Mangetout

[This is a]n insightful and thought-provoking documentary tracing the journey made by mangetout peas from a Zimbabwean farm to British shops and a dinner-party table in north London. The lives of farmers are contrasted sharply with supermarket policy and consumer expectations (Source: BBC 2005, np link).

[It’s o]stensibly a double-headed look at this designer pea, from the filigree care with which it’s grown for Tesco in Zimbabwe to the indifference with which it’s eaten in Britain (Source: Ferguson 1997, p.65)

As contentious statements go, the opening to last night’s Modern Times: Mange tout took the biscuit; in fact it made off with several bourbons and a gypsy cream. ‘If you look hard enough at a vegetable,’ it said, ‘you can catch a glimpse of all the people who’ve come into contact with it’ … Mark Phillips, the producer of Mangetout, was obviously rash to generalise from his own experience, but this delightful film certainly demonstrated that if a documentary film-maker with an eye for colour looked long enough at a vegetable, the result was extremely worthwhile. … If you ever saw that troubling old advert for Del Monte tinned fruit – ‘The man from Del Monte say yes!’ – it was like that, only longer (Source: Truss 1997, np).

In English supermarkets, customers leant on trolleys and depressingly denied all knowledge of the mangetout’s origins. ‘China,’ they hazarded, wildly. Asked to guess the whereabouts of Zimbabwe, they were equally clueless. ‘Africa?’ was a lucky hit, but spoilt by ‘Is it the capital?’ (Source: Truss 1997, np).

[It f]ollows Mark Dady the produce buyer on his annual visit to the Chipaware farm and Claire Montague who throws a dinner party serving mange tout to her guests. Looks at the food people eat, those who grow it and the supermarkets that sell it. Considers how supermarkets increase sales of a single vegetable, what the working conditions are like for those who grow the crop, and who the consumers are. Illustrated by the growing of mangetout on a farm in Zimbabwe for the Tesco chain of supermarkets. Follows a produce buyer from the company on his annual visit to the farm, and features a society hostess serving the vegetable to her dinner party guests (Source: BFI nd, np link).

A noisy dinner party in Basingstoke: mange tout is about to be served. A vegetable farm in Zimbabwe: the man from Tesco is about to arrive. Grown with reverence, eaten with indifference. This is the entertaining world of the designer pea. Mark Phillips’ amusing and thought-provoking film [is] about the food we eat, the people who grow it, and the supermarkets that sell it to us. … ‘Mange Tout’ means ‘eat everything’ in French and you may wind up feeling that film has done precisely that to British upper middle class. In looking behind the economic and social implications of exporting this vegetable delicacy from Zimbabwe, some serious questions are raised about how we think about how well we eat. It does it with the look of a high budget advertisement (Source: Anon nd, np).

The beauty of mange tout peas is they don’t roll off your knife. This makes them popular at smart dinner parties. Mange Tout (Modern Times BBC2), a documentary on the Man from Del Monte theme, was a runaway winner from the moment Blessing, a foreman on the pea farm, drew an outline of Africa in the lion-coloured earth and wrote Tesco above it like the name of some fabled, undiscovered country. ‘I’ve never been there but I have the imagination of it. I take it to be quite superior, quite magnificent.’ This is an impression Mark Dady, Tesco’s veg buyer, is happy to cultivate. Mange tout, said Mark, is a new product vis-a-vis the banana. There is a huge market out there for mange tout if only people could be persuaded to eat the stuff. Every year he and his retinue visit the Zimbabwe farm (at the farmer’s expense) to urge him on. ‘I want to be convinced of his on-going loyalty and commitment. If there’s only one mange tout in Zimbabwe I want to be sure he puts a Tesco label on it.’ The labourers bent over the mange tout. Mange tout must not bend over. Tesco want them straight and identical like green sardines. Blessing (the names alone are worth the price of admission) held a curved pod and a straight one. ‘We treat them like children, this one is a sick child. This one a healthy child. What we aim for is this good child.’ The language of the workers was extraordinarily vivid. Imagery came to them like breathing (Source: Banks-Smith 1997, p.26).

Centre-stage was Tescoman’s visit to the mangetout farm, where – in our name – he capriciously bullied and chivvied the farmers into producing standard-size mangetout for as little as possible (Source: Aaronovitch 1997, p.16).

For Mark’s arrival, farm owner Chris Kay urged the workers on in ‘a spit and polish operation’. Everything had to be perfect for the great man from Tesco (Source: Holt 1997, p.5).

