived to be out of touch and working on behalf of outside interests in the creation, monitoring and administration of standards relating to farming and food production within the supply chain that takes everything that UK farms and food producing businesses create, along the journey to where consumers buy or receive it.
The question being left unanswered is ‘Where should the balance of power and influence in the farm to consumer relationship naturally lie?’
3FG will answer that question and explain why. 3FG will then suggest the ways that the balance of power and influence can be restored to the people who should be making all the decisions that really matter, and how that relationship can be developed, strengthened and secured.
The focus of 3FG is local. Because working locally is the only way that food chain assurance of the kind that farmers and consumers now need can be managed and applied consistently and fairly to every part of the process that is involved.
3FG isn’t a perfect work, plan or strategy. It is not intended to be.
The knowledge, experience, drive and motivation that has the power to change everything in farming and food production for the better will come from the people and businesses within farming and food production, with help from consumers themselves.
It is for the people that matter in the farm to consumer relationship that this book has been written and the creation of a completely new food chain assurance scheme is therefore proposed.
Introduction
UK farming and food production is in crisis.
Latest figures suggest that the UK only produces around 52% of the food that we consume. Yet we are increasingly reliant on trading relationships threatened by war and the collapse of global supply chains, making the supply of imported food increasingly vulnerable and insecure.
Despite the risk to UK food security, politicians and big business keep pushing UK farms and food production towards profit making systems. This approach increases consumer reliance on unhealthy and highly processed foods and manufacturing, is quickly leading to the destruction of agriculture and our ability to grow food naturally in the UK, and it uses organisations and standards like the Red Tractor scheme to exert ever more influence and control, knowing that significant change can be achieved without question, if guidance and direction comes from organisations that farmers and growers trust.
The short-, medium- and long-term future of UK farming and food production now hangs in the balance.
If UK Farmers don’t begin to take risks to save their own industry today; there will no longer be anything left of UK Farming worth taking a risk on in just a few tomorrows.
However, the risk taken to secure the future of UK farming needs to be measured and considerate of all the ingredients necessary to secure permanent change, putting locally grown, healthy and nutritious food back at the centre of consumer and community life.
This cannot be achieved through populist protests and civil disruption that will damage the relationships that we now need to cement.
The creation of a new food chain assurance standard, led by farmers, with the help of consumers and everyone who genuinely believes in and champions UK food production, offers the opportunity to achieve change that will not be possible in any other way.
This is 3FG.
The Aim of this Book: Let’s think about an alternative to the Red Tractor Scheme. One that prioritises Farmers and Consumers and not the profiteers and idealists ruining everything in between.
Whilst farming and the rural community have never been far away from my life, recognising the massive risk to food security and the health of our nation because of the direction that UK farming, Food Production and everything related has been taken has still come as a shock. I feel passionate about finding practical, real-world solutions that will help us all, right now.
As an experienced politician with an understanding and perspective that doesn’t align with the direction that Politics and government in the UK has gone, broadening my understanding to focus on the issues that are causing real problems within the industry and academia too has been immensely frustrating and at a personal level, quite challenging.
Not least of all because I am a ‘doer’ and hate being able to see so many of the issues and potential solutions so clearly. Whilst also recognising the perceptual and cultural barriers that exist right across and that surround the industry, that have created massive walls that stand in the way of anything meaningful being done.
I dip in and out of social media to follow what’s really going on for everyone (no matter what side of the political divide they think they might be on) and whilst there are other important issues that I have already and will certainly talk about later in this book, the one that keeps popping up regularly for me is the reality that UK Farming and the Public desperately need a replacement for the Red Tractor Scheme: One with all the hangers on and vested interests left out.
The Organisations involved in food policy today are all about the interests of those Organisations.
Whilst I am hesitant to say anything that suggests that I intend to place the NFU and what any of the representatives who speak for them in a bad light, because I don’t, it has to be said that no matter what meetings they have, what promises they receive or whatever headlines they make, lobbyist organisations like them will not achieve the results that farmers need. Because for them, the approach that would be needed and the perceived risk to the relationships that they have with politicians, government departments, NGOs, business and retailers, or many other organisations by doing what needs to be done, is perceived to be too high.
This isn’t a criticism. This is how established and well-known lobbying organisations work, right across every area of public policy.
They value the relationship that they have with the establishment more than they do the need to do whatever it will take to achieve meaningful solutions for the people and businesses that they represent. That results in compromise, fudges and being grateful for nothing more than politicians, business and public sector leaders paying lip service to the idea that the change they offer is the same thing as a genuine outcome being achieved.
To be fair, one of the myths that too many of us have bought into is the idea that politicians and the establishment do actually know and understand what they are doing. That they have integrity with the responsibility they have to the electorate, and that they are therefore people we can trust.
Few have a real appreciation of the interconnectedness of every problem that exists within the realm of Public Policy, and I’m afraid that I speak from experience when I say that this very much includes the politicians who are supposedly in Westminster to legislate on our behalf.
Waiting for a Top-Down solution will inevitably result in more of the same.
The Red Tractor issue and the kinds of complex issues that it represents is about so much more than a quality benchmarking scheme or system that has been taken over by the people taking all the profit out of UK Farming and Food Production.
It’s about the misuse of power, influence and position by people who are now obsessed with change in a direction that goes against everything that Farmers know and are now using every tool that they can employ to exert pressure and therefore to increase control.
A completely new Red Tractor, or rather, what replaces it could become the catalyst that Farmers, Food Producers and a very tired public employ to turn the whole balance of power and what is an increasingly unworkable and therefore Food-Security-destroying situation around.
But to do so, Farmers need to wake up to the direction that the industry is now being deliberately taken.
There is an industry or lifesaving need to accept that it’s a situation where everyone who appears to have any control over what Farmers do and produce, other than the farmers themselves, are well and truly committed to farming in the UK becoming unrecognisable. That their priorities are money and profit, idealistic theories, and keeping and increasing control over a public and businesses whose current level of independence they are massively afraid of and want to end, no matter the real cost of doing so.
3FG offers a process that can be the basis of the conversation that everyone who has a genuine stake in this needs to take part in.
3FG could be the start.
About me and why am I proposing 3FG (or something similar)
My name is Adam Tugwell, and I wrote and published ‘Food From Farms – Guaranteed’ in the early part of February 2024.
I have become increasingly concerned about UK Agriculture and food production. Where everything that surrounds the UK food chain is being taken, and the troubling reality that attempts are now being made by populists to try and harness the growing frustration and anger that now exists within the farming community, to stoke up protests that have no real direction. Action that could easily be used to make the situation that Farmers face even worse than it already is.
Although I’m not a farmer, farming and industries that are traditionally affiliated to farming and rural industry are part of my heritage.
My father and his wife were smallholders. My uncle was one of the early pioneers in Agri-contracting. My grandfather was a wheelwright and his father before him a steam ploughman.
After many summer holidays riding a bale sledge and annoying my older cousins, I had a number of jobs on farms in my early career that included harvest driving and lots of relief milking. It was through working with a former President of the County YFC Federation that I became a member myself and made many farming friends who I remain in contact with today.
I went ‘back to school’ in my early 20’s to do the qualifications that a disrupted experience of school never provided. Doing so helped me into management training with Pickford’s and what at the time was the National Freight Consortium (NFC).
I’ve since run a local authority refuse and recycling operation. I’ve managed and developed people centric projects and services for a Rural Community Council and for a county council based Rural Transport Partnership, supporting charities. My last full-time job was as a regional manager for the British Lung Foundation where I had a big focus on managing and developing a network of volunteer led user groups.
When I was 30, I set up my first proper company, and as a startup won a large distribution contract with the Northcliffe Press which was then part of the Daily Mail Group or what is known as DMGT. I created the kind of working environment for others that I always wanted to experience myself, and committed to building systems and procedures around quality benchmarks like Investors in People and what was then the DWP Two Ticks scheme, right from the start.
I set up and ran a number of businesses that have included an online local and organic food delivery business, and have advised different businesses, and coached their managers and owners. I also tutored business planning to final year undergraduates at a University Business School.
I’ve been interested in politics and public policy since I was a teenager. I believe the first letter I ever wrote to the media was published in The Farmers Weekly when I was 18.
I first became a Councillor in 2003 at Tewkesbury Town Council (Where I also chaired the committee that looked after the Town’s Severn Ham – a 70Ha SSSi). In 2007 I was elected as a District Level Councillor at Tewkesbury Borough where I served for 8 years and was heavily involved in the local response to the 2007 Gloucestershire Floods and the water shortages that followed. I also joined the newly formed Ashchurch Rural Parish Council in 2008 to help as a founding member.
For my second term at Tewkesbury Borough, I was elected and then reelected every civic year to serve as Chairman of the Licensing Authority, with lead responsibility for the Council’s Regulatory Licensing service. My role oversaw local Licensing, Licensing Policy development, National Licensing Policy implementation and Licensing hearings and Reviews.
Theres a lot more that I could say about my professional and political experiences and everything else that I have experienced in life. However, the important thing has been the insight and understanding that I have gained about how public policy, government, the establishment, the public sector, charities, businesses, people and communities’ work.
With other priorities since 2015, I have continued to blog and write books in the hope that they will help others and broaden perspectives about things that not everyone can or has the time to see or understand.
At the time of writing, I have been studying and researching an MSc in Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security at the RAU. It has regrettably been an experience that has served to consolidate and amplify my own view of just how bad things really are. It is because I now have a clear, up to date understanding of the role that academia plays and more importantly doesn’t intend to play in the future of farming and food production policy, that I refer to its role later in this Book.
Farming and Food Production in the UK is not in a good place. But neither are any of the organisations (government and public sector) that should be falling over themselves to support it. That isn’t going to change because of a General Election with the options we currently have.
Challenging as it is to try and convince anyone that government and the public sector doesn’t and will not do what it says on the can is hard enough.
But the issue that has the greatest potential to destroy any chance that UK Agriculture and the organisations that Farmers should be working with to succeed in turning things around and getting the industries and its allies to the place they should be, is that so many influencers and people who have useful and beneficial things to say are losing sight of the truth that many others do too.
Regrettably, solutions built on commonality and practices that could work for us all are being lost.
If anyone can take the bull by the horns and turn UK agriculture and food production around, it will be UK farmers and the brilliant people that populate this wonderful community.
However, even those who know a lot more about farming than I ever will also need to listen to views and perspectives that can fill the holes in their understanding of everything else. We all need to be open to the realities of how different parts of a very unfriendly world work.
This Book is my contribution to the conversation.
Adam Tugwell
Cheltenham, 16 February 2024
Part 1: The Important Stuff
What Farmers and Food Producers need to consider for a new Food Chain Assurance Scheme
Over the following pages, I have outlined a number of different opportunities, suggestions and functions that 3FG has the ability to create and provide as part of a new food chain assurance and standards scheme.
These pages cover different ways of thinking, alternative approaches and practical approaches that will make sense of where the real opportunity for approaching the assurance question and relationship between key stakeholders can begin.
It’s not a perfect list. There is no specific order, and the reader will need to continue through the following sections covering issues like 3FG structure and governance, and then the future of farming before the most informed picture will be available of what 3FG has the power to do and to create.
The Key Stakeholders in Farming Standards and Food Quality are the Farmers and Consumers
We need to ask the questions: ‘What does it mean to be a stakeholder?’ and ‘Who are the real stakeholders?’
Because the interests of the people who are guiding, influencing and controlling the most visible forms of food standards that communicate what farmers do to those who consume the food produced, are not focused or aligned with the interests of the most important players who are located at each end.
Their focus is instead the many middle parts of what is in the main an otherwise unnecessary chain, where no value is added. But production prices are squeezed whilst the price to the consumer is repeatedly being raised.
I will come to the role of other organisations who affect the food chain. But any argument that statutory authorities have the right to dictate the direction of an assurance, standards or benchmarking organisation as a key stakeholder, is willfully and deliberately misplaced and, in all honesty, wrong.
The key principle for 3FG is transparency of the food chain
Any new standards, food production benchmarking or quality assurance system must revolve around farming today and what it will be in the future, along with what’s best for the consumer in mind.
Farms, food producers and the consumer must not be expected to change their habits to meet the requirements of businesses that have become involved in the supply chain, whose only interests are making money – as has been the case now for a significant period of time.
The role of government, regulation and legislation in 3FG
One of the most back to front or upside-down realities of the way people believe government and any organisation that regulates or legislates today works, is the idea and sadly the acceptance that these bodies exist to ‘tell us what we are allowed to do’, rather than being there ‘to serve us’.
Whilst regulatory organisations are there to regulate and advise on the interpretation of those regulations, none of them should have a controlling interest in the management of any assurance or standards scheme that they are not paying for and that can only thrive and deliver in the many ways that it has the potential to do so, by maintaining its independence and autonomy.
Following rules or laws doesn’t take away independence. It’s what all businesses do and businesses that take their responsibilities seriously, are likely to exceed any standards or guidelines that regulating bodies set.
It is vital for 3FG to have independence from any form of government or political control. As such, it must be funded, managed and maintained in ways that do not mean taking funds from anyone who will require adherence to agendas of any kind. No matter how innocent they might appear to be.
Operating areas and governance to reflect and promote community links and localism.
One of the first important opportunities that establishing a new assurance mark or brand creates is to localise and federate the structure of the organisation before it is even launched.
By creating a localised model built upon the same frameworks, 3FG can:
Allow better access to the Board of Governors and the advisory team.
Create localised branding for the most local produce.
Help to rebuild local production identities, brands and styles that help promote and market food products with a geographical area alignment.
Keep control localised.
Promote better relationships with other businesses and organisations at community level that farmers and food producers are increasingly likely to need to develop productive working relationships with as globalisation ends and the need for much more localised supply chain models are recognised.
