Consider a Loaf.
Or
How we lost the Local
Consider a Loaf…in the long past it was baked at home, then as time went on it was purchased from a village shop that baked it on the premises, then from a shop in the local town that had baked it, then from a shop in the local town that purchased it from a local bakery, then from a supermarket in the local town that purchased from a regional bakery, then from a supermarket on a retail park that purchased it from a national food company, and now it is produced by a multinational company, ordered online, and delivered from a warehouse by an international company to the house where once the residents baked their own bread.
The residents of that house used to bake the bread, depending on practical circumstances, as they liked, each household, even each loaf or batch, would be slightly different. Local custom and ingredients would contribute to the character of the bread. When shops increased the choice of bread narrowed to loaves the retailers could sell in sufficient numbers, or at a sufficient price, to be commercially worthwhile. As consumer regulations then emerged the variety of the bread available became even more restricted, regulations at first set by local authorities, then national authorities, and now by international authorities. Even nations that are not members of international regulatory bodies have to abide by their regulations if they want to sell them bread and other produce, and as it is cheaper to have one production line for national and international trade than two separate lines so the economic gravity pulls toward more standardisation. Regulation, mass production, and unit costs iron out local variety.
Bread once tasted local; characterised by local ingredients, shaped by local traditions, made by an individual hand. Increasingly bread tastes of nowhere; characterised by generality, shaped by minimising costs, made by standardised production. The only creativity and initiative left to the individual is a choice between basic or luxury, or the healthy option, a choice that is largely about price, and the colour of the wrapper.
You can of course buy an artisan baked loaf in reproduction of what once was.
The shift from local production has eaten diversity, and local initiative, and individual creativity, until the only significant difference in loaves is the sales pitch.
We have traded the convenience of baking the bread at home, or fetching it from the local shop, for the inconvenience of driving to a retail park. We have traded time spent in baking bread for time spent in earning money to buy bread. We have traded individual initiative and creativity for consumer choice. We have traded local traditions and identity for corporate image and brand loyalty.
At least home working and internet shopping brings convenience back to the domestic level, but at the cost of losing social contact with neighbours and colleagues, and all this shift away from the local inevitably has a cost on the environment, the food-miles in a loaf produced, hauled, warehoused, and delivered, are considerably more than someone walking to the village shop or baking the bread at home.
What prompts this loaf rant?
I recently read ‘The History of Ryedale: From Earliest Times to the Year 2003’by John Rushton, a book that does exactly what it says in the title. It is well researched, crammed with local detail, and manages to describe big historical processes from a local perspective. It is perhaps unfortunate that it is written like a reference book rather than a narrative, but not everyone has the gift for storytelling.
This book reminded me of something I have been considering for a while, the slow loss over time of local identities. John Rushton’s book chronicles over hundreds of years the rise and fall of communities in Ryedale. Political power, economic activity, and social and cultural life have increasingly drained away from local communities to regional or national, or even international levels. This weakening of local identity gained momentum as rural areas lost population and urban areas grew, communities once settled had to migrate for employment, economic activity became more concentrated in urban areas, especially in London and the South, and local amenities such as shops, churches, clubs, and pubs closed.
A village once might have had a few shops, several resident trades, a mill, and a social life made up of festivals, amateur concerts, clubs, and the common life created by church and chapel. Local areas once had meaningful political control over planning and development of key infrastructure, and as a consequence participation and interest in local government was relatively high.
Now a village is likely to have no shops, very few employment opportunities, no pub, no resident Vicar, next to no clubs or social life, and very low participation in the much reduced tasks of local government. People are less likely to have significant social contact with other people in the village, more likely to work away, more likely to originate from away, more likely to shop away, or shop online, and thus they have less connection to the area. Often the church and the local school are the last remnants of a once complex and thriving village life. It’s not just villages either, towns, regional cities, and nations, are all experiencing a slow pull away of local control and identity.
It makes me wonder how far the gravitational pull from local to regional and national and international, will take us?
Will we all work for international companies?
Shop with international retailers?
Purchase global brands?
Get our entertainment from global corporations?
Follow the same manufactured fashions?
Will our accents, dialects, even our languages meld into one?
Free from the culture and morality that shaped our communities who would we become? Would we all share a common bland identity based on international corporate capitalism? Are unit costs, mass consumption, mass production, retail outlets, mass advertising, consumer choice, management, product development, and ever expanding roads, rail, freight, overheads and sewers, are these to be the basis of our identity instead of our local cultural traditions, ideologies and religious beliefs? Will we then believe in the same lowest common denominator Creed?
And would this be a better world? Would blander people behave better? Free from difference would we at last be able to live together, or would the desire for power, and competition for scarce resources, still pitch us into periodical conflicts?
Can we really not learn to live together as different characteristic peoples?
Perhaps that was too many grandiose questions.
I once overheard a conversation between and plumber and his mother in a café in a small North Yorkshire town. He was complaining about his work since the local company that employed him was taken over by a national company. Jobs were now directed by a remote headquarters, I think he said it was in Kent. He explained that the staff in the headquarters had no understanding of the geography of North Yorkshire. He was being sent to do jobs miles apart when jobs in the same area could have been collected together to save time and unnecessary travel. He explained that some “youth”, who had neither plumbing experience nor local knowledge, took customer calls and handed out the jobs. Not that he thought it was the youth’s fault as he was employed on the minimum wage and was doing his best given the limited training and incentives he had been given, the trouble was the company didn’t trust local employees to make decisions and prioritise their work. He regretted that he didn’t have time to chat with customers anymore, or to take time to do a good job when a cheap fix would do, or to help people out when there was no return to be had, all of which he reckoned would help the reputation of the firm if he could get on and do these things. He clearly felt disenfranchised.
That’s my point.
Local is better.
Pictured: a loaf baked by our neighbours in a traditional small loaf tin using organic ingredients tailored to produce their preferred taste and texture, and offered to us out of Christian generosity.
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