[Dady is a] finicky buyer of mange tout – snow peas – [and] considers the current crop is 2mm too long, but while his purchase is big business and he intends to make mange tout a designer vegetable on British tables (Source: Oliver 1997, p.27).

[Here] this jargon- spouting specimen of modern management was feted by the children of an area dependent on Tesco’s contract with the local producers (Source: Aaronovitch 1997, p.16).

[The film] offers terrifying footage of the need – nay, the love – an entire African village has for their ‘king’, a man called, dammit, Mark, who works in marketing for Tesco. They sing him anthems, they bring him gifts, they dance for him, they fly his flag, they worship what they truly believe is called the land of Tesco, for it keeps them alive (Source: Ferguson 1997, p.65)

Mark arrived and not only was Tesco on top of the ladder, it was on top of a flagpole too. In an astonishing ceremony, Tesco’s red and white flag was raised to the top of the pole while local children sang the Tesco song and danced he Tesco dance. ‘Down the valley, up the mountain / Tesco’s our dear friend / Thank you, Tesco, we shall always remember you / As, our best buyer and best friend.’ Mark smiled benignly, but not, of course, openly enough to jeopardise his air of imperial hauteur (Source: Holt 1997, p.5).

Workers on the Chiparawe farm thought that Tesco was a foreign country – they offered it gifts, sang songs of dedication to their ‘dear friend’ Tesco and worked under the shadow of a large Tesco flag. ‘I’ve never been there but I can imagine it. I take it to be quite superior, quite magnificent,’ was how Blessing Chingwaru, chief mange-tout picker at Chiparawe, described the mythical Republic of Tesco (Source: Hall 2005, p.7).

Blessing always spoke of Tesco in terms of a visiting royalty. The Queen would have recognised the form. The VIPs sitting in the dappled shade, the Tesco flag, the drumming, the dancing. The song of welcome: ‘Up the mountain, down the valley, Tesco is our dear friend.’ The speech of praise: ‘Chiparawe peas! What a delicious meal! All people enjoy eating peas and beans.’ This was more tactful than true. Local people don’t like mange tout. Every week four tons, which fall short of Tesco’s exacting standards, are fed to cows, who seemed to appreciate them. So do caterpillars (Source: Banks-Smith 1997, p.26).

Grannie (who is, as it happens, young and beautiful) is a caterpillar picker. Mark Phillips, the producer and director, must be a sympathetic listener. The workers talked to him with moving candour. When she was 17, Grannie gave birth to a daughter, Memory. ‘What my father decided was to kill me because I had spoiled my life. He was preparing me to go to agricultural college. He had already paid money for me to go. It was not refundable. He was very, very angry. He said, ‘You must not come to this place again.” When her husband went to jail, Grannie wanted to kill herself anyway. This time her mother intervened. ‘She told me not to do that. She said, ‘We’re here to help you. What will Memory do when you are dead and she doesn’t know her father? Find a job and save money for your kid for her to have a better life than what you did.” So she kills caterpillars for a living. ‘I’m doing it for the children like a soldier going to a war, not wanting to fight. I remember when I was at school and life was running like water but now it’s too hard, like grinding meal. If you want to become a king you must work like a slave.’ What a story and what a prose style. Grannie is a writer (Source: Banks-Smith 1997, p.26).

You see how dependent the workers are on the supermarket’s business. ‘If the king is not satisfied, you simply do away with the community,’ says Blessing, recognising that the social fabric of the surrounding area is at the produce buyer’s mercy (Source: Bellos 1997, p.4).

The global capitalist intricacies … are dealt with by guests at a dinner-party in Basingstoke. There’s Claire, the hostess. There’s Gwen and Francis, who are something in financial services. And there’s George … (Source: Ferguson 1997, p.65).

… [and] Ben and Frances, ‘both in financial services’ (Source: Holt 1997, p.5).

[Here, t]he short and simple annals of the poor were intercut with a champagne-fuelled dinner party … (Source: Banks-Smith 1997, p.26).

… [where diners] ate the peas between outbursts of smug crassness, [as] the African pickers were being treated as slaves (Source: Holt 1997, p.5).

