Talk to the Jersey Methodist Womens Luncheon Club

I was ask by the club to give a talk - I gave this one, a variation on the concept of Fair Trade. Enjoy!

I’ve been running Cooper’s for the past 20 years – our core business has always been to supply tea, coffee and associated products to the catering industry. It seems that there has never been a period without some form of dramatic change to which we have had to adapt.
When I took over at the end of the 1980’s tourism on Jersey was at its peak – we didn’t know it at the time, but the introduction of low cost airlines such as Easyjet and Ryanair combined with the launch of the Internet were all going to change the face of European air travel and tourism as we had known it on Jersey forever and as with all cataclysmic changes our tourism industry found it very hard to adapt to this brave new world; where one minute you’ve had a very successful business and the next you’re out of business. Obsolete; deleted by the march of technology and a world waking up to globalisation. However in business where one door shuts another opens and for Coopers that door was opened by Starbucks, originally a small coffee business that started life with around 5 stores in Seattle some 6,000 miles away from this Island. Before we knew it the word speciality coffee came into our lexicon. A whole new language was born and at the same time a huge new interest in coffee was ignited. Coopers in the mid 1990’s found themselves in a hugely fashionable business; a business that allowed us to really differentiate ourselves by becoming a one-stop shop for all things coffee. In the mean time Starbucks has developed into a global behemoth of around 13,000 stores worldwide.
And so the brave new world of the global village had been born. Food that once upon a time was only available seasonally is now available all year round. Clothing once made in the British Isles is now made in places like India or the Philippines for a tenth of the price it once was. Technology improvements have also meant that today we have more choice than ever before. As a comparison the average household just after the 2nd world war spent 30% of their income on food, today that average has dropped to just 10%. So why then today do we have organisation such as the Fair Trade foundation? Why do we talk about sustainability and how unsustainable our current way of life is? Why does extreme wealth seem to fall into fewer and fewer hands? Surely the result of global trade is that everyone gets a piece of the economic action? The answer is yes they do, but the proverbial global playing field isn’t quite as flat as we’d like to think and globalisation has made some organisations extraordinarily powerful whilst at the same time millions of individuals powerless as they lose control of the very resources upon which they rely for their day to day existence. In my industry coffee, the world is dominated by 4 major roasters. Nestle, Kraft, Proctor & Gamble and ........ As documented in their 2003 publication Mugged; poverty in your coffee cup Oxfam for the first time highlighted how these organisations are able to play countries off against each other in the global equivalent of a Dutch auction – that is buying from the lowest bidder.
When millions of pounds are at stake many countries have little choice but to take part in a race to the bottom and all the economic consequences that come with that non-choice. At last we in the west through the media have begun to understand the consequences of continually wanting more and cheaper stuff. As Fair Trade fortnight comes to an end I believe it’s thrown yet another dilemma at our own society, particularly in light of recent events, namely the global meltdown of the financial markets.
After all what is the concept behind Fair Trade? Well it’s about rebuilding communities – the premium you or I pay for say Fair trade certified bananas is intended to go towards a project that is of benefit to the whole community where that product is grown. I’ve seen with my own eyes a computer room that has been kitted out with the proceeds of the “social premium” in Brazil. The intention is to give that community a long term future; something we thought only we in the west ever considered. The point I make is that we are doing something tangible. What a contrast then with the huge wealth that is supposedly created by our own financial institutions. To use a term coined by David Korten an American academic; the Phantom wealth of the finance markets. Without doing anything stock markets seemed to rise inexorably. Without doing anything the price of houses on Jersey continually increase. Without seemingly doing anything those who have, have more whilst the rest increasingly struggle. But as we have just seen so much of what we once thought was true now appears to be like so much smoke and mirrors. It hasn’t been real wealth that has resulted in the average family house in Jersey now costing around £500,000, it’s debt. In order to lend more Banks have simply created debt; debt that we now know was based upon what is now described as “toxic assets”, the now infamous NINJA loans sliced and diced until our leading institutions thought they were worth something.