Provide an improved and arguably more democratic system of governance.
Support transparency and provenance for consumers when they buy food that has come from other areas of the country.
Many do not see it yet. But there is good reason to believe that a new model of operation for UK Agriculture that is led by farmers, will take a much more community-based approach that is similar to the current Small Scale Farming model, rather than the production and output focused model that is disintegrating around us now.
Farming has the opportunity to return to being financially independent and commercially viable in a way that frees the ties, restrictions and the damage from supermarket-type contracts and subsidies.
These will always have agendas attached that will inevitably push Farming in all sorts of different and often detrimental directions, the motivations usually being unseen.
Agreeing, Implementing and Maintaining Standards that provide Assurance
It is very important to understand and accept that the regulatory standards that farms and food production must adhere to today, are not the property of a private organisation or person. They are owned by the public and are therefore in the public domain.
The farmers, food producers and business owners that 3FG is aimed at all know the rules and regulations that govern their practices, operations and what they already do.
3FG is not about hacks, go-arounds or finding ways to ignore any system that protects farmers and consumers already.
3FG is about redefining, reestablishing and reenforcing the relationship between farmers, food producers and the consumer. So that quality, experience and fair prices paid and received at each end of the food chain are the only priorities that sit beyond the level where public health, animal health and legal requirements exist to protect any of us.
Farmers, food producers and consumers don’t need anyone else, any outside organisation or any of the agendas that they bring with them to create a new standard mark that offers any of this on a universal basis.
Using the right knowledge
The answers, solutions, knowledge and experience already exist within the groups of key stakeholders that 3FG is looking to as future members.
Beyond proactive, respectful, dynamic communication and respect for the laws of the land that we are all obligated to, that is where all of the focus and responsibility for the success of 3FG and the role in securing the future of farming in the UK lies.
Funding
Sustainability is a big word in Farming today, and it’s no less important in terms of creating, developing and maintaining a food chain assurance scheme that can pay for itself.
Financial independence is essential to keep self-serving and other destructive agendas away, that could all too easily corrupt or redirect the purposes and objectives of a new food chain assurance scheme that should be about nothing more than being able to offer quality standards and guarantees of provenance and production, to the people who eat the food produced.
It is the development of executive and so-called ‘professional functions’ of any organisation that really starts to rack up the costs.
When you have growing numbers of staff who are shielded or insulated from what the work of the organisation is really all about, they soon start finding ways to take the organisation and its objectives in a very different direction – especially if the only contact they have with others is people who fund them or they otherwise wish to carry favour with in some way.
As much as possible of the management and decision making of 3FG should be made by volunteers.
It keeps costs down and removes all sorts of potential governance and management issues that we will come to a little later.
3FG should be as near as self-funding as possible.
This can be achieved through:
A standard per item charge to retailers, which could be tiered and would be applied either per item sold or weight/wholesale unit delivered.
A Membership fee for all farmers and food producers
Tiered Membership Fees for Retailers, based on number of shops, size of business etc.
A token consumer membership fee for members of the public who want to support the Scheme.
Ongoing crowdfunding initiatives
3FG MUST be financed by suppliers, supporters, consumers, sales and fundraising. Not by other interests which are not aligned with those of the Key Stakeholders.
A Rating system based on location, length of supply chain and size of business
The visibility of 3FG (or whatever it might be called) is very important.
Using an emblem like a Plough, Tractor, Windmill or a traditionally attired farmer will certainly draw recognisable links to food and food production in ways that schemes such as the Red Lion mark for eggs will not.
However, creating ‘just another brand’ or assurance mark that can quickly be incorporated into the design and print of supermarket packaging isn’t the answer either. It isn’t what a live, considered, recognisable and meaningful link for the relationship between Farmer and consumer is all about.
Many will have seen environmental rating badges that are awarded and regularly updated for pubs, takeaways, supermarkets and any business that sells freshly prepared food to the public.
The award is made on a premises-by-premises basis by the local district level authority or council and can be clearly seen as a 1-to-5-star rating, illustrated on a green sticker that is usually displayed as you enter, pay or order at the premises.
It is arguable whether consumers really take that much notice of food assurance marks in the forms offered today.
The primary reason for this is that especially now, during a genuine cost of living crisis, at the point of purchase, it is cost rather than anything other than a quick look at whatever the consumer can see, that is the real determinator of whether a product will be bought.
Creating a dynamic badge system with the potential to identify different sources, size of farm, method of farming and distance travelled, would offer engagement that would provide consumers with a very different level of meaning.
Giving the ‘end product’ a real identity for the food chain that it followed would create further forms of buy-in that large retailers resist because of the costs involved. Yet they are very happy to create different ‘created’ farm brands to give consumers the impression that what they are about to buy from the supermarket, came from a farm with a nice name and the feeling that the food was grown (or prepared) just around the corner or just down the road.
Please bear in mind that administering and adding this level of detail about the food chain journey – which consumers do want to see, is only resisted by the big retailers because of:
The perceived cost for margin obsessed businesses, and
That by offering a tag that makes clear whether the food purchased really is local or came on a 600-mile journey, the consumer would demand of the retailer that they guarantee legitimacy to the promises about food quality that they make.
By adopting a new food chain assurance scheme with a standards mark that clearly promotes local, identifiable businesses or perhaps cooperatives of a number thereof, 3FG will be encouraging and promoting the decentralisation (deglobalisation) of food production, whilst redirecting political influence as well as commercial power back into Farmers’ hands.
The immediate kick back from retailers to any kind of food chain assurance system that recognises production at individual farm level will be built around protecting what is a genuinely impractical model of supply and distribution that must control every contributing part within what is a machine that must continue to grow margins to survive.
The direction of travel for supermarkets is the extinction of small, recognisable farms and food production units. However, the big retailers will always be very happy to suggest to the consumer – through marketing – that their priorities are directed only at the benefit to the customer and that everything they do is achieved in completely the opposite way to what they actually do.
Payment structure from Retailers for branded or qualified products
Retailers should always pay for the standards marks that are applied to products. Because they will pass on that charge to the consumer.
However, it doesn’t mean that big retailers have any right to dictate how food is produced or made.
Perhaps the most challenging aspect of creating a grassroots-up food chain assurance scheme is that favouring local production and short supply chains, in ways that run counter to the operating models of retailers that currently hold so much of the market share, is that in the first instance and early days of 3FG, the implementation of a scheme which offers transparency will not have the volume of products or wholesale units passing through it to keep the product or unit price at a negligible level.
It will therefore be necessary to subsidise the implementation of 3FG until this can be achieved.
Remember, the format for 3FG being proposed in this book isn’t one that is expected to grow into some massive HQ near London type organisation, where there are departments full of staff who have never seen a farm or upon doing so, would immediately hold their nose.
The role of academia
Anyone in UK farming or food production wanting real change must be very careful about the role of academia in creating the solutions to the problems that the industry faces.
Academia is a very useful source and resource for the supply and collection of technical data that relates to how things have been; how they work and what known technologies and working methods can do for farming and food production, today.
However, academia, like the lobbyist organisations discussed earlier, is very focused on the relationship that it has with government, politicians, the public sector, big business and people who fund what it already does, rather than creating, identifying or endorsing solutions that might change market directions or contradict what is currently accepted or what establishment narratives say.
Being tied to accepted and establishment thinking, often for no better reason that funding is involved, means that there are incredible biases at work, that academics and the institutions they represent are highly unlikely to admit to, even though some quietly will off the record.
As such, if you approach an academic institution – even a highly revered one and ask them for a review of anything new or ‘outside of the box’, they may well pay lip service to whatever benefits they may perceive to exist.
But they will also do everything they can to refocus attention on methodologies, systems and ways of working that already exist or have already been tried. Even when it is quite clear to third parties that delivery is either weak, serving agendas, or doesn’t actually work or deliver the results that it was supposed to.
Creating an ecosystem putting Farmers and Consumers first
Thoughts become things.
So, changing the way that the industry thinks about measuring and promoting food standards, the transparency of the food chain and the direct relationship with consumers will quickly deliver benefits that cannot be seen. Simply because a leap of faith has been taken in the direction of putting right a lot of things that are currently wrong.
Knowing the land as farmers and many food producers do so well will mean that many with the power to embrace change will already appreciate how ecosystems work. And that within big ecosystems, there can be a great many more besides.
This thinking can be applied to businesses, to the public sector and the way that businesses or a range of different organisations have a shared interest, goals or set of aims too.
The important thing to consider is that although the players in a flipped, localised supply chain may appear to be obvious when we think about farms selling whatever they produce as an end product to people the farmers knows, the reality is that with a grassroots-up, rather than a top-down focus, 3FG will open the doors to the central role that food should always have within the community.
Working at the heart of the local community means that there are likely to be many more potential working partners – a good proportion of which will be unique to specific locations – that farmers will not immediately recognise as being there, today.
Putting the key stakeholder or farmer and consumer relationship first will open the doors to new ways of working, new partnerships, new opportunities and new ways of taking the food that farmers produce to market, and to the consumer, that will benefit everyone involved.
This type of symbiotic relationship with the community – with models that might resemble Small Scale Farming, but with much more significant scaling involved – is what a genuinely sustainable future for UK Agriculture is likely to now be all about and how genuine UK Food Security can be achieved.
Regional, Localised meets for Members that inform localised standards marks for sales in stores.
3FG is all about being local. Being localised and bringing a level of power and autonomy back to farmers that will not be possible again, if the industry continues to be led on the path that it is currently on.
Farmers will never again feel powerless if they choose to work with and trust only the people and businesses that they regularly see.
From the community members that come together as a steering group to create the local and primary form of 3FG, the most able and appropriate representatives can then be nominated and elected, to represent and report back to a meeting of all local representatives who can then define what the common, cross-UK governance for 3FG should be.
The real power of this new food chain assurance system is keeping it as local and as locally or community attuned as it can be.
By doing so, the idiosyncrasies of farming practices such as fruit growing, hill farming or even hop farming can gain the specialised consideration and promotion that a truly holistic and UK-wide food production system should champion throughout.
One of the reasons that government, the public sector and even lobbyist organisations are so out of touch, is because they do not have or share the appreciation or understanding of what being a farmer, food producer and regrettably – a consumer in every sense genuinely means, at organisational level.
Nobody with genuine issues about the public policies that affect them will continue to shout, once they know that their concerns have been heard AND have been listened to.
With power focused on locality and community, 3FGs direct contact with the two key stakeholders will make responsive and therefore attuned proactive action hard to resist.
3FG cannot involve big money interests or retailers as influencers
BIG retailers and market players might today be responsible for a high proportion of the business that UK Agriculture does.
But that does not mean that big retailers have any right to dictate farm management or food production practices at any level or in any way.
The two key stakeholders in the food chain are the farmers (and food producers) and the consumer.
Nobody else should be making demands or forcing the direction of either food production or consumer eating habits from any part of the food chain in between.
Farmers and food producers have a VERY GOOD range of products to sell, and it is they who should be setting the production terms and standards – that with feedback from the consumer, ensure that UK Agriculture is providing the food and food products that people who with 3FG will experience full transparency over the whole supply chain – wish to buy.
The 3FG Membership
The organisations that will constitute the farm business, food production, preparation and supply side of the 3FG Membership will include:
Any farm or farm business committed only to UK Agriculture, sustainable Food Production and Food Security with prioritisation of supply to the consumer in the most localised way possible, with the production of the widest range of foods and food products that the land can produce sustainably.
Along with SME (non-public or shareholder) owned:
Abattoirs
Bakeries
Butchers
Dairies (Milk & Dairy Product creation and Home Delivery)
Farm Shops
Fishmongers
Greengrocers
Independent Food Retailers
Independent Fisheries
Independent Trawler & Fishing business owners
Independent Garage Forecourts
Mills
Pubs (Genuine Free Houses and those without Food Ties), Independent and non-franchised Takeaways, Cafes and Hotels
Along with any other independent retail or food production business able to meet and maintain the standards agreed by the primary and secondary governance requirements and member agreement of 3FG.
Universality to include Farm Shops, Farmers Markets and the smallest UK Food producers
It is no accident that the main focus of existing food assurance schemes are labels on products sold by big retailers that pushes the narrative that food standards are only really applicable to food that ends up in BIG shops, BIG supermarkets and that is handled by BIG business.
It is the upside-down reasoning that underpins this idea, that gives BIG retailers and the businesses and organisations they work with the apparent power to dictate what any farm or food business that sells to them must do, to secure that sale – and to be grateful for whatever they are given in return.
There is no reason why the food chain assurance labelling that a consumer sees on a farm product on a shelf in one of the large UK supermarkets isn’t the same as what that same consumer could see if they were to travel to the local farm shop and look at the same kind of product on the same day.
That the BIG retailers don’t push for this universality in standards or that this level of assurance doesn’t exist already, tells us all we need to know about what the real priorities for the parts of the food chain that they control.
3FG Offers the opportunity to create a universal system of food chain assurance and quality standards benchmarking that means a consumer can look for the same guarantee of quality and information upon where the food they are about to buy came from, no matter where they buy it.
Yes, such an approach certainly favours localised food production and smaller farm businesses. But that is where the focus of food production for Farmers and Consumers desperately needs to be.
Committing to detail certainly doesn’t preclude any large food retailer from supporting a food chain assurance system, that under the exclusive governance of the two key stakeholders, will far exceed any of the standards those businesses currently use to control the industry. Existing commercially driven ‘standards’ that are not about people or farmers, but all about the profit-obsessed monoliths that supermarkets really are.
A QR code for every 3FG farm, food producer and every product too
Farms and food producers are businesses that play a very important role in life and the community.
Sadly, the way the world works today means that three meals a day are often taken for granted in the same way that we don’t even think about the air that we breathe.