[Thy] discuss the moral relativities of life in Basingstoke and life for the pea-growers of Chiparawe farm. ‘I mean,’ says George, laughing, ‘I mean … we were exploited. Exploitation develops riches, so people become wealthy, so they … well, then they go from a stage of exploitee to … to …’ The sheer wrong-headedness of his argument actually defeats him, so he resorts to muttered affirmations that a) it’s good to suffer, and b) we live in the real world, returning to his theme with each passing bottle. Later, the others chip in, similarly defensive, increasingly surreal. ‘Survival in this country (Britain) is probably relatively pretty tough … probably tougher than it is in the Third World. Maybe they’re better off than we are, at the end of the day’ (Source: Ferguson 1997, p.65).

[T]he dinner party conversation had gone intellectual. ‘Exploitation is part of evolution progression. The journey from exploitee to exploiter is …’ said one of the financial services guests, before being cut off by a contribution from a representative of the Basingstoke Women in Business group. The camera zoomed in on a bowl of steaming mange tout peas. Cut back to Zimbabwe. Mark and his Tesco assistant were opening gifts from the local children. Like a pair of supermarket feudal lords, the lads smiled again and nodded, not, it seemed, in gratitude, but merely to emphasise the new world order with patronising protocol. There they were – a pair of sharpies in suits and striped shirts – reps for the great white empire of capital without even the decency to be embarrassed. ‘These people (African farm workers) can’t cope with our mentality – the motor car, the lathe. ..’ a voice was bellowing at the dinner party (Source: Holt 1997. p.5).

The Zimbabweans, who were all called names like Blessing and Memory, spoke of their hopes and hardships in beautiful, lyrical English. But cut into their testimony was a Home Counties dinner party that could have been scripted by a playwright. Here the touts mangeurs – middle class, middle-aged, articulate men – pontificated about the third world, with an effortless arrogance matched only by their incapacity to allow the women (generally more thoughtful) to intervene. The point was not that these men were particularly dreadful in their facile adumbration of the general laws of nature (the ‘naturalness’ of exploitation, survival of the fittest, the blessed state of having few possessions, etc), but that they were so like us – only a tiny bit more so. Nor were they entirely wrong in their tongue pictures of how the world works. Should we stop eating the mangetout pea because we disapprove of Tesco’s bullying – in which case Blessing and Memory suffer? Or should we go on buying, thus vindicating Tescoman’s trading philosophy (Source: Aaronovitch 1997, p.16)?

[T]here are questions as to whether the pea pickers are being exploited (Source: Oliver 1997, p.27).

Wait till the end, for the answer to how much they’re paid at Chiparawe (Source: Ferguson 1997, p.65).

[T]he pickers made roughly one penny for every 45p made by the farmer and every 68p made by the buyers. Tesco sells 150 grams of mange tout peas (1p worth for a picker) for 99p (Source: Holt 1997, p.5).

‘Crikey,’ said [The Tesco buyer] Mark [Dady], ‘We’re not a charity’ … (Source: Banks-Smith 1997, p.26).

… when pushed to defend the quest for more profits (Source: Bellos 1997, p.4).

Before this visit [the pickers] were paid for every pea they picked. Tesco recommended an improvement. Only perfect peas should be picked and paid for. Some of the workers realised their wages would be significantly reduced (Source: Banks-Smith 1997, p.26).

Instead of getting something for every mange-tout picked, they will only be paid for ones good enough for export. It appears this will mean a drop in wages of 25-30 per cent. It also comes over that the supermarket would drop the supplier immediately if that was considered commercially prudent, regardless of the impact on local livelihoods (Source: Bellos 1997, p.4).

Give ‘em strong narratives, get it moving chop, chop, chop, sexy images and Gerard Depardieu look-alikes… And keep [it] funny for heavens sake! The ratings war is on and the soldiers of the documentary brigade are in the trenches. Do we stop to reconsider? Do we care, or just keep shooting for a bigger audience (Source: Anon nd, np)?

All the tricks are there, of course: the wide-angle white-light filming in Britain that makes every supermarket shopper look turnip-ghost ugly and security-guard stupid, then the long, loving African shots, pregnant with colour and faded to thoughtful silence. But … hey, why be fair? And the fact it’s shot through with such fierce wit and hard work is a lesson for us all: that outstanding chances to make a point can be lost by those who insist on confusing seriousness with solemnity (Source: Ferguson 1997, p.65).