This is why shares in such great institutions as the Royal Bank of Scotland once valued at £6.00 in 2007 today languish at 20p? That’s how an organisation can lose £24 billion, £24 billion! in one year; the biggest corporate loss in history thus wiping out all the profits that organisation has made in over 3 years and destroy the value of hard saved for pension schemes? A money for nothing economy generates only phantom wealth and envy, what we need is an agenda for a new economy. An economy built on community interest, collective interest, the wealth of our own relationships, not monetary relationships. I believe as Peggy Noonan, a columnist for the New York Times does that we are approaching a time where “everything will be local”. I don’t mean that we’ll start building cars locally; what I do mean though is that we’ll start to look at our own resources and naturally question how we can incorporate them in our community for the benefit of our community.
This summer 1,000 youngsters will leave education in search of employment. We’ve given them a great education yet they will struggle to get employment; many will leave the Island, many more will remain at home playing computer games; some will simply go out looking for trouble; the most undervalued, bored, Police time wasters in the world. What could they be doing for our community whilst waiting for that first job opportunity? How much more valued would they feel if they knew that they were adding to the wealth of our community and that their effort was valued. So how you may well ask does all of this relate to you? How can you make a difference? It reminds me of a quote by John F Kennedy which I paraphrase here “ask not what your Island can do for you — ask what you can do for your Island”.
The other day I was with a very frustrated senior civil servant talking about the latest States strategic report and he said to me – “why is it the first thing people turn to when there is a problem is the State?” That’s a very good question, we don’t want a nanny state, yet we expect Government to solve our economy – supply the magic pill; yet in reality the economy, society, community is a problem for all of us to solve not just a handful of elected officials.
As I look around this room today, how much collective knowledge and wisdom is there stored in your heads? Real wealth not phantom wealth; ask yourself what am I doing with that resource my personal wealth of knowledge and wisdom to help my community? The problem is that so many people simply don’t appreciate the wealth of knowledge and experience that they possess – As an example a couple of weeks ago I stood next to a retired farmer as we watched half a dozen tractors from temps passé plough a small field. As I stood there chatting I realised just how much knowledge this man had to do with local food production; surely this knowledge can’t simply go with him to the grave? What if we were no longer able to cost effectively import food? Oil after all isn’t going to be around forever; where will we look for the knowledge that has been passed down to previous generations and stopped at ours because we now rely on someone else to grow our food?
Your generation still retains this knowledge – you owe it to the next generation to ensure that that knowledge is not lost whatever it is. Isn’t it time that Jersey had its own Wikipedia – an equivalent to that world famous on-line encyclopaedia?
We’re living in a fast changing society; a society whose changing demographics will mean that in the not too dim and distant future those in work will be significantly outnumbered by those who have retired. We have already reached the point where the number of people over the age of 60 outnumbers those under the age of 16. That has huge economic implications if we measure things in purely monetary terms, but it is also a huge opportunity to create the real wealth of which I have spoken. The wealth of community; thinking up better ways to harness the energy of our society for the benefit of all. What opportunities do you think that you could suggest; how could this be brought together in a new community manifesto? We urgently need diversity in our economy – diversity will create opportunity for our young people; but the ideas for what exactly that diversity is, or looks like comes from all of us. We all have a part to play. But the reality right now is summed up by the building of a new incinerator. Nothing highlights for me more the total bankruptcy of ideas that currently pervades society than the building of this monstrous new £106 million incinerator. How any sustainable society can think that burning more waste than ever before is the way to make that paradigm shift is completely beyond me. But how many people realistically took part in the debate; a tiny percentage, the rest just shrugged their shoulders; lost in the concerns of a me first society rather than the interests of our wider community. Ultimately we get what we deserve. We all need to re-engage; re-organise and realise that real wealth comes from inside and that we each have a part to play in the agenda for a new economy.