Campaign Option: Reclaim & Regrow
Essential Info
Corporations have wormed their way into every corner of our lives, ideas and desires, but arguably nowhere more fundamental than food production.
Many universities now have corporation-run food outlets on campus, for example Starbucks, and a vast number of school and college canteens, while not visibly being corporations, are in fact fun by Sedexho, who have a history of union-busting and aggressive privatisation. Agriculture accounts for 20% of the global green house gas emissions and mass food production affects people’s health, livelihoods, and is ultimately unsustainable.
Aim & Objectives
Challenge and eventually remove all food corporations from campus, and replace them with local, ethical alternatives.
Investigate all seemingly non-corporation outlets to ensure that they use local or ethically sourced produce.
Educate students about the alternatives available to them, and encourage the use of local farmers’ markets and the establishment of student-run cooperatives and allotments.
Promote better relations between students and local businesses, as a knock-on effect of increased education around the value of local businesses.
Targets & Strategies
This proposal allows for individual People & Planet groups to have as much involvement as they wish.
In order to remove corporations from campus, actions could include boycotting food outlets or university-based supermarkets. Students could also mandate the university to replace them with ethical alternatives, or campaign for an ethical consumption policy in their school or university. In universities and colleges where food outlets are not obviously corporate, People & Planet must investigate the sources of the produce sold.
There is also the opportunity for students to begin their own allotments and cooperatives, for example to begin a box-scheme, opening the possibility for collaboration with enterprise societies.
A main strand of this campaign would be educating the student body about the value of alternative consumption, mythbusting about big corporations, and raising awareness of where our food comes from.
There is also the possibility of collaboration with existing campaigns such as Tescopoly, Killer Coke, and the boycott of nestle which already exists in many universities.
Actions for Groups
- Student’s union motions
- Boycotts of unethical corporations on campus
- Alternatives: Co-Ops, Waste sharing, Allotments and Community Gardening
- Letter writing to universities and companies
- Petitions
- Education
- Stalls
- Street Theatre
- Debate/Round table discussion e.g. Should we kick unethical corporations off our campuses?
- Demonstration
- Events sampling local and ethical produce
- Posters and leaflets
- Occupations of unethical corporations on campus
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Existing campaigns we could work with.
- Food is a major part of people’s lives at work, leisure and out of necessity
- Affects nearly all campuses — even if there are no corporate chains this doesn’t mean that the contents of smaller shops and cafes will be ethical.
- Works with the community and small, ethical businesses and suppliers.
- Promotes healthy eating
- It would promote workers rights around the world
- Benefits farmers and workers here financially.
- There are specific goals i.e. kicking unethical corporates off campus.
- There is a range of actions possible direct and indirect, simple and involving expert opinion.
- Possibility of celebrity endorsements e.g. Hugh Fernley Whittingstall, Jamie Oliver
- Relevant to the entire network including school canteens.
- Promotes local and global citizenship
- Can involve network planning and actions within groups themselves. E.g. national actions against big companies and actions on campus.
- Uses People & Planet’s strengths as a student network; if everyone got involved it would make a big impact symbolically and actually.
- There is a large body of research and resources available.
Cons
- Challenging brand loyalty could be difficult
- It could be considered too similar to other campaigns from other groups — no P&P autonomy.
- Don’t want to alienate students and other staff of shops and corporates — need to work with them, not against them.
- It could be argued that people abroad, many in poor areas, could lose jobs if western societies stopped buying products from these companies.