Farms producing the food or ingredients that contribute to any food or drink deserve to be recognised for the importance of the role that they play.
However, it is just as important to allow consumers to reconnect with the reality that surrounds every part of the food chain. Where their meals have come from.
By embracing this dynamic by making the relationship between farmer and consumer direct, power will be returned to the most important part of the food supply relationship, whilst taking back influence from all the hangers on.
If you hadn’t realised it yet, 3FG isn’t about rejecting technology.
3FG is about embracing technology that helps to make things better.
QR codes that any smart phone can instantly read, offer the opportunity to make every farmer and food producer’s portfolio, story, aims and objectives available in live time, as consumers do their weekly shop.
Websites, blogs, videos and downloads offer farmers and food producers the opportunity to open up their businesses as virtual worlds. Golden moments of discovery where value of a kind that only comes from human interaction and the sense of reality that these mediums are able to provide, mean that added value and credibility of supply can be given in a way that globalization and big supermarkets cannot offer, and that no form of money can buy.
Accepting that money always comes with ties and UK Agriculture is currently tied down to a pathway of destruction
The 3FG proposal will be controversial to some, as it’s all about changing direction from the way we are all used to things working now. That means that it’s about changing the way that we think.
From the direction I have found myself looking at UK Agriculture, Food Production, its relationships with business, retail, government and academia too; and arriving here with the experience that I have, there is nothing great about trying to talk through the mechanics of a situation that many farmers now face. One that whichever way you write it, has the ability to suggest that the very people reading about 3FG are wrong.
The truth is that nobody is doing anything wrong. But what a great many of the people involved in farming and food production are doing right now, is looking at the problems that UK Agriculture faces in a way where they are expecting the answers and the solutions to come from the same places, the same faces and the same organisations that at least two and increasingly three generations of farmers have grown use to as being the centre of everything.
Farmers are financially savvy people. Most know only too well that subsidies have been the lifeblood of viability for a long time, with the promises of regular contract payments from relationships with retailers and market-focused organisations sitting almost too snugly alongside.
Most across the industry already know that the price is too high.
For those that don’t, it is impossible to ignore the evidence of our own eyes, as farm businesses close and land is sold without any hint or suggestion that it will ever return to productive use once again.
The reality of UK farms and food production today
Whatever politicians and business leaders tell us, paying lip service to solving problems and even shouting out loud warnings about the direction UK farming and where food production is being taken, this is not evidence that they can or will doing anything constructive to help. Because even in the rare cases that you are listening to a farmer who has decided to wear a different cloak, they are still only one of an overwhelming number who have to understand and think the same way as farmers and food producers before there will be real and meaningful change that comes from them.
Help isn’t coming from the government in any way that will save UK farming in the long term.
What politicians and public sector managers will do is just enough to keep giving farmers hope – and what will probably be just enough to keep the majority bought in to the accepted narrative, because the risk of doing otherwise will appear to be too high.
Meanwhile, the big retailers and traders will continue using every underhand contractual trick that they can, to keep farmers tied to them in just the same way, all the time pushing everything across the industry in a direction where for many farmers, the problems will soon reach a point where it is no longer possible to turn back.
If you ever wanted to understand how obvious the lies of the system that underpins the way that government, big business and the economy work, please stop reading and think about the so-called freedom that UK Farmers currently have.
The system or economic philosophy that runs everything today is called Neoliberalism.
Neoliberalism is based on the principle of free markets and deregulation.
So, the question to consider if you are a farmer is ‘How is freedom of the marketplace working out for you?’
The thinking that all farmers need to change is the reliance upon someone else coming up with and then delivering the solutions, along with the expectation that whatever the change someone else decides upon looks like and what it will cost to be implemented, the government or someone else will step in and pay.
If farmers and food producers want freedom, want a future and want to continue to exist, the time to act and take the risk of breaking away from a system that doesn’t serve UK Agriculture is now.
Not in perhaps as little as just a few years’ time, when the current course will be run and there will be nothing left of UK farming to take a risk on.
Part 2: 3FG Governance and Structure Development
3FG governance can be built around farms and food production standards.
The real strength in a new food chain assurance scheme is keeping as much of the management and strategy in the hands of volunteers who have skin in the game.
That’s Farmers, Consumers and then representatives of local small businesses that buy, use and sell the produce that comes from those farms.
Man cannot have two masters. So, the priority of those influencing the food chain could be many things other than farming or food production itself, IF the net is allowed to be cast too far and wide.
The priorities of influence that would damage 3FG could be:
Career advancement or Personal Ambition
Currying favour
Idealism
Money, Profit and Greed
Political Gain or keeping specific people or interests happy
The easiest choice
Creating a Central Framework (Created in reverse)
The best forms of governance are those that guide and give direction, rather than aim to instruct and control.
There is a fine line between them that once crossed can quickly find the metaphorical pendulum that swings between them picking up speed and travelling in the opposite way.
Governance is important to:
Confirm and govern the terms of membership and the standards themselves
Create a management structure
Document aims, priorities and methods of working
Identify responsibilities
Maintain the integrity of the organisation and protect it from malign influences that will change the direction of the organisation and its priorities if they can
Manage relationships with other organisations
Provide direction if and when anything goes wrong
However, whilst the immediate temptation would be to believe that creating a centralised system of governance or the instrument of governance itself is the first step, this is not so.
The ‘magic’ ingredient that will make 3FG work, be successful and for it to fulfill the aims of bringing real power back to farmers and to the consumer, will be in the creation of governance that comes from the grassroots up, rather than from immediately falling into the trap pf falling back on a system of governance that is created from the top-down.
The central framework or instrument of governance must therefore be created and updated by representatives of all the localised regions or areas, once they have been formed.
Local Governance of the New Standards Scheme (The first step)
Farmers, local food producers, food retailers and pubs/restaurants/cafes that are local, small businesses, supported by qualified local public interest is where the first steps of creating a governance framework for 3FG should begin.
Everyone involved in growing, producing, processing, preparation and the sale of food today is already well aware of the Standards, Regulations and Laws that exist.
There is therefore no need for look beyond any business owner or person with a legitimate interest in supporting the creation of 3FG at local level, for the knowledge, ideas and experience that will identify the rules framework that will:
Be used to inform the creation and further development of the central framework or instrument of governance, or
Be used to inform the creation and further development of the local framework, which would be localised rules or by-rules that constitute a sub-framework or addendum to the central framework
Once a local ‘meet’ or ‘committee’ has been convened and the basic objectives of that meeting or committee have been agreed, the process can be used to identify and elect a representative who will then attend and discuss the objectives, ideas and priorities of the local group at a meeting of representatives of all the local groups, where a central steering group or pre-committee can be formed.
The Members Charter or Agreement
The nuts and bolts of 3FG will be the commitment that everyone makes as a member of this new food chain assurance scheme and the standards it will require of them.
It cannot be emphasised strongly or repeated enough that 3FG offers the opportunity for Farmers to reclaim and maintain their power and independence from organisations and interests that do not see the future of farming in the same way that they do.
However, 3FG isn’t some kind of pathway to Farmer anarchy and rebellion.
3FG is a legitimate tool that has the ability to be very successful in achieving its aims, whilst reaching well beyond them in terms of the added value that it can deliver for everyone – BUT only if those involved are committed to doing everything that is agreed that 3FG is there to do.
Some will understandably feel resistant to rejecting one set of contractual relationships with government and commercial partners just to commit to another.
But contracts aren’t always the same thing.
Setting up a membership charter or agreement, which is of course a contract using different words, offers 3FG members the opportunity to build both an evolving and dynamic type of agreement, that when run, operated and promoted by members who have ‘skin in the game’, will genuinely work with the best interests of all involved in mind.
The 3FG membership charter or agreement will be a dynamic, living document. Because unlike subsidies from government and contracts from retailers and buyers, the growth and success of 3FG will create opportunities to give members opportunities and incentives back that will support and enhance their businesses, rather than being designed to take more and more from them at every turn.
The need for and function of the 3FG members charter or agreement
The core function of a membership agreement or charter is to provide the framework rules of what 3FG expects from every member on a universal basis. The only variations being those that will be necessary to accommodate the different functionality of the relationship.
For example, a dairy business producing cheese will have very specific rules that apply to the production of cheese. Meanwhile there will be many other rules that apply to food production or processing business that would also be specific to those similar at another level. And there will then be rules and requirements that apply to every member universally, no matter who they are or what they do.
Whether rules are applied at 3 levels, as the example above suggests, or there is a need for even more levels – perhaps because they are location specific, it is essential that every like for like business that joins 3FG is treated the same.
Equality of Interest
Fairness and the integrity that underpins it is an essential part of the pathway to 3FGs success.
A situation should never exist or be encouraged in any way where a business of any kind is single out and is deliberately prejudiced in some way with the rules of membership that everyone is expected to follow.
Membership rule infringement is another matter entirely. There should be zero tolerance of any breaks in membership rules that have the potential to bring the 3FG relationship between members and with consumers into dispute.
Give and Take – What a membership agreement or charter will expect from 3FG members
The steering groups at primary and secondary level will need to agree what the key requirements and standards of membership will be in respect of:
The member relationship with 3FG
The food chain assurance standards themselves
The 3FG membership agreement or charter will probably include the requirement:
To attend local meetings regularly in person or online
To pay any agreed fees on time or as scheduled
To provide regular feedback to help inform the development of new and evolution of existing standards
To undertake to meet all agreed food production or growing standards
To undertake to meet all agreed food handling standards
To undertake to meet all agreed animal husbandry standards
To not enter into new contract arrangements that have the ability to prejudice 3FG in any way
To meet and where possible exceed all legal requirements
To join and promote the 3FG marketing system
To report to the local meet when circumstances create difficulty for the member in their ability to meet any or all of the above
The membership agreement or charter would also include a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) that requires ongoing confidentiality of shared commercial data, and the protection of any personal information, from beyond the public realm, that is shared as a direct result of membership.
Give and Take – What a membership agreement or charter will give back to farmer and food-producer members
The benefits of joining and contributing to 3FG must go beyond the obvious and give back more and more to those supporting the scheme as its reach, influence and the access to opportunities grow.
The kind of support that is likely to be offered to 3FG farm and food production members will include:
Access to any cooperative support businesses that are created locally within the 3FG network
Business Mentoring and Coaching from other members of the 3FG Community and signposting to other, more specialised support services when and where needed.
Complaint handling system
Discounts with commercial suppliers wishing to offer support to 3FG member businesses
Industry representation that is always focused on the needs of members and the issues that they face in real time, rather than at government or establishment speed
Proforma websites, training and support with all forms of social media
Regular Meetings with local members where feedback will be prioritised as part of the agenda
Regular social events with members (and consumers)
Regular updates, information and advice bulletins
Membership for ‘affiliate businesses’
The real strength or foundation that 3FG has the ability to build something very special upon isn’t just a repurposed and revitalised farm and food production industry. It is all of the small businesses and independent retailers of various kinds that work with or retail food, who will also benefit from an interactive membership arrangement with 3FG.
Technology used for the right purposes offers ways of working to build upon commonality of purpose across a wide range of different businesses that were not even available just a few years ago.
The costs are often negligible, and the creation of very productive relationships are all about the governance and engagement practices that focus on what is practical and what will work well for everyone, rather than what anyone would ‘like to see’.
The suggestion made for the purpose of sharing the 3FG concept is that the primary and secondary governance steering groups use the lists above and below to apply to this very important prospective pool of members and partners.
Membership for Consumers
Some will be surprised that there is even mention of extending membership of 3FG to consumers.
But facts are facts, and as the other key stakeholder in the food chain assurance relationship, it is essential that the relationship between farmers, food producers and consumers be developed and enhanced in every conceivable way.
No opportunity to engage consumers should ever be missed and whilst there is always some fear of trolling and negative approaches from activists, where handled correctly and where rules are followed and maintained, the oxygen that such people need to thrive can quickly be removed from any potential interaction, whilst legitimate consumer interest can be welcomed in.
3FG will not need to offer consumers anything that you wouldn’t expect any business to consider offering a loyal customer base – which is the way that 3FG will need to consider every legitimate consumer to be.
In return, it is likely that a minimum membership fee, or donation can be attracted by consumer members who can pay.
Once the legitimacy and integrity of 3FG has been fully established, which won’t take long, some will willingly make additional donations that will support 3FG and running costs.
What 3FG could offer to consumer members includes:
Complaint system
Discounts for specific businesses or products
Food Preparation Training
Home growing training and advice
Job board
Online feedback on experience of 3FG member businesses and products
Opportunities to take part in member meets, speak and ask questions
Recipes, cooking tips and regular cooking competitions
Regular Newsletter, updates and links including highlighted businesses and member stories
Visits to 3FG member businesses, farm open days
The Benefits of 3FG (Or something very similar)
For now, at least, we have reached the end of the list of suggestions that underpin the creation of 3FG and the system that manages it as well as the food chain assurance scheme that it offers.
So, before we move on to the next steps and what happens next, here is a quick run through just some of the benefits of the 3FG food chain assurance scheme:
Creating immediate opportunities for individual farm and food production businesses to build direct relationships with the consumer
Encouraging natural or organic development towards local farm-centred food supply chains
Introducing a new, definable and clearly branded form of food chain quality standards and assurance
Moving towards sustainable agriculture and UK food security
Prioritising the relationship between the key stakeholders: farmers & consumers
Reestablishing the farming community and food production at the heart of local life
Removing political influence
Stopping imported and mixed foods being rebranded as being from a specific farm, being local or being from the UK
Taking power away from big retailers, big business and big money
Supporting an immediate, practical drive towards healthier, affordable, nutrition-focused eating without making a complete meal of it
Part 3: Where do we Begin?
