1960s Rebels: Craig Sams, Health Food Pioneer from Victoria & Albert Museum

In conjunction with their exhibition You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966 – 1970 (10 September 2016 – 26 February 2017), the Victoria and Albert have uploaded a series of videos interviewing 1960s Rebels including myself.

The late 1960s saw progressive ideas emanate from the countercultural underground and revolutionise society. Challenging oppressive, outdated norms and expectations, a small number of individuals brought about far-reaching changes as they sought to attain a better world. Their idealism and actions helped mobilise a movement which continues to inspire modern activists and shape how we live today.

How to regenerate organic – privatize it

How can we free organic from its self-imposed bureaucratic box? We could always ask Brussels to privatize us, says Craig Sams

Q. What do Slow Food, LEAF, Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance, Cosmos, Marine Stewardship Council, Red Tractor, Vegan, Vegetarian, Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) and Woodmark all have in common?

A. They all operate trusted authentication symbols that are 100% independent. They can decide what they can certify and how they can certify.

Q. What do the Soil Association, Ecocert, EKO, KRAV, Nature et Progres, OCIA, QAI, OFF, OF&G and 400 or so other organic symbols have in common?

A. They operate trusted authentication symbols that are 100% Government-controlled. They cannot decide what they can certify and how they can certify.

This ‘nationalisation’ of organic certification didn’t happen by accident or by force, we actually asked for it. The independent symbols have grown organically to global respect and stature while the organic ‘brands’ have been stifled in their self-imposed bureaucratic box.

“This ‘nationalisation’ of organic certification didn’t happen by accident or by force, we actually asked for it”

Back in the late 1980s I got to know key players at the Soil Association (up till then we were OF&G licensees). When I heard they were seeking to get the EU to enforce organic standards I was dismayed. Francis Blake of IFOAM and the Soil Association told me that if I wanted to have any influence I should stand for the Soil Association board. I did and didn’t get elected. Boo Hoo. But the Council wanted me anyway and appointed me Treasurer In 1990. I argued from within against letting our precious organic standards go under the control of the agricultural departments which subsidised industrial farming and were 100% behind GMOs. Regrettably the train had already left the station and, short of tying myself to the tracks, there was nothing I could do to stop it.

The infant organic industry was stressed about fraudulent claims and thought calling in big brother would stop that. In fact the opposite happened. When the Soil Association sampled a licensee’s oat flakes a few years ago and found chlormequat residues at quite a high level they told the licensee to take them off the market. Defra and UKAS and the oat processor who supplied them all cried foul. The paperwork was in order, that was all that mattered to the enforcers. The Soil Association came close to being banned from certifying but luckily the horsemeat scandal broke out and the EU said lab sampling of products should be permitted.

Not long ago the most venerable players of the organic world came together, along with the new-kid-on-the-block Regeneration International, to call for “Organic 3.0,” a nice term for evolved organic standards that combine elements of Slow Food, Fairtrade and a less oppressive certification regime for small farmers or farmers who regularly perform well on inspections. It’s a great idea and just the breath of fresh air that the organic movement needs. Meanwhile the EU organic officials are mired in endless delays just to bring about a much-needed update of existing organic standards. The latest review should have been completed long ago and is still years away. The consensus of Organic 3.0 hasn’t helped move things along in Brussels.

Regeneration International and IFOAM are setting their sights on the COP 22 convention in Marrakech in November 2016. This is the follow up to the Paris COP 21 climate talks last November. More than 170 countries have signed up to the Paris agreement, but the detail is still fluffy. Marrakech will focus on how farming and sequestration of carbon in the soil can stop global warming. We are losing 39 football fields of soil every minute thanks to farming – not one of those football fields is organic. The French will be promoting ‘4 per 1000.’ They say if we could increase soil organic matter by 0.04% each year it would offset ALL of our annual global greenhouse gas emissions. Organic farming increases soil organic matter by 0.1% per year, or ’10 per 1000.’ So organic’s the easy route to compliance with the Paris agreement and it regenerates soil for future generations instead of stealing it from them for cheap food today. With composting, crop rotation, fallowing, agroforestry, permaculture, biochar and other organic inputs farming could easily be 100% of the solution to global warming instead of 30% of the problem. But the Governments that control farming are hostages to the agribusiness lobby. If we can’t beat them can we go around them?