One of the revealing aspects of this film was the relative levels of information about, or ignorance of, the other displayed by the producers and consumers. As might be expected, the supermarket shoppers interviewed had hardly any idea where the peas originated, or indeed of where Zimbabwe actually was, and scarcely any interest in the conditions of production of the commodity. By contrast, the farm workers interviewed showed a sharp sense of the distanciated exchange relationship which is central to their lives. This extended from a subtle sense of the hierarchy of demand to be satisfied in the transnational operation and the importance of maintaining the exacting standards of quality of the product ‘demanded’ by the unseen consumer, to a sophisticated awareness of the importance of bringing foreign exchange into the Zimbabwean economy. But there was also evident a rich, imaginative mythical construction of what life for the inhabitants of the ‘Kingdom of Tesco’ to the north must be like, which contrasted sharply with the relative imaginative poverty of the British consumers (Source: Tomlinson 1999, p.136).

Anyone see the BBC 4 documentary 4 last night about how mange tout is grown in Zimbabwe for the Tesco product buyers? Very simple film – following the journey of the peas from a farm, through the hands of the pickers and caterpillar killers and so on, until the end up in an English supermarket and on a dinner table of some drunken white prats. Class. The whole thing just showed Tesco up for being a colonial ‘Man from Del Monte’, with the village schoolchildren singing these beautiful but bizarre songs about how Tesco is lovely. Watch out if it’s repeated (Source: Micko 1999, np).

One of the revealing aspects of this film was the relative levels of information about, or ignorance of, the other displayed by the producers and consumers. As might be expected, the supermarket shoppers interviewed had hardly any idea where the peas originated, or indeed of where Zimbabwe actually was, and scarcely any interest in the conditions of production of the commodity. By contrast, the farm workers interviewed showed a sharp sense of the distanciated exchange relationship which is central to their lives. This extended from a subtle sense of the hierarchy of demand to be satisfied in the transnational operation and the importance of maintaining the exacting standards of quality of the product ‘demanded’ by the unseen consumer, to a sophisticated awareness of the importance of bringing foreign exchange into the Zimbabwean economy. But there was also evident a rich, imaginative mythical construction of what life for the inhabitants of the‘Kingdom of Tesco’ to the north must be like, which contrasted sharply with the relative imaginative poverty of the British consumers. As with subordinate groups in the First World, then, disadvantage here is not a matter of exclusion from globalization, but of being unequally positioned within it. And this ‘inequality’ does not work itself out in a way that maps cultural-imaginary resources neatly on to economic advantage (Source: Tomlinson 1999, p.136).

[It’s] a deliciously scathing episode … As shafting jobs go, this one was splendid (Source: Holt 1997, p.5).

… it wasn’t just the financial exploitation which rankled. It was the shameless arrogance of the supermarket prats and the dinner party guests (Source: Holt 1997, p.5).

Tesco became ‘evil’ for me … when I saw [this] BBC2 documentary back in 1997 (Source: Chapman 2010, np link).

Just watched it. Saw it the first time round, had to re-watch to convince myself that the arrogant b@£$%’@’+s were as bad as I thought they were. Listening to the white upper middle classes talking about how wonderful they are for buying mange tout so that those people could be happy in their mud huts because that’s all they need put me off my dinner.  Clearly the pickers on the farm who get one pence for every 150g of the right size and shape pea they pick get something out of it.  One wonders though, how much more they would get if all that arable land was used and run co-operatively to feed the local population with food they want to eat. The surplus, and there would be a surplus, could then be sold or traded.  If the food was grown to be eaten, instead of used as a pretensious status symbol in Britain, the Zimbabwian workers may also have some leisure time. And the kids may get the chance of a proper education instead of learning songs to apease the great god Tesco. (All the Tesco people did was sneer at them anyway.)  Okay, rant over, I feel slightly better now (Source: snowball 2005. np link).

It was the sort of programme that makes you want to kick the TV in  and it really did show that the white farm owners were slaves to Tesco and the workers were slaves to slaves (Source: jema 2005, np link).

I confess I did not watch all of the programme – basically because I couldn’t stomach the way Land Owner dealt with his workforce and the way the Foreman dealt with his workers. Tell you what, if some b*st*rd came into my workplace examining my fingernails and deciding to take chunks out of them I know where I’d stick the bleedin’ clippers. Turned over when the little girl gave a welcoming speech in praise of the wonderful Tesco. p.s. I’m going there (Tesco’s that is) in the morning – please don’t let me think about Mange Tout, otherwise I’ll stick my fingernails into every veg I handle (Source: gertie 2005, np link)!!