The interesting thing about creating 3FG (or whatever it ends up being called) is that local farming and food producer communities have the opportunity to begin work on developing this new food chain assurance scheme immediately.
One business owner on their own cannot do much. But perhaps as few as 12 will have the links, networks, knowledge and skills between them to get many more people involved and to quickly build momentum towards 3FGs early governance development goals.
Arranging the early (Primary) Meetings
One thing farmers and the farming community are good at is getting people together.
Face to face will always be better. Especially when people coming together for the first time are looking for reassurance that those, they could be about to work with are motivated in the right way and that they are people they feel it likely they can trust.
Not everyone can be at meetings whenever they are called. So, the use of streaming, or video chat software like Microsoft Teams or Zoom can be offered as a way to broaden participation – which will always be good.
The advantage of recording meetings using video is that there is an immediate record of everything discussed.
As long as there is not commercially sensitive or personal data being discussed on a video (which could be edited out if it’s there), this will immediately provide the opportunity to publish the whole meeting so that everyone can see it, and feedback online.
If you are keen to get started and would like some ideas or pointers, please drop me a line: ourfoodproblem@gmail.com
Embrace formality to play by the rules on the pitch
Whilst the direction within this book is nothing less than a revolution within UK Farming, Food Production and the relationship they have with consumers and the community, the tools suggested and offered are all about action and taking positive, proactive steps to create change.
There are no empty gestures or protests of any kind involved.
Whilst it’s a term that many don’t like to use where real life is concerned, the fact is that where anything that will have an impact upon public policy is concerned and you want things to change in a meaningful way, there is a game to be played.
That means that there are rules involved that need to be followed – and some of those rules are rules that might not easily be seen.
Therefore, the way to play the game the best way possible is to do things the right way from the beginning and to use creativity, outside of the box thinking and reinterpretation of existing rules and shibboleths to make the existing system work for farmers and consumers, until the public sector, business and government catch up and start to help with what they will then and only then recognise as inevitable change.
Common Purpose is Key
Doing things the right way sounds very time consuming.
As someone who has witnessed just how slow the wheels of government and the public sector turn when there is so much competing self-interest involved, there is no doubt that the success and depth of the change that is possible for farming and food production in the UK – which could realistically add up to what it will now take for the industry to be saved – will not be possible if competing ideas, self-interest or egos get in the way of agreeing objectives and what needs to be prioritised.
For example, there is an existing misconception that any form of commercially viable agriculture and forms of farming that are genuinely environmentally friendly are mutually exclusive propositions and that one can only truly exist without the other.
Whereas the reality and truth is that there are already commercially viable forms of farming that not only promote but depend upon a very holistic approach to land and the environment in a very balanced and sustainable way.
The difference is that they are not purist in such senses as accepting that the end result can only be achieved through ending the production of animals for food, but meet somewhere in the middle with the general acceptance that it would actually be a lot healthier for us all to eat less meat – But that our priority is moving towards a self-sustainable food producing and food secure UK, before jumping the gun on what might be the finishing touches of how future food production across the UK runs.
Few of us really understand the mechanics of:
How we got to a place where we have forgotten how the mechanics of good farming and land management works
How cheap, unhealthy food is the outcome of increased profitability for the few, all at the cost of small producers who are going out of business at an alarming rate
Why we were duped into allowing this to happen
How traditional management practices which are both respectful of and aligned with good soil management, sustainable farming practices and the direction it takes us into food production, which is once again much more community led, will save the industry for our future.
Why the future of farming in the UK really is in UK farmers’ hands
The common purpose is for those who step up and use their voices for themselves and to genuinely represent the best interests of others to decide.
However, the core priorities will be clear. They will be outcomes and will not focus on the detail of the map that dictates the route of the journey – which will inevitably lead to a failure to launch, even before anything begins.
Building The Structure of 3FG
In the first instance, the creation of the Primary (local) Meets which will then feed in Member Representatives to the Secondary (national) Meets will not immediately require a formal arrangement between founding members and those others who are early to join.
It is the shared commitment to 3FG and what it means that is most important at this stage.
With the knowledge already being available within the prospective membership that will allow a draft constitution or whatever formal document to be created that gives legitimacy to both the Secondary and Primary structures, the biggest decision that members will then need to make is a) whether and when a legal organizational structure will be required, and b) what kind of legal organizational structure is most appropriate and therefore which it will be (i.e. Limited Company, Partnership, Charity or Other)
No matter the speed with which 3FG and its systems are formed, any formal structure and governance agreements (including membership agreements) MUST be in place and be available to read BEFORE any business relationships between members or between members and outside parties is opened up for discussion with a view to being agreed.
Getting advice on the 3FG structure and governance
Whilst even mentioning organisational structures and membership or contractual arrangements can set some on a path to worry, the creation of a structure that works locally (Primary) and at national level (Secondary) isn’t difficult, as long as there are no hidden agendas or motives in the room.
With the level of success and reach that 3FG could have, getting someone to cast a legal eye over anything that is agreed before it is documented and signed off is essential. However, it is very important to be selected regarding where such help and support comes from.
Under no circumstances should the creation of any part of the 3FG governance structure be influenced or have the potential to be influenced by anyone who is linked to companies or any kind of organisation that would itself be excluded from having 3FG membership of any kind – even if that ‘help’ is offered as a donation of some kind, is apparently pro bono or given ‘free’.
The chances are that once 3FG gets known and starts to build momentum, there will be legitimate volunteers of different kinds who will step forward and be able to offer exactly the kinds of skills and knowledge that the process of signing off governance tools will need.
3FG as a Functioning Organisation
As I continue to write, I am acutely aware that many of you reading this will be experienced business owners and professionals.
Every one of you will have skills, knowledge and experience that will be helpful to 3FG – depending on what and how much of it you are happy and willing to give.
Once the governance structure is in place, the next step will be to agree strategy and who is going to do what.
Tasks to consider include:
Coordinating the Research, Creation and testing of the ‘Standard’ of the New Food Chain Assurance Scheme
Consulting with 3FG Members and Consumers over the proposed ‘Standard’
Appointing Inspectors/Trainers to conduct 3FG Member and prospective Member Farms and Businesses
Creation, design and procurement of the Guarantee ‘Stamp’, Logo or information badge for products
Web design and web training
Social Media Training
Public Relations Training
‘Trade’ representation and negotiation between member organisations
‘Trade’ representation and negotiation with external organisations
Cooperative Coordinators
Local Board Members
Membership Officer (Trade)
Membership Officer (Consumer)
Events Officer(s)
Treasurer or Finance Officer
3FG Ambassadors
Newsletter editors, writers and news reporters
And more.
These are all people that 3FG can expect to volunteer from within the 3FG membership, or as consumers who are independent of any of the food related businesses that are excluded from membership of the scheme.
You will know which areas are most important and which will need to be prioritised first.
The key thing to bear in mind that the responsibilities at national (secondary) level will be fully and comprehensively universal for 3FG, whilst those at local (Primary) level will be much more tailored to the needs and requirements of the locality, rather than being in an umbrella form.
Part 4: Thoughts on the Future of Farming
Accepting the need for change
Whatever your interest or role in Farming and Food Production, or even if you are just interested in 3FG as the consumer that the supply of food is really all about, it is unlikely that you would not agree that Farming and Food Production across the UK has massive problems, and something has to change.
We all recognise that the need for change is something that we have in common. This is a great start.
Barriers to progress
The real problem and barrier to progress is agreeing on what change is needed and what that change will therefore be.
The number of people, business owners, organisations and lobbying organisations that have an interest in the future of farming and food production, simply because of the many areas that the food chain touches and relates to, is mind boggling.
Every one of them has a different take on what’s happening, what the real issues or causes and effects of the problems are, and therefore what the solution needs to achieve.
In many cases, that also means they will already have an idea of what the solution needs to be.
This is where everything hits the metaphorical brick wall. Because we all have a habit of getting emotionally tied into the dynamic of the experience we have vs the problem as we see it vs what we know the solution needs to be or look like for us.
Work together. Find all that we have in common. Then we will have common cause
It’s frustrating to watch the same old arguments unfold and play out between different interests that have so much more in common than what are probably just a few ideas that divide them. Ideas that would probably be progressed anyway, by focusing on what aims we share in common, with the people that we might today be refusing to listen to, because the few things we appear to disagree on appear to make everything else they have to say or can do to help us, wrong.
For instance, we all:
Need to eat (healthy food that will not harm us)
Need to drink (clean, healthy water)
Need food and water that is natural with a good nutritional base
Want eating healthy food to be ‘normal’ or easy
Want food to be readily accessible to us at a price that we can afford
Need Food Security
Need the UK Food supply to be sustainable
Need the planet to continue being able to support our lives
Want to be happy
And there will certainly be more.
However, the issues we see about issues like climate change (and whether its real), money, being vegetarian or vegan, rewilding, wild animals, animal welfare standards, who deserves to be guaranteed access to food, hedgerows, building on productive land, what a sustainable life really is and just about everything else that can be argued as being personal to us and therefore how we see ourselves is a belief.
It isn’t what we have in common.
That’s why adopting a purist approach and saying anyone or all of these MUST be the end result, in order for us to agree, is what stops us all from coming together to achieve something that could quickly become very good.
Reading the room
The default setting for most of us when we think about the future or rather how we would like the future to be, is based upon everything we know and experience now, with all the things we find uncomfortable ended or addressed in whatever way we believe they will be.
However, if we stop, stand back and look at the way the world is working today, it isn’t difficult to understand that small changes will no longer do. That the people who should be changing things and helping us aren’t changing anything for the better.
Whilst ‘influencers’ might give a good talk, we struggle to recognise the last time that anyone with responsibility in the public realm really did anything that really helped – but rather just created different problems that in time added up to feeling exactly the same.
The knowledge, experience, skills and determination needed to revive UK farming and Food production and do it in a way that respects the environment, is sustainable and makes the UK Food Secure, already lies dormant and untapped, at rest within the community that surrounds the industry and way of life that so many of us love.
Making predictions can soon come back to bite us. Because none of us know what factors may come into play. Nor do we know what events will take place that will lead to change of some kind anyway.
However, there are things that we can all see happening today that tell us that things that we know and expect as being normal today, cannot continue to go on in the same way.
For instance:
Politicians aren’t listening. They hear and they talk a good talk. But they aren’t doing anything that really helps. They just do and say things that make it look like they are.
Farming and food production is not respected by the establishment – even though every one of us needs to eat each and every day.
There is an undertone in everything we read and experience in the media that suggests UK farming and food production is archaic, and that any need for food that the UK has for the future will be met by other sources, most of which don’t exist in the UK and which external businesses or other countries have.
Politicians believe in market freedom. Just not freedom in the markets of the kind that small, independent autonomous businesses have.
However:
Globalisation is over. It just hasn’t ended yet. This means that the food supply that the UK currently relies upon to come from outside, could stop at any time.
The UK is bankrupt. The money that we have is created and the more that gets created, the wider and wider grows the distance between the wealth divide.
The wars and growing talk of war is likely to speed up the collapse of global supply chains – in one way or another, especially if conflict of a kind that the UK is directly involved in should come at any time.
The EU or ‘European Project’ is collapsing. It was a sub-project of globalisation that never did anything for UK Farming or Food Production in ways that actually helped. It just taught farmers and food producers to be dependent upon handouts which always came with a cost which was always about destroying the independent functions and autonomy of once great industries leading to ever greater reliance on big business and tech that is destroying the usefulness of farms – as we are now painfully finding out.
And yes, once again there is much, much more.
After reading and considering all this, you may still believe that UK farming and food production has a future, left in the hands of the people and the type of people who are running everything now.
Personally, I don’t. And what is more, I believe that the future of UK farming and food production will not only be safer and much more secure, but it will also be massively successful and play a beneficial role for everyone – IF the future is guided and stewarded by people like YOU.
Not undoing the shackles of one set of chains to be quickly shackled by another
A challenging aspect of the kind of change and the change in thinking that Farmers and Food Producers will need to embrace for an independent and autonomous future is that the rejection of the level of influence that so many establishment level organisations currently have, doesn’t mean that farming and food production can operate and thrive within a bubble.
Farming and food production are probably the most important industries for continuing human life.
Yet as things stand today, the narrative tells us that these vital functions and industries that provide the fuel for life deserve to be treated as being subservient to all others.
The true role of farming and food production is at the heart of the communities that they feed.
Because of the role that food plays in the life of everyone, it necessarily follows that farming and food production has links of one kind or another with everyone and everything.
The future is about the dynamics of that role and how farming and food production must change to fulfil that role in a relationship that will save them and place them back at the heart of everything.
Progress is not one directional.
People from all backgrounds fall into the deliberately manufactured trap of believing that progress goes only one way.
It’s the kind of argument that says we no longer need meat in our diets because someone clever has found a way to replace the nutrients that meat provides, another way.
What those same people don’t tell anyone, is that what we have done before and what we have always done, is the foundation stone upon which everything is built that we currently think we are.
To attack the foundations of life is like standing in a bucket and then lifting the handle*.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a healthy diet, or tractors that today can do the work that seven tractors did fifty years ago.
There are principles and values at work that tell us very clearly that when something is wrong or something isn’t working because of the direction that things have gone or the choices that have been made, there is no good reason for us to continue on a pathway that’s hurting us and keep taking dangerous steps into the unknown.
Big, productionist farming methods and all the hidden agendas that go with them haven’t helped farmers.
The obsession with output hasn’t helped UK agriculture, food production or the quality of our food.
It certainly hasn’t helped the health of the people who eat food in the UK, nor has it provided the security of knowing that whatever trials and tribulations may come, there will always be an adequate supply of food for everyone across the UK to eat.
However, what big, productionist farming methods and all the hidden agendas that go with them have achieved has been the funneling of power away from farms, communities and the industry, which has passed through the sieve-like hands of incompetent politicians and establishment apparatchiks, to the wants and desires of big money and ways of thinking that have nothing beneficial for day-to-day farmers and consumers in mind.
The globalist, neoliberal propaganda, the narratives and the endless barrage of marketing that comes with it is frighteningly good and effective. Because over decades, through conditioning, it has successfully changed all that we believe, so that we look at our options today and conclude that there is no way that we can go back.
But we can.
*(Sir Winston Churchill is quoted to have said this in relation to a nation taxing itself into prosperity)
Going back to make progress from where we are now is the leap forward that we need.
No matter how we feel about sustainable agriculture, UK food security, regenerative farming or any of the words that can cause as much concern as they can create reassurance, traditional farming methods and systems of production that look much more like they did a hundred years ago, are where the real answers for UK Farming’s future and longevity now lie – in a scaled-up way.
However, the future of farming also lies at the centre of a 21st century version of life based around local communities. Where industrial scale monocropping and transporting food across continents and countries was just a misguided phase that we went through in the past.
Farming has allies waiting to step in, alongside. Independent business and community leaders who are ready to help this transition and change, who don’t yet realise that the commonality in purpose that we all share is the most important thing.
We can live life very well with everyone else, if we just concentrate on doing what’s important to everyone together and respect that the need to be right and the need to agree stops there.
Set up a Cooperative System to support the development of a not-for-profit supply chain between Farmers and Consumers
Farmers are good at what they do. Growing whatever they grow.
Yet the surrender of responsibility for whatever happens once it passes the farm gate has not helped the industry in any way.
The world appears to be successful in ways that we overlook and take for granted today, because it has become ‘normal’ for so many different ‘specialists’ to take on different roles and responsibilities within supply chains.
Regrettably, this splitting up, distillation or ‘professionalisation’ of certain roles or functions has also opened the gate to many additional roles that add cost, but don’t add value, squeezing down on farmer earnings at one end of the supply chain, whilst unnecessarily pushing up retail prices for consumers at the other.
Farmers might not need the responsibility of taking control of the entire food supply chain. But it is in the interest of the whole industry to redefine the roles and responsibilities of any party that has a role in the chain between farmers and the consumer, and to ensure that those involved add value without taking anything out.
Relocalisation of the food supply chain offers the opportunity to do just that. And whilst many farmers won’t want to return to running their own lorries, setting up their own abattoirs, butchery or even a farm shop on site, there are others who certainly will.
The establishment of non-profit making cooperatives or social enterprises that are ‘owned’ and ‘governed’ by those who have skin in the game will mean farmers can keep a higher proportion of the retail (or wholesale) value of everything they produce. Whilst the consumer will also benefit twice – because they have improving access to higher quality, higher nutritional value food, whilst prices will lower and then be genuinely reflective of what food really costs.
Skin in the game
The idea of what ‘skin in the game’ means and why it is important to the future of UK Agriculture cannot be underestimated or underplayed.
Skin in the game is a phrase or name given to the presence of those who genuinely have a stake in the success or failure of any enterprise, activity or policy.
Sadly, farming in the UK is in the mess that it is today because there are far too many people and organisations with influence over what UK Agriculture does, that don’t have skin in the game.
Therefore, they have no real commitment to and therefore no concern over the direction of UK farming and food production, or what it really does.
To be clear, investing in farming or food production at any level or in any way without being committed to what UK farming, food production and its true purpose is all about, isn’t having ‘skin in the game’.
It’s what’s called ‘making a bet’.
Politicians, Legislators and Decision makers don’t have skin in the game
Regrettably, Politicians, Legislators and Decision makers today don’t have ‘skin in the game’ either, because they aren’t focused upon or representing either farmers OR consumer’s needs.
The political and therefore the government and public sector ‘system’ is broken and massively out of touch with everyone and everything that sits outside of the sphere of its own influence.
That’s why we have the unfolding tragedy that is beginning to lay a very dark blanket over every part of UK life and the businesses, organisations and communities that fall outside.
A snapshot of where Farming and Food Production fits?
I’ve mentioned the series of ten books that I wrote and published before this one. They are listed in the ‘Books by this Author’ section which follows at the back of this book.
One of them ‘The Future is Local’, isn’t really a book or booklet in the same sense of this one.
It represents a proposal or call to action for different people from across local communities, who may wish to take on the role of becoming community business leaders or social entrepreneurs.
The Future is Local offers a pathway to creating a franchise-type system of turnkey enterprises that represent the key businesses and functions that local communities of our future are likely to need. Especially if, as many now expect, things generally take a turn for the worse and we have to approach the mechanics of life and community in a very different way.
Farming and Food production is at the centre of that proposition. What I called ‘The Glos Community Project’, for no other reason than it is where I am based and Gloucestershire and some of its Towns represent the areas and the communities that I know.
If you really would like to think about how things could be run in a much more people centric way, without all the woo-woo nonsense and bullshit that comes from people who have got a little too high on impractically idealistic views, please do take a look.
We could all soon be running good, healthy and viable businesses, or have work and be able to afford good, healthy and happy lives – without exploiting anyone or profiting unnecessarily through the abuse of rules and power.
Change your mind. Change the world
Farmers are truly some of the most creative and entrepreneurial people that I know.
Not only that, working 24/7 in an operational environment, where the unexpected is what you are conditioned to expect, means farmers are comfortable dealing professionally with uncertainty, when dealing with the responsibilities that are within their realm of control.
So, whilst many within UK agriculture are effectively paralyzed by the industry-wide reliance on government subsidies and sales which are contract led, there is absolutely no doubt that if any business sector and the people within it could take control of a very bad situation and turn it around, it will be farmers who do it first and do it comfortably, before anyone else.
It sounds like a tall order to create something new that would be big enough and powerful enough to have real meaning and impact anytime soon.
But it is only perception, experience and acceptance of the narratives that we are all regularly fed that tell any of us that change is something that can only be achieved by other people and other organisations who are established, that have a name or have what we therefore recognise often wrongly as experience, knowledge and understanding that we don’t have.
Revolutions come in very different ways and whilst nothing less than a revolution in UK Agriculture and food production will now save the industry, there is still time for Farming to save itself without resorting to meaningless gestures and protests that an establishment capable of misleading so much in life will have absolutely no problem spinning, so that the public and the people who should now be farmers allies, look on and see what’s happening in a very different and very negative way.
Farmers still represent one of the last great communities that the UK has left. And it is the power that the farming community has, alongside all those interests that sit alongside, who believe in it and feed into it, that will really make a very different grassroots-up, reprioritized way of presenting food chain assurance and quality standards work, work quickly and work very well.
The opportunities that await the industry and the ability it has to redesign, repurpose and redirect its own future, with new alliances that will be very different from what experiences today tell us to expect, will quickly become apparent. Once the people that count here – that’s farmers and consumers – begin to look at the relationship that we have with big business, government and the public sector in a much healthier, appropriately deferential and non-subservient way.
Your Feedback
This book has been written with the best interests of everyone in mind who wants to be able to continue to eat good, healthy and nutritious food, whatever events may be thrown at us, or we will experience in the months and years ahead.
It is up to you how you interpret the content of 3FG and what you then choose to do with it.
Either way, whether you feel enthusiastic, hopeful, uncertain, scornful or don’t agree with me in any way, I will always be very happy to respond to questions and discuss the material I have written – as long as the feedback being shared is informative and helpful in some way.
3FG is not a finished idea. It is food for thought.
I am, like I hope anyone reading this booklet will be, very open to ideas and suggestions that can improve what is in the pages above or offers something that is genuinely better to any or all parts of it.
Whatever you decide to do, I wish you good luck and happy eating.
More Reading
Food From Farms Guaranteed supports or sits alongside a series of books that I have written and published since early 2022 that began with Levelling Level.
It was really brought into the frame by the work I did on The Glos Community Project and An Economy for The Common Good, where I began to focus on the central role that food production should be playing in life and within every community, and which itself led me to take up a place at the RAU.
To see how Food and Food Production could sit at the centre of our future and our communities, please read Our Local Future and do bear in mind that it is providing a suggestion rather than a prediction of exactly how everything will look or how things should be.
It would be better for everyone, if instead of waiting for everything we know to collapse without taking any kind of voluntary or proactive action before hand, that we embrace the options and exercise the real power that we can to precipitate change, right now.
This is where Food From Farms Guaranteed steps off and every title below will add perspective for the read in some different but simultaneously real way.
All of the following titles are available to purchase as complete eBooks for Kindle from Amazon using the links provided.
Where indicated, titles may also be available to download FREE as PDF Copies from my Blogsite in different forms, using the links provided.
If you would like to discuss any of the works listed, please get in touch.
If you would like to download a FREE to read PDF copy of Food From Farms Guaranteed or alternatively buy the Book for Kindle, please find the links at the bottom of this page.
Published in this second form as an eBook for Kindle on Amazon on 14 April 2024, From The Basic Living Standard follows here in the form of the original text, with some minor editing principally to allow publishing in online format and this PDF form.
First discussed in Levelling Level, published in March 2022, The Basic Living Standard has become a common theme of the eBooks that have followed that are listed with links to purchase and/or download as PDFs to read FREE under ‘More Reading’ which follows at the end.
If you understand that the way we value money and how money has become the benchmark in all things across life is the root cause of just about every problem the world now has, you may be ready to accept that meaningful change requires that our relationship with money and everything that places money at its heart MUST be thought about and acted upon differently.
The Basic Living Standard cuts straight to the bottom line and if instead of immediately accepting any thoughts you have that might sound like ‘This wont work because…’, and then repackage those thoughts as pointers to what The Basic Living Standard would require to change, you may then begin to grasp just how extensive the changes that are required for humanity to flourish really now are.
Thank you for your interest.
AT, Cheltenham, UK. 6 March 2025
Epigraph
Trust your instincts. Trust the thoughts, the feelings, the unexpected, unsolicited and unemotive words that ‘arrive’ in your mind.
Trust the messages that don’t suggest outcomes or results, but when trusted always deliver the better outcome for you and as you will only ever appreciate given time.
Trust yourself before all others, and when you find yourself ready to embrace truth that others contradict or don’t appear to believe in, remember that both things can be true – from your respective points of view.
Preface
Nobody has the right to make a profit
Government and politicians have willfully overlooked this truth for decades, whilst helping to remove the regulation and safety barriers that once helped to keep life for the lowest paid affordable to live.
Whilst many pour score upon the lowest paid and society’s most vulnerable and buy into the propaganda that their financial misery is somehow self-inflicted and that only they are at fault, the truth is that the prices of all the essential basics that we all need would never have escalated and reached the unstoppable highs that they have already, if the whole business and financial system hadn’t been manipulated to serve the interests of profiteering and greed.
We have all been conditioned and enslaved by money, the accumulation of material wealth and the status that goes with it.
These are the only things in this world that count. Today.
The function of every real business and organisation is to provide goods or services that support or improve the lives of people. Not to generate income. Yet the businesses that don’t do anything to support or improve the lives of people are the ones pushing up prices and making life for everyone else so hard.
This, the cost-of-living crisis and all of the UKs social problems have come into being because we have become obsessed with money as the key priority in life, rather than having values and humanity which are the benchmark of how a good life should be.
However, the world is changing, and it is changing fast. Nothing is certain in the way that we used to believe, and we are now experiencing a time of chaos and change that cannot offer any certain outcomes for any of us, unless we all embrace the need for meaningful change as a conscious and voluntary choice.
Money is God (But not for much longer…)
The FIAT monetary system that we have today has slowly been destroying our humanity and replacing it with commerce and consumerism since 1971.
FIAT translated quite literally means ‘let it be so’, and if the majority of the population already understand that the money that is holding them and their misery to ransom doesn’t even exist but is created out of thin air by their jailers, it is fair to assume that this tyrannical financial system that effects everything, would no longer exist.
FIAT is no better than a massive confidence trick that relies on those with influence and power gaining too much from their involvement to stand against it, and everyone else never understanding or asking the questions that would immediately make it fall apart.
Whilst FIAT has always been flawed, it has taken until now and the massive bouts of public spending that have been underway since the government responses to the Covid Pandemic, which have led to the runaway price escalation in every area of life.
This is the warning signal that the system is about to break.
The return to values and humanity
Because money has been our priority in everything for so long, we have lost sight of what the experience of having a good life is all about. We have quite literally forgotten our humanity and find excuses to apportion blame and see guilt in others who are struggling, when we are doing well – because when things are good for us financially, it’s all too easy to assume that everyone who counts in life will be doing exactly the same.
However, we are all in for a very rough ride and whether the establishment succeeds in their aims of introducing a new financial system of their own that will herald in an unprecedented level of human control, or we collectively wake up and reject their ‘leadership’ and replace it with something better that we can call our own, FIAT as we know it and the unsustainable way that we have been living may not yet be over, but it is certainly now at its end.
Rejecting the lead of money and embracing people-centric economics
Difficult as it might be to visualise a world that works with money in a very different way, there is no universal law that says one person has the right to exert any form of control over any other, even if the methods, the yolk or the chains they use restrain us using forms of fear that are carefully hidden from everyday view.
With the monetary habit or addiction regrettably now ingrained, we must embrace the opportunity that this period of inevitable change now offers, to create a new system, and to create and embrace new laws, that put people and specifically the essential or basic needs of each person, at the centre of life and of every business transaction. Rather than being like today, where those people ‘without’ or who have become vulnerable to the greed of others, are just considered to be a lost cause.
The Basic Living Standard and the way that it can be used to influence change throughout everything in life, offers precisely that choice.
Introduction
Life is our economy. Economics should never be our way of life
Wealth divide
We are living in an age when nobody should go without. There is wealth of a kind that the world may never have experienced before and living standards have reached heights that have extended human lifetimes massively, whilst drastically reducing mankind’s susceptibility to disease and physical ailments that were guaranteed to kill or be life-changing for everyone exposed, perhaps as recently as 100 years ago.
Yet poverty and the vulnerability that sits alongside it is relatively unseen and draws scorn, whenever those in need of benefits, the support of food banks or of other kinds of support demonstrate an experience of life that we believe to be intolerable and one that deserves punishment and guilt, because we somehow believe that we are better and that it could never happen to us.
This phenomenon isn’t new. Government of one kind or another has been legislating to support society’s poor since Tudor times. Despite all of the advances that include the industrial revolution and the period of rapid technical change that we have experienced in recent decades, poverty continues to exist. In fact, poverty is thriving. Yet few really ask the question why and nobody has dared suggest a real solution or fix.
We believe that for some to be financially rich, it is necessary for others to remain poor.
Uncomfortable and as disagreeable as this statement may appear to be, the actions of the culture and the society we live in and are experiencing today, tell us that this is our unspoken truth.
Yet this statement isn’t the truth. It is just how our experience of the world we live in today has conditioned us to think.
There is no need for anyone to be left behind. There is enough of what we need for everyone
As we buy in and commit ourselves to the rat race, consumer-led mentality that has been ruling the world and steadily taking over every part of human life since the end of the Second World War, we easily learn to lose sight of what is really important in life as our values switch from relationships, our community and our immediate environment, to seeking qualification and acknowledgement from the material world that now dictates everything from outside.
What we have forgotten and learned to overlook, is that everything we really need to be happy, content and lead very good lives is already available to us from all those things, and that the real answers that we are looking for can only come from looking within.
It is in everyone’s interests that nobody is left behind. It is because we have forgotten this that so few of us could argue that we have really prospered, whilst even those who believe themselves financially wealthy in today’s terms have actually been left behind.
We can all have the happiness we only believe to be available to those who are billionaires just by doing our bit to ensure that everyone has access to meet their basic and essential needs, without being forced to experience the fear, worry and anxiety that comes from debt, being forced to seek charity, or being beholden to and exploited by others who have embraced the idea that their own success can only be achieved at someone else’s expense.
This pathway of inescapable change is likely to result in the complete reform of our financial system and the money we use, alongside everything we know involving the way that business and industry run, and even our government and political system work too.
If we are to make the best of the difficulties we face and achieve meaningful change as the outcome, we must accept that we have all played a part in what is happening to some degree. Even if it is just down to the products we buy, or what we do or don’t do when it’s time for us to vote.
Understanding the need to change how we think about money and economics
Hear the words economy or economics, and you will probably have the word ‘money’ come immediately to mind.
But the idea that money = the economy isn’t really the truth.
The truth is that money is just a part of our economy.
Money should play a part in the economy, just like all the other things that we do and the interactions we have in any relationship that we have with the world outside of our door.
A twisted reality
Because we have been conditioned to believe that the economy is our life, it has been very easy for us to accept that there is a monetary value to all things, and that anything that cannot be given a monetary value, simply has no real value at all.
Life has literally become all about money. Money – and everything to do with it, whether it be power, influence, ambition and anything that can be considered to be material wealth – is how our world qualifies absolutely everything.
But the true cost of building our lives around money has been that we have forgotten who we really are and that we no longer place value upon the things that are really important in real life.
We are addicted to money. Money is our habit. Habits become our truth
Money is an addiction. An addiction like every other, whether it be alcohol, smoking, drugs, gambling or anything else.
Money is an addiction that brings nothing but misery whose lives are on the wrong end of its power. The deception of being happy and in control when we have more money that we need takes complete control of us but delivers nothing but pain when we don’t have enough of it and money becomes the only thing that we want.
As with people, our culture, community, and entire country (and World) has become addicted to the money myth and everything that surrounds it.
We are the drunk or drug addict that we have collectively become. Rolling around in a world we have allowed to become our own gutter, thinking all about the next ‘fix’, but with no idea who and what we really are.
Those who have experienced the realities of addiction know what comes next.
Remove the metaphors, and the collapse of everything we know is now knocking at the door.
This is who. This is where we are right now.
We can have a money-focused economy, or we can have a people-focused life. We cannot have both
Turning the period of crisis and change that we are going through on its head so that it becomes beneficial and meaningful through the experiences of constant price rises and the cost-of-living crisis will be horrifically difficult. Because progress is dependent upon our understanding and accepting that our destructive relationship with money is all about the way that we think.
We quite literally have to do ‘cold turkey’ to get over the money-based addiction that is destroying us and the world around us.
We MUST accept that as with every other kind of addiction, there really are no different levels of addiction involved.
There is no halfway house.
We either believe in the power that money has over us today. Or we don’t.
If we continue to maintain our belief in money and award it the value that we do today at any level, we will damn ourselves to repeating exactly the same mistakes of the past. No matter how much we do to correct everything in life as we have the opportunity to do so right now.
The Basic Living Standard and locality-based economics are the building blocks of the to a good future for everyone, rather than the pathway we are on right now
The Basic Living Standard follows Days of Ends and New Beginnings and builds upon the suggestions, ideas and principles that you will find mentioned there.
In the coming chapters, we will add further detail to the proposals already made that surround the creation of a new (or renewed) fully locality-based economy or what would be easier to imagine as being a large series of micro economies covering local communities and their geographical areas.
Whilst we could much more easily move to a locality-based system of economics voluntarily today – and it would be highly advisable for us to do so, for the purposes of this Book, it has been concluded that voluntary change will not be possible and that instead, this fundamental switch of systems and governance will instead hinge upon or be anchored to The Basic Living Standard.
The Basic Living Standard and related Basic Living Standard Wage are covered a little later.
Together, The Basic Living Standard and locality-based economics offer an alternative economic structure that that has the ability to turn every social problem and the difficulties we face in our relationships with the World around by refocusing both our thinking and our activities back to valuing people and therefore ourselves.
The alternative, which is a choice, nonetheless, is the passive acceptance of the changes that are now being dictated and imposed upon us by somebody, somewhere else, that will only make any sense to us for as long as we value money and everything that goes with it, above all else.
An economy focused solely on money and a Locality based Economy focused on values and people are mutually exclusive. We cannot have both at the same time.
There is no in-between or hybrid system that sits between either money or people-based values.
As such, the proposals built around The Basic Living Standard for the new world ahead and where we go next, really are the alternative to everything that is going wrong for us all now.
It is up to us whether we want to take control of the process of change so that we can reach that new world, or just accept the inevitable change as it comes to us each day anyway and whatever that means for our quality of life in the times that lie ahead.
Part 1:
The Principles of the Basic Living Standard.
The Basic Living Standard is the foundation of a locality-based economy that puts people, values and humanity first
There is one fundamental rule of a system that will be and remain balanced, fair and just, that works for everyone:
That every rule and law remain subservient to and respectful of the Basic Living Standard, and that its existence or impact will not compromise the principle of The Basic Living Standard in any way, no matter the relationship.
The adoption of The Basic Living Standard, whether through a resetting of the current system of governance or as the result of everything we know stopping and then starting all over again, is the act of completely overturning the top-down or hierarchical system of governance.
Implementing The Basic Living Standard will turn the mechanics of the whole top-down, hierarchical system on its head, so that the system becomes ‘grassroots-up’.
The Basic Living Standard is the rule that puts people and values first.
It will end the prioritisation of money, the disproportionate accumulation of material wealth, the abuse of power, influence and of gaining more of anything and everything before considering anyone else.
A fair, balanced and just society can only operate by maintaining a fundamental benchmark for equality across the system.
This can only be achieved by creating and maintaining a framework of governance and rules that ensure the material independence of each person cannot and will not be compromised by either the action or will of any other.
It MUST be the primary objective of the community and any structure of governance around or beyond it, to ensure that this principle is maintained at all times.
By adopting and maintaining the principle of The Basic Living Standard, the overwhelming number of societal problems that we face today will be addressed.
As long as the individual remains respectful of the dynamics of the principle of The Basic Living Standard which is and always be ‘treat others how you wish to be treated yourself’, almost everything that needs to be fixed, needs answers or requires solutions will create its own fix.
The Basic Living Standard (BLS):
The Basic Living Standard is a formula or form of words designed to ensure that every person, no matter who they are, will have the unhindered ability to sustain themselves independently and without help.
The Basic Living Standard is summarised as follows:
Each person working a full working week must be able to feed, house, clothe and provide adequately for their own travel, whilst providing for all their essential needs, without credit, loans, benefits or third-party support of any kind.
Every part of business, charity and civic life MUST prioritise The Basic Living Standard as its focus and run with this priority in mind at all times.
For absolute balance, fairness and justice across society, the commitment to that system of balance through fairness and justice to each person MUST be absolute too.
How the Basic Living Standard (BLS) will work practically through the Basic Living Standard Wage (BLSW)
The Basic Living Standard (BLS) is based on the proportional division of what a working adult would earn for the equivalent of a working week in the lowest paid role.
The BLS Wage MUST be equal to the minimum amount necessary for that same adult to live safely, securely and healthily in a self-sustainable way, without the need of any kind of subsidy, the requirement to engage in debt, or the need to fall back upon charity such as food banks.
Money-centric thinking makes people-centric thinking feel impossible
The immediate response to the suggestion that the whole system is built around the lowest paid being financially independent in every way is likely to be, ‘That’s not the way that wages work. We get paid and then we see what we can afford!’ – or similar.
This is the thinking of the money centric world that we are experiencing today.
It is the thinking of the old age.
It is the thinking of the system and the governance that we are now leaving.
It is the thinking of a system that is about what’s best for somebody somewhere else.
It is the thinking that always prioritises someone other than us – all too often without you, me or any of us realising that’s the way that it always works.
Once the framework has been established that says the first rule of the new system will always be the BLS Wage, everything that relates to or relies upon what workers are paid, will have to redirect, recalculate, reform, reset or even restore to values that reflect what the lowest paid can afford, rather than the profit that any business decides it may be entitled to make.
The BLS and The BLS Wage will mean that personal freedom through material independence will be assured for each person and no longer be threatened by the actions of those who abuse the power and influence that they may have.
The BLS Wage and The Basic Living Standard will ensure that greed, profiteering or the accumulation of disproportionate wealth of any kind will no longer lead the way for everyone in how they conduct their lives.
Personal Freedom through material independence is how life should always be.
The mechanics of the Basic Living Standard Wage (BLSW)
In Days of Ends and New Beginnings, we discussed the basic needs for each person to function and survive.
Foods, goods & services that meet each person’s basic needs are essential.
Essential Foods, Goods & Services are what each of us need. They are not what we want.
What we need and what we want are two very different things.
The Basic Living Standard is a benchmark that allows each person who genuinely wishes to work to live, rather than live to work, has the choice to do so.
Through receipt of the Basic Living Standard Wage, given by employers in return for providing the most basic functionality to fulfil the most basic role, each person can live and maintain their own personal freedom through material independence.
The Basic Living Standard is not inflationary. Therefore, the Basic Living Standard Wage is not inflationary.
If an individual wants to earn more than the Basic Living Standard Wage, they will have the option to gain more through the accumulation of skills, experience and/or time served that they can then offer to fulfill the needs of business and/or the community.
Each person can fulfill a role that requires a greater level of skill or experience once they have it. But that role cannot change or be awarded a higher wage, just because it’s what the employee wants.
If the principles of The Basic Living Standard are followed, the highest wage within any organisation will find its own natural ceiling.
However, reaching this point of balance will take time and in the first instance, it is suggested that the highest paid employee or income earner within any organisations should not receive a gross income larger than the Basic Living Standard Wage any greater than five times (5x).
Breakdown of the Basic Living Standard Wage (BLSW):
The following Table provides a suggested breakdown of how the BLSW should be apportioned:
The Essentials:
% Proportion of Income / Time (Suggested)
Basic Food
20
Accommodation
20
Utilities
10
Healthcare
5
Transport
5
Clothing
5
Communication
5
Entertainment
5
Savings, Investments & Other Eventualities
15
Taxation and/or Community Contribution
10
TOTAL (%):
100
Figures of this kind may be unrecognisable in today’s terms. But that is because the cost of living has been pushed so disproportionately out of control and driven by the greed and profiteering of private interests.
Inflation only exists because the current financial system isn’t balanced, fair, or just. It allows anyone able to influence the system to do so, purely on the basis that doing so will enable them to make more – no matter the true cost.
The Reset or Great Reset: Recognising inevitable change and making it meaningful
In Days of Ends and New Beginnings, we referred to the period of change and crisis that we are now experiencing as a system ‘reset’, ‘restart’ or as a complete flipping of the system which has money at its centre, and which relates to how everything is governed and how everything works.
Due to the way that the establishment uses the media to create narratives and also the way that many of us have responded, we often refer to this process as ‘The Great Reset’.
Whether we see the danger of the message being conveyed by use of ‘The Great Reset’, the fact remains that World Elites and the World Economic Forum have been building a narrative around this term and it has become vital that we all recognise that ownership of this process of change and the future beyond it is ours.
The Great Reset is not theirs.
Reset or Great Reset – it doesn’t matter. Reset is likely to prove to be the most accurate term. As whatever happens, what is affected or however we look at it, unless the world is completely destroyed, there will be restarts, re-establishment, redirection and resets of everything at all levels, right across everything to do with life.
IF we take control of this process with the aim that the change will be good for all of us, everything will be corrected so that it works fairly and in a balanced way – as it always should.
As part of the price correction or system reset, each business and organisation must restructure their pricing so that it reflects genuine worker input, rather than the bottom line
With the collapse of the existing money-centric system taking place step-by-step, like a series of falling dominoes, where one is knocked and then they all follow, it may seem strange that the reconstruction process that will create our new world, could be achieved in a very similar way.