All those other independent organisations need the organic movement to join forces with them, indeed lead them. Organic agriculture is at the heart of the drive towards our shared environmental goals. Can we just ask Brussels nicely to privatise us? It works for everything else. Might be worth a go. The existing regulations cover claims like ‘organic,’ ‘biological, ‘økologisk’ or ‘Ecological’, so if privatization was off the menu and we wanted our freedom we’d need to find a new name to break free of Brussels and Washington.

Regeneration International, born out of the Organic Consumers Association, applies organic principles to food, climate, biodiversity, small farmers and health. So, how about ‘Regenerative?’

Civilising influences

The ancient Mayan civilisation collapsed over a thousand years ago, but its people lived on and are now part of a new ‘civilisation’ – of how business is done, writes Craig Sams

I first visited Belize in 1987 to film the Deer Dance of the Maya because it was, according to the Maya Calendar, the ‘Harmonic Convergence’ – the August 17 alignment of the planets that was the lead-in to the 2012 excitement that various overexcited doomsayers are saying is ‘the end of the world.’  In fact, the Maya Calendar is clear, there is a paradigm shift taking place.  We come to the end of a 5200-year Great Cycle of History on December 21st 2012, but the assumption is that we will move to a higher spiritual dimension.  It will signal the end of the old world of greed and exploitation and herald the onset of a new age of connectedness and shared mutual interest.   At least that’s what we thought when we went to Belize in 1987 while simultaneously ‘sun dancers’ stood on Glastonbury Tor holding hands, with similar events at other sacred spots like Chaco Canyon, Machu Picchu and Stonehenge.  Shirley MacLaine, Timothy Leary and John Denver were all participating.

While I was in Belize I met some cocoa growers and the first little seeds of an idea started to germinate in some fertile corner of my skull.  4 years later we had launched Green & Black’s.   We had some pretty clear objectives from day one:

– we’d pay a fair price to encourage increased production and farmer income;

– the cocoa beans would be organic and sustainably produced;

– no exploitation of children and respect for women’s rights;

– no exposure to toxic pesticides or fungicides

– the environment would be protected and ecosystems kept intact.

In 1993 we pumped $20,000 cash into underpinning the producer cooperatives that would make it happen.

Green & Black’s had these principles embedded in its DNA from birth.  We won the Ethical Consumer Award, the Worldaware award and became the first Fairtrade marked product.  Sure, it tasted good, so we won awards for that, but the big prize was that we proved it was possible to do good and do well without compromise.  Now this sort of thinking isn’t just commonplace, it’s what conscientious customers expect.  But what about Big Business?

When Cadbury’s took over the Green & Black’s in 2005 the hooting and hollering reached a crescendo.  Everybody expected them to drop organic, drop Fairtrade and turn Green & Black’s into a high-class variant of Dairy Milk.  In fact they helped the Maya growers in Belize recover from the terrible damage from Hurricane Iris and at the same time they learned a great deal about how cacao can be grown without chemicals and by small farmers rather than on plantations.   In 2008 Cadbury announced their Cocoa Partnership, a £45 million fund to help improve living conditions among farmers in Ghana and to help improve declining yields.  And they took Dairy Milk Fairtrade.

Then Kraft took over Cadbury.  More weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. More angry emails in my inbox.

Recently Kraft, amoeba-like, divided and the new chocolate entity is called Mondelez International.  At the International Cocoa Organisation conference last month in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Tim Cofer, CEO of Mondelez announced an upgrade to the £45 million Cadbury Cocoa Partnership.  It’s now a $400 million “Cocoa Life” programme, working with UNDP, WWF and Anti-Slavery International to improve the lives of cocoa farmers.  It has 4 main targets

1. Help farmers improve yields and increase incomes

2. Create positive communities and promote gender equality

3. Eliminate child labour by attacking its root causes

4. Protect the environment so that cocoa farming is viable for future generations

Sounds familiar?   It’s uncannily similar to the founding principles of Green & Black’s.  OK, it’s 20,000 times as much money as we invested, but we’re talking a major initiative to transform the lives of a million cocoa growers and ensure that the next generation would rather grow cacao than go and drive taxicabs in Accra or Abidjan.

The cynic in me says this is naked self-interest.  The average age of a cocoa farmer is 60 and you can’t make chocolate (or money) without cocoa beans.  But it’s kinda nice that it is happening in 2012, when the Maya calendar says we are going to embark on a new, more spiritually enlightened age of connectedness and shared mutual interest in each other’s well-being.