This crop, which is easy to grow in the UK and which is not eaten in Africa, was then flown thousands of miles so that it could be on our supermarket shelves all the year round. From an environmental perspective it is clear that the crop is harmful and certainly teachers who watched the film at a Geographical Association [a UK Association of School Geographer Teachers) conference felt that consumers should boycott it. But from the point of view of the local people, although the pay was meagre it was the only work that was on offer. So, from a human rights perspective, the response is different – and not simple or straightforward. Political literacy is thus essential if both teachers and students are to have an awareness of the complexities of issues and the complex results of our actions. [According to Paulo Freire) ‘When we try to be neutral, like Pilate, we support the dominant ideology. Not being neutral, education must be either liberating or domesticating. Thus we have the right to recognise ourselves as politicians. It does not mean that we have the right to impose on students our political choice. Students have the right to know what our political dream is. They are then free to accept it, reject it or modify it. Our task is not to impose our dreams on them but to challenge them to have their own ideals, to define their choices, not just to uncritically assume them’ (Source: Wade 2001, p.166).

University angered me up today. Not in a bad way, either- I was angered up because I was enthusiastic about the course. Hmm… Maybe it was bad in a way? I’ll explain why. In my lecture (I won’t be more specific, I only had one!), we watched a video that’s a few years old now, about Tesco and the mange-tout growers in Zimbabwe. It was made before the world kicked up a fuss about [Zimbabwe’s President] Mugabe being a bit [sh*t], but it was still horrible. Incidentally, I also saw it during economics and business back in the days when I used to go to school, and it angered me up then, too. The gist of it was that there’s this farm in Zimbabwe that grow it – not wanting to get into race issues, but the supervisor was a black guy, and the farm itself was owned by white guy with a British accent. He looked like what you’d imagine the people who colonised Zimbabwe 200 years ago looked like – he just needed one of those ivory-poacher hats to complete the ‘upper-middle-class twunt’ look. After a standard documentary vox-pop about ‘Do you know where Zimbabwe is?’… and the standard ‘Isn’t it the capital of Africa?’ type responses, it went on to tell the story. Tesco had sent out one of their buyers to check the farm – the [b@£$%’@’+] they sent out to check on them wasn’t happy with anything. He was complaining about a sprinkler not sprinkling enough water, how some of the mange-tout didn’t look perfect. That sort of thing. The reason I call him a ‘b*%tard’ because he was saying how he wanted the poor farmers to be scared of the inspection, and he wanted them to constantly strive to do better. All this when presumably their standard of living ain’t great. When this guy arrived at the farm, the buyer and his team were treated like Gods. It was sickening. Hundreds of children and employees were singing crudely written songs about Tesco being ace and being their friend. And they sat there enjoying it. The locals had bought him his team presents, and the narrator revealed that these poor farmers had in fact paid for Tesco, a company turning over billions of pounds a year, to fly out to them. All this because the contract Tesco has is what determines whether they live in great or only moderate poverty. Then more songs. Whilst this was bad enough to watch, the documentary makers offset this god-like worship of our corporate overlords with something else. They’d found the most sickeningly middle class, Daily Mail reading, awful woman who was having a dinner party. With some mange-tout being served, of course. She described how she was inviting round some equally middle class twunts, who work for a big insurer and something in financial services. Cut to the dinner party in progress. I didn’t know you could fit so many [c*^±s] around one table. I apologise for the strong language, but it’s appropriate. They started discussing ‘issues’. More specifically, in keeping with the documentary, farming and the third world, and that. ‘They’re not advanced enough to drive cars’, ‘They’re not intelligent enough to use our technology’, ‘exploitation is vital and natural’, ‘I’m sure they’re much happier than we are because they’ve never had what we’ve got, so are probably happy in their mud hut’. Cut to the farm’s ‘caterpillar examiner’ explaining how she tried to kill herself. It ended up saying that the growers earn a penny for every [amount] of mange-tout they pick- on which Tesco would make something like a 46p profit, and the exporter 30p ish. It was sickening. Sickening that multinationals have such power over these people and are exploiting them so much. Mike made a good point: ‘It’s like slavery never ended’. I was so sick I had a Coke (Source: O’Malley 2005, np link).