It is the adoption of The Basic Living Standard and with it, The Basic Living Standard Wage, that MUST be the first principle to be adopted.
Adoption of the Basic Living Standard Wage will serve to be the first domino that knocks over all the others that need to fall into place so that the Basic Living Standard becomes the benchmark for all.
Our system of governance only has to adopt and get the framework that guarantees The Basic Living Standard right, to set off the process that will ensure that it works and operates in every way that it should.
Once the Basic Living Standard becomes the principle upon which all rules and laws governing business and finance are based, all activities will then realign away from profit to people.
Putting the value of people right at the heart of economics and making every business and legislative process think of each person in this same way will be like a catalyst that leads to everything that is unjust, unfair or out of balance, being put into its correct alignment with the outcome that everything will work out right.
Defining the prices of all the essential basics that each person needs
Within the system based upon The Basic Living Standard, there are two forms or streams of commerce we can identify: The foods, goods and services that we need (The essentials) and the foods, goods and services that we want (The non-essentials or ‘luxuries’).
The retail or consumer cost prices of ‘essentials and every part of the process that provides for them must always correspond to the requirements of The Basic Living Standard in every way.
When the rules and principles of locality-based economics and the Basic Living Standard that underpin it are followed in every way, the entire system will function as it is intended to do so and as it should.
On this basis, business and industry would adopt the following basic formulas to identify the prices of essential foods, goods & services or their proportional attribution.
For purposes of illustration, this Table is based on the current Minimum or Living Wage (£11.44 per hour, per 40-hour week as of April 2024) and demonstrates the maximum corresponding prices or compounded values for essential goods and services, in today’s terms and based upon what the lowest paid are likely to receive for a full working week:
The Essentials:
Monthly % Attribution
End of Month Value £UK
Basic Food
20
396.59
Accommodation
20
396.59
Utilities
10
198.29
Healthcare
5
99.15
Transport
5
99.15
Clothing
5
99.15
Communication
5
99.15
Entertainment
5
99.15
Savings, Investments & Other Eventualities
15
297.44
Taxation and/or Community Contribution
10
198.29
For anyone attempting to gauge how unaffordable life is today for each person on the minimum or living wage and why we are in a cost-of-living crisis, this table demonstrates just how much they would be paying, if the minimum weekly wage were enough to support the lowest paid outright.
This table shows how wages would then be apportioned in a way that was both affordable and fair to cover the cost of basic essentials at the end of each month if the minimum wage could cover these costs in April 2024.
Please note that these figures assume there being no requirement for Benefits Payments (subsidy) or taking on debt (loans & credit cards etc.) in any way.
The figures and proportionality suggested would be agreed democratically before the Basic Living Standard Wage system is adopted and implemented.
However, given how the cost of essential basics would be apportioned fairly and in a balanced and fair way, it the variance is unlikely to be any more or any less that 1 or 2 percentage points either way (+/- 1 or 2 %).
Once adopted, the rates of apportionment will not be changed because one interest or another claims that their business or industry wants, is entitled to or must have more. Changes would only be permitted as any change to the way that we live dictates any related change to the goods and services that are essential for each person to be able to sustain themselves.
The prices of the essential basics each person needs MUST remain fixed
The relationship between the Basic Living Standard Wage (BLSW) and the prices of essential goods or services (or their accumulated value), MUST remain static, for a fair, balanced and just society to function and for locality-based economics, underpinned by the Basic Living Standard to work.
Setting the exact value of the Basic Living Standard Wage, versus the monthly value of each person’s essential costs is not the most challenging issue to be faced, once everyone is committed to putting people first.
In today’s terms, the minimum or living wage would have to rise or the current prices of essentials would have to fall to meet the requirement of meaningful change, one way or another.
We are emotionally tied to the perceived value of the £Pound ($Dollar etc.) as we experience it today. So, for the purposes of illustrating this people-centric way of using and valuing money, it may be helpful to use another form of nomenclature or currency in order to establish the Basic Living Standard and Basis Living Standard Wage, at least on a temporary basis.
Quality of life for everyone should never hinge on a name or label and in the next part of this Book, we will adopt a new currency value to help visualise this very different and much more beneficial picture of the future.
Part 2:
The Locality based Economy
The future is local
Few can see it; many would pour scorn upon it. But the future is local, IF we genuinely have the desire to live in a fair, balanced and just system, where we are all happy, healthy, safe and secure to enjoy the freedom to be in the most meaningful and human way.
We have regrettably become so used to the money-centric, consumerism-led world that we live in today, because many of our living generations have not experienced life in any other way.
We genuinely believe that the unsustainable way that we live life based upon what we want is here forever, and that having the next or newest available technology is what we need so that we can be the best that we can be.
But we are using money that few of us really have, all the time under the direction and adoption of a values set which comes to us from someone, somewhere else, using digital devices that plug us into a parallel universe which isn’t real, but we accept it as such because everything seems so much more credible when it comes to us ‘online’.
Consumerism and the globalisation that it opened the doors to is quite literally killing us physically as we eat foods that are increasingly bad for us, whilst the flow of meaningless information and opinion presented as fact are destroying our ability to be healthy in our thought processes and to look at every interaction or encounter with others in a helpful and human way.
The point has been missed or is being deliberately obscured, that the healthiest and most beneficial way for each person to live is to interact with, listen to, eat, work with and have relationships of any kind with people, places, goods, services and anything else essential to life – that we can physically touch.
We should only use digital technology as a way to improve life. Not so living life digitally becomes the way of life itself.
The future is local. Because it is only by adopting systems of production, supply and relationships built upon real interaction with the people within the communities that actually surround us, that we will be able to rediscover who we really are, embrace a life with humanity and values, and then build a new world around us which is balanced, just and fair.
The real value of money and cryptocurrencies (DeFi) today
Crypto or cryptocurrencies have become increasingly popular in recent years. But in their current form, they have a massive and potentially terminal flaw: Today’s cryptocurrencies are worth ZERO.
Today’s cryptos work on the same basis as the FIAT money system that they were intended to side-step.
The value of Cryptocurrencies is based only on what anyone using them, buying them or accepting them as payment believes.
For many of us, this is a very difficult truth to understand.
We only have to look at news in the media that suggests cryptos such as Bitcoin are worth tens of thousands (x10,000) of £Pounds, $Dollars or the equivalent in many other currencies or monetary terms to see what people believe they are worth.
Yet cryptocurrencies are not tied to anything of value. They do not have anything of value linked directly to them.
Even the arguably sensible idea of only creating a limited or finite number of them doesn’t answer the fundamental questions or realities of what a currency or any form of money is, and how they should really work.
Money is a unit of exchange. Money is a value transfer tool. Money is a medium and nothing more.
Money has become the benchmark that is set against everything in our lives. Because making us believe that the value of money is real has benefitted someone else’s greed for wealth, power and influence in some way.
With the FIAT Money system on its way to collapse, we are all going to go through a process of realising the real value of the things that we genuinely need, as opposed to the things that we want.
That process will lead to us rediscovering the true value of money and any form of currency.
When money or currency of any kind can no longer be used to buy anything, either because we simply don’t have enough of it, it’s not tangible, or because what we need is not available to buy, circumstances will force us to appreciate what the value of the things that we need really is.
The tipping point
Whilst a systemic and financial collapse may not appear to be a one off momentary event, or have the stop-start feel that the ending of one system that will have to be replaced by another suggests, the reality we face is that for what may only be a short period of time, it is likely that there will come a time when none of the currencies we use either in physical or digital form, will have any value when it comes to being able to secure anything that we need to buy or survive.
Despite what your immediate thoughts might be after reading that we might find ourselves having to function without any form of money, it is within the collapse of the mechanisms of the current money-centric system where the seedbed of the greatest opportunity to secure meaningful change exists.
When boiled down to its purest elements or the nuts and bolts of the current top-down hierarchical system, we can see that our belief in the money-centric system is based on the idea that everything we do or that we can achieve in life is about the value of money, the accumulation of material wealth, and the power and influence that supposedly goes with it.
At the point in this process of change when circumstances and practicality tell us through our experience, that this belief, idea, principle, motivation – or whatever you want to call it, no longer works, we will have reached a seminal moment.
This will be the moment in time when the light can shine through on the darkness of our current reality, and our true values and understanding of what life is and how it should really be will face an open door to changing life so that it is better for us all.
This is not about making light of what will happen when the World we know today, that runs on money in every way, simply stops functioning. Because money doesn’t work anymore.
It will be hard. In fact, it will be very hard.
But adversity really is the mother of invention. And it is at this point that we have the opportunity at the local, community level to establish a locality-based economy, founded upon Local Market Exchanges (LME), that will feed into and provide the basis of how a new system of governance works.
Locality based economics is focused on people. Not money. Not things.
The basic building block of locality-based economics will be the value that we place on each person in a very practical and measurable way: The input or contribution that each person makes.
Locality based economics is quite literally all about putting the value created by people first.
It is by founding and then building a system of locality-based economies upon the value of the input or the contribution that each person makes, we will successfully create The Basic Living Standard for All.
It will be the priority of the new system of governance to maintain The Basic Living Standard. As by doing so, the majority of the social problems that we have today won’t just disappear or be removed from view. They will be gone for good.
If money no longer works, the basic laws of trade and commerce will rule
So, let’s imagine we have reached the point where the financial system as we know it has collapsed.
Money simply doesn’t work. What happens next?
Well, people need to eat. People need to be able to buy essential food. People then need to be able to secure the basic essentials that they need.
With no money in circulation, or no money that has value in circulation, people will begin to exchange or swap what they have and have accepted they don’t need, or can do without, for the things that they do need and that they cannot do without.
No law, regulation or threat from any authority will stop this.
When people are hungry or need to provide, they will do whatever they can to secure whatever they need, and swapping, exchanging or bartering is a lot more civilized than what will happen if theft or violence becomes the next step.
The good news for us all is that whilst the system may have collapsed around us, the technology and infrastructure are unlikely to have disappeared.
The issue we face is that the technology and infrastructure isn’t currently set up to work in a very localised or microeconomic way, when this is how we need technology, infrastructure and the governance that oversees it, to operate so that it can help and support All of us.
The emergency birth of Local Market Exchanges and Local Market Exchange Platforms
We should all feel confident that we can survive and thrive through the coming years and months.
We can all play an active and positive part in creating the new system that is balanced, fair and just for all, because much of the creative and innovative thinking already exists that we will need to build every part of it.
It is just the question of what, why and who people will be doing their bit for that has to be settled before work on our new world and the locality-based economy can begin.
If the moment is reached when money doesn’t work for the majority of people, events could unfold in a number of ways.
A note of caution: Please look kindly at anyone who loses their shit in these circumstances. Desperation doesn’t excuse poor behaviour of any kind. But it does provide good incentive to organise anything and everything that we have available to our communities and the people within them, as quickly and as efficiently as we can.
The first step to maintaining civil order is to pool everything that the community has available and to be fully transparent about what the community has, and how it can and will be shared.
If events should result in a situation where people are going hungry, transactions cannot be based on exchange, and must be based on the simple act of sharing all that we have and don’t require to meet our own immediate requirements.
Genuine help cannot ever be provided on the basis of what others can ‘afford’.
The next step is to create a system of fair exchange, that functions on what everyone can give, or what they can trade or barter.
The principle value of this exchange system, or Local Market Exchange, will be based on the time, skills, experience and basic labour that it took to provide whatever the essential foods, goods or services being exchanged might be, or what it would be when the complete process of producing that food, those goods or services would be, when considering the process or supply chain from end-to-end.
The creation and development of the Local Market Exchange will take place in two primary stages:
Bartering & Exchange of goods, supplies and services that the community already has available, or which it has the ability to grow, manufacture or provide, and
The creation of a new localised currency linking, anchoring or pinning transactional value of foods, goods and services directly to the number of people and/or the contributions (input to the system) that they make.
Bartering & Exchange
There will be a transition between the thinking that people have today – the current money-centric ‘value set’, and where it will end up – the ‘people-centric’ value set.
During this process of transition, where it is likely we will experience shortages, through necessity people will want to use goods that they have but do not need to exchange or swap for the foods, goods and services that they do.
To maintain order and promote community cohesion, communities will be required to create markets in a physical form, to allow bartering, swapping and exchange to take place in an open forum that supports transparency of distribution for all.
Historically in times of shortages, black markets have always thrived. But they are also representative of the same power structure that top-down unfairness and bias creates.
It is essential that the communities come together to provide a support structure that ensures transactions of any goods or services deemed essential to each person are made available to all.
Beyond ensuring fair distribution of everything each person needs that is available, the creation of formal exchanges will ensure that any goods or services that can be considered beyond what is essential – i.e. anything that anyone wants to trade, are exchanged in a way that reflects the newly developing local economy, and doesn’t change hands at a level that continues to promote the money-centric value set that we have moved away from.
The Basic Living Wage has been constructed, so that the process of calculating the true value or price of any essential foods, goods or services will be as straightforward as possible within the new Local Market Exchanges and locality-based economics.
As discussed in Part 1, it is the apportionment of essential basics in relation to the Basic Living Standard that is most important. The money or currency adopted will literally just be a method of exchange – not a device that can be used to manipulate the price or value of anything that is essential to life – and can therefore be massively exploited, as is the case today.
Developing new local currencies (Cryptocurrency, DeFi)
The Basic Living Standard and Basic Living Standard Wage create the basic principle, guidance framework or directive for the operational priorities of Local Market Exchanges and how governance of locality-based economics will function.
All transactions anchor to or hinge upon The Basic Living Standard, a universal benchmark, which through the mechanism of the Basic Living Standard Wage, provide the basic rate of exchange between all local or decentralized currencies, or any umbrella, centralised or connective currency linking them all, as the basic unit of value remains constant throughout.
A currency that works on a fair, balanced and just basis MUST correspond exclusively to its own system of governance.
The fairest, most balanced, just and most democratic form of governance is where power has been attributed and responds in its most local form.
As such – despite the commonalities between different currencies, the power to govern local currencies must remain in local community hands – not for the purchase of essentials – but so that non-essential or luxury goods, can be exchanged at rates which correspond to the idiosyncrasies of production in their very localised form.
Beyond the practicalities of the requirements of the Local Market Exchange system, it is also ethically correct to keep the balance of power that accompanies use of currencies and finance in their most dispersed, local and transparent form, so that they cannot be used as a leverage tool within an oversized governance system that relies upon coercive control.
Local decentralised finance (DeFi) in the form of both paper or coin and local blockchain derived cryptocurrencies, based on an intrinsic population-based value and linked only by the Basic Living Standard, will assure our personal freedom from economic tyranny, in the most basic sense.
Supply chains of every kind must always be as simple as it’s possible for them to be. As it is through the accumulation of additional stops or steps in a supply chain that don’t add value, but add additional and unnecessary costs, where so many problems begin.
The roles that each person has within the locality-based economy will be redefined and reconsidered as the evolution of our new system takes hold.
Some forms of employment that are today highly regarded for all the wrong reasons will no longer be ‘needed’ and will no longer have any reason to exist.
Using Tech and AI for good: Developing the Local Market Exchange app
If you are one of the many people with an interest in new currencies, new ways of living and a new (or a return to) people-centric way of living you will already appreciate that a process of change and chaos is underway. Even if you are not sure what it all means.
Many of us find the idea that massive change can happen without us even being aware very challenging. So, the suggestion that the world we know could change in just about every way imaginable step-by-step is equally hard to accept. However, we all need to be open to the reality that the collapse of the system or any part of it doesn’t necessarily mean that absolutely everything stops.
Within the process of change that we are now experiencing, it could well be the case that because the world doesn’t stop many of us will continue to believe that nothing has changed.
This creates two specific dangers for us all:
That the people who believe nothing has changed will stand still, do nothing and allow those who have created all the social problems that we have now, to dictate and recreate a system that continues to work only for them, and:
That when things do reach a critical point and we are experiencing social disorder, people will not look to themselves and to our communities for the answers and the solutions, and instead will continue to listen to the same old sources and go around in circles – back to point 1!
Preparation today, is and will be one of the most effective ways to counteract and lessen the risk from the impact of change, whether that change is step-by-step, or should happen as part of a recognisable event.
More importantly, preparation today is the best way to help ourselves, the people we care about and everyone within the communities where we live.
There is no doubt that the long-term success of the Local Market Exchange and within locality-based economies will require the development of a new app-based exchange systems for foods, goods and services, and that these are fully interactive and linked to or with the fully localised or decentralised currencies that we need to create and correlate them with.
In time, Local Market Exchanges will require a localised or franchised version of an app that works as follows:
Operates within geographical parameters that are definable using existing postal codes or GPRS
Allow an item (or group of items) to be swapped directly for a rate of currency to be agreed, OR another item (or group of items) IF the two parties involved in the direct transaction should agree
Allows a source of community governance to set the values of basic or essential foods, goods and services, but prohibits any other kind of change
Shows what essentials foods, goods and services are available collectively to the community transparently at all times
Makes any goods that are not essential to community members, (which could be the surplus of otherwise essential foods etc.) available to other Local Market Exchange Franchises – in the order of prioritising immediate neighbours first
Is based on a membership structure that requires sign-in and acceptance of all terms
That will either be or can quickly and easily become fully interactive with a new Local Digital Currency that is directly linked to the number of ‘members’ in terms of the structure of its value, with the ability to change or rescind those values on the membership status of each member of that community group
That is fully open source
Each ‘franchise’ will be owned by the community that manages it, with a salary to be paid from the local governance body to those administering the system on behalf of it
Locality based economics revolve around the mechanics of a genuine minimum wage
The Basic Living Standard is based on what we would today recognise as a genuine minimum or living wage.
Genuine, because the Basic Living Standard is a minimum wage based on what it costs the employee to live and to support themselves. NOT on what the government has told employers it is acceptable for them to pay, which is less today, than it costs for anyone to live independently with all their essential needs met without benefits, charity or going into debt.
Today’s minimum or living wage is just a sum that is set by the government as the minimum amount per hour that every employer must pay.
The Basic Living Standard instead tells suppliers of essential foods, goods and services, what the recipient of The Basic Living Standard Wage will be able to pay for everything that is set within the standard. Suppliers will not be able to charge more for essential foods, goods and services, because The Basic Living Standard will be a universal framework rule.
It will be a legal requirement that every supplier provides essential foods, goods and services of some kind.
‘Luxury’ or ‘non-essential’ products must always be the secondary purpose, not the primary purpose of any business or organisation.
No business will be able to develop their primary business, based on what people can ‘afford’.
Valuing each person and the contribution they make
Through the creation and implementation of The Basic Living Standard, we will give back the real to each and every person who contributes to the community by working in any role, no matter how much it is paid or how it might be perceived.
It is essential for everyone to recognise the value to all of our lives, that contributions made within the most basic of roles actually have.
People who pick fruit. People who empty our bins. People who fix the roads. People who stack the supermarket shelves. People who deliver parcels and takeaways to our doors. People who make and serve our coffees. People who serve us a pint in the pub.
These are the people who undertake all of the very different tasks that make our life experiences easier in the real and everyday sense.
These are the people who must be recognised through the award of The Basic Living Standard Wage, so that contributing to all our lives by filling any of these roles can be a genuine and happy lifestyle choice.
The value of currency is anchored to the value of the contribution or input that each person makes
Money and cryptos or digital finance today have no real value, other than what any of us believe.
Today’s money or currency system may now be over, even though it hasn’t ended yet, but that doesn’t mean physical money in the form of paper/coins and cryptocurrencies won’t have a place in our future.
Local digital currencies, built on a Local Market Exchange platform or exchange, will be the best way for our communities and a world built on locality-based economics and microeconomies to thrive.
To make any form of currency work properly, it is necessary to give or attribute a system around them that underpins their value as a medium or a unit of exchange.
The basic unit of value in locality-based economics is the Basic Living Standard Wage, or any part or unit thereof.
However, the figure or the specific values agreed for The Basic Living Standard Wage is not the important factor.
Once the whole system works around The Basic Living Standard, the figure itself is a technicality.
It is the value or de facto guarantee that we attribute to the Basic Living Standard, where the importance of the whole principle must be placed.
Foundations of Value in locality based economics
For the purposes of illustration and suggestion, we will create a new unit of currency for locality-based economics and the new system itself.
We will name the currency a ‘Goal’ and give it ^ as its symbol.
So, if we begin with the BLSW being set at 75 units per agreed working week, it would be written like this: ^75.
^75 is the weekly rate of pay that each person will have available to them as a gross wage, from working a 40-hour week, before any deductions are made.
To establish the new system, each person within it must be given or awarded a residual value, so that the total value of the currency available within the system is always proportionally and directly related to the number of people who exist within it.
So, at the establishment of the new system, let’s say each person is awarded ^75.
The ^75 apportioned to each entrant is added to the Local Market Exchange balance sheet, so that an overall ‘market value’ and record of the ‘Goal currency’ in circulation always exists from that point.
The entrant can spend the ^75 or begin using it as a medium of exchange within the Local Market Exchange immediately. But the entrant can never withdraw or draw into this sum in cash or equivalent form.
When the entrant leaves the system, the ^75 must be removed from the Local Market Exchange Balance Sheet.
Newborn babies (and children under 14) would be added to the system @ ^25, with their ‘account’ being managed by their parents or guardians until they are 14 years of age, with a further ^50 added to their own independent account.
Whereas the above table illustrates monthly and annual equivalent values of all essential cost centres, the table below uses basic foods to show what the daily allowance (maximum) would be:
Essential Foods
Weekly Allowance ^
Daily Allowance ^
Meal Allowance ^
Basic Food
15
2.14
1.07
Essential basic foods are quite literally the ‘meat and two veg’ or very basic, healthy food options that are available, or will become readily available, once locality-based supply chain structures have been (re)established to create the microeconomies that our new localised world will require.
Once again, these are the foods that people need. Not the foods that people want.
Essential or basic foods typically remain identifiable in their prepared (cooked) form, with they were when they were in their pre-harvested form or the condition in which they entered the food chain.
The exceptions are good basic foods that have been through traditional forms of processing, such as bread and basic dairy products. Foods that can be produced through processes that can be powered by hand, or using energy in very sustainable forms, through processes of milling, baking or churning, that can be powered directly by wind or by water, without any reliance upon electrical power or energy in any other form.
Please remember, it will be perfectly normal to look at these figures and think ‘that doesn’t sound like a lot’. But that thinking relates to how things operate today, within a money-based system.
Locality based economics is people-centric or ‘people first’, and values driven.
The value of everything will be determined by people. Not by ‘market forces’ – which is profiteering or greed using another name.
Community Contributions: Our contribution to address shared need across the community
Another change that will be necessary for us to achieve a workable Basic Living Standard is our relationship with charity giving. How we pay for services in the community, and how we all give back or contribute in ways that give us ownership or a stake in the success of the society we are part of.
The fairest way to achieve personal buy-in and a pay-off that creates a positive impact on the world around us that we can see, will be for each person to give the community 10% of our working time or income – or the equivalent of one-half day working per week, through Community Contributions.
Many of us could easily use the specialist skills and experience that we have to offer during a three-and-a-half-hour weekly contribution of massive impact and contribution within public service delivery. We could also volunteer to support charities and public organisations with three and a half hours each week of whatever help they may need, where we cannot.
By providing such help and support, through a new local community services hub, linked to the revamped and localised system of governance, we will reduce the cost of the local public services that we still need. We will reduce our reliance on ‘professional’ government staff, and we will all be able to play a part in improving the experience that we all have of our local environment, which will help us all regain a healthy view and respect for all the public services and infrastructure that we share.
Community contributions: A public sector run by and for us all
The system of community contributions will allow the cost, influence and involvement of the public sector to be returned to the level where it should be, with its focus being service to the community and not as a business or sector in its own right as it is seen today by too many to be.
There will always be a need for full-time roles. But the emphasis will return to front line professionals that carry out purposeful and dedicated professional roles, such as Police Officers, Doctors, Nurses, Firefighters and Paramedics, rather than disproportionately sized backrooms and systems of managers behind them, that refocus energy and resources away from what public services are actually there for.
Taxation & community contributions in the locality based economy
Taxation would run not on a Pay as You Earn basis (as in the UK today) or as a simple tax on income as it is earned.
Taxation would run as a flat tax at the equivalent of 10% of income, OR the contribution of one-half days’ work, within any basic role that the community needs fulfilled, or the equivalent professional skill that the individual can offer – if and only their skillset, experience or knowledge is something that the community needs.
Community contributions rather than tax would be obligatory for a period of 5 years from the end of each person’s period of full-time study or apprenticeship (vocational pathway), which would normally be 21 years.
The half day to be worked as a contribution to the community would be given ‘back’ at any time during the standard working week which would be mornings and afternoons on Mondays to Fridays and Saturday mornings too.
Employers would be expected to release staff during the week, with any such absence made up on Saturday mornings.
Working from home (WFH) sports, spiritual well-being and time off
In an economy where you work only to live, rather than being expected to live to work, we will all be much happier with the way that our days and weeks are broken down.
A working week will cover five and a half days and be the same for everyone within the locality-based economy, with only very few public services needing to be operated around the clock.
Working from home (WFH) or hybrid working will be normal for every form of employment where no physical presence is required, with those who have to attend their place of employment to complete their work doing so very locally and paid higher remuneration if there is any need for them to travel beyond their locality.
Saturday afternoons should be dedicated to community activities and sport, which will always be participatory for those who wish to take part.
Sundays shouldn’t normally be commercial or work-focused in any way and should be a day of rest and spiritual development in whatever forms each person would choose that to be.
Weekdays are used for illustrative purposes only. Different Religions place different values on different days of the week, and there is nothing contrary to the purpose of the locality-based economy if rest days or spiritual days should be defined as a personal preference or choice. In fact, the overlap is likely to be beneficial to the community, ensuring that the number of those working when others with shared priorities are not, are kept to the absolute minimum in every respect.
Back Page
We can only solve the problems that society faces if we give the lowest paid the means and opportunity to earn enough to sustain themselves independently and without the need for support.
The national minimum or living wage will never achieve this, because within this broken financial system, the nearer the minimum wage gets to the true cost of living, the faster the cost of all the essentials that we all need will inflate or go up.
We need nothing less than a paradigm shift from a money-centric system to one that puts people first in every respect.
The Basic Living Standard introduces the principle of Locality Based Economics and offers the basis of a new financial system in which we can achieve financial freedom for ALL.
The Basic Living Standard was the second book in a series that I began writing about three years ago in early 2022 and has been featured throughout.
Each of the Books that follow are a variation on a shared theme, working very much under the principle that it is not only possible but actually healthy to be able to understand, value and even hold different views or perspectives of the same situation or set of circumstances at the same time, whether that be in the Past, Present or Future tense.
Equally, it is also important to be able to consider different pathways for the future that sit beyond what many consider to be the obvious, simply because the obvious itself is usually inextricably linked with what has already been done and what sits in the past.
All of the following titles are available to purchase as complete eBooks for Kindle from Amazon using the links provided.
Where indicated, titles may also be available to download FREE as PDF Copies from my Blogsite in different forms, using the links provided.
If you would like to discuss any of the works listed, please get in touch.
Adam Tugwell 