[A]ll this for a designer vegetable bought by two out of a hundred supermarket shoppers. To me, it starts out funny and, inevitably, ends up bittersweet, because, of course, this is being done in our names. When the supermarket insists that the revised optimum length for mangetout is 75mm rather than 65mm, that they should be trimmed 1mm and not 4mm, that 30 percent of the crop should be rejected because although they taste fine they don’t look quite right, these rules are being laid down for us. The discerning, quality-obsessed British consumer demands no less, according to Tesco. With sales of mangetout doubling annually, and nine and a half million Tesco customers just waiting to be converted to the new pea, it’s easy to see why the supermarket would be interested in shaping the market and pushing the pea. But a share of the responsibility does lie with us. For in the same way that you’re unlikely to see angry consumers with placards outside your local Tesco store demanding ‘Mangetout: 75mm or else!’, we are not exactly clamouring to know more about the process behind the product, the people involved in it, or their pay and conditions. Only the extreme cases, such as apartheid or French nuclear testing, ever consistently prick our consciences (Source: Phillips 1997, p.18).

[In a UK House of Commons debate on International Development:] The Secretary of State must not think that I am condemning all multinational companies, but NGOs and others constantly report examples of multinationals not following good practice, and of people being exploited. I remember a wonderful film on television called ‘Mangetout’ – everyone must have seen it. People in Zimbabwe – or perhaps it was Tanzania – went up and down the mangetout plantations singing something like, ‘Up the hillsides, down the valleys, Tesco is our greatest friend.’ They sang that little song as they picked the mangetouts. They were happy and well cared for; it was a good project. I am not suggesting that all is bad (Source: Tongue 2001, np link).

Tesco reaped so many free name-checks last night that its PR director, sitting at home in mounting agitation, was probably the first person ever literally to burst from excitement while watching BBC2 (Source: Truss 1997, np).

Tesco shareholders will presumably be overjoyed at the portrayal of the company. Its staff come across as hard-headed, consistently pushing for higher quality, higher sales and higher margins (Source: Bellos 1997, p.4).

[A] Christian Aid spokesman says: ‘It is Tesco’s right to negotiate the best deal they see fit. But it is unacceptable to have cavalier decision-making which fails even to consider its impact on people. It should not be beyond the wit of sophisticated businesses like Tesco, who are proud of their social commitment in Britain, to show more visible concern for the workers they depend on in poor countries for their profits.’ Tesco responded to the documentary by saying that the reapers would be no worse off because they would choose better mange-tout. A spokesman said he was sad the programme did not mention the education and health care projects the farm owner invests in. ‘We pride ourselves on having extremely good long-term relationships with our suppliers,’ he added (Source: Bellos 1997, p.4).

But Mark Phillips, the programme’s director, said … : ‘I am aghast that Tesco is implying that the school was anything to do with them. It was the (farm owner’s) initiative’ (Source: Bellos 1997, p.4).

Eight years on … what does [TESCO CEO Terry] Leahy think the farmers of Chiparawe would make of Tesco’s un-relenting growth? ‘Actually, someone came up to me this year who knew that farm particularly well and pointed out the benefit that had been bought to that community from that business,’ he says. ‘Tesco can’t solve all, or even a fraction of, the problems in the developing world but we are a positive force. We do improve wages, we do operate to good standards and we do provide a market in the developed world for their exports’ (Source: Hall 2005, p.7).

In the eyes of at least some of the groups associated with contemporary anti-globalization protests, the African French bean embodies the ironies and injustices of the globalized food economy: produced in underfed countries by people earning typically less than a dollar a day, transported at great expense, and consumed by affluent city-dwellers who neglect the seasonal produce of their own countryside. This quite accurate characterization, already captured in a recent British television documentary called ‘Mangetout’, gives corporate authorities in the anglophone trade good reason to worry about press coverage. It also makes them eager to stress at least three positive points about their industry: first, export horticulture in Africa employs tens of thousands of people in areas where job options are scarce; second, most of these people are women, whose wages are crucial to family well-being; and third, labour and environmental standards in the horticultural industry (at least in countries like Zambia, Kenya, and Zimbabwe) are higher than in any other agricultural sub-sector. All these points are also quite true, and provide solid support for the industry’s argument that, overall, African countries benefit from European demand for out-of-season, exotic, ‘baby’, and otherwise frivolous fruits and vegetables. To the extent that multi-site ethnography facilitates understanding of, and even empathy with, the positions of diverse actors within controversial commodity chains, it complicates the politics of globalization. But complicated understandings need not be immobilizing. In the Afro-European horticultural trade, one potential arena for progressive action is the ethical trade movement and, more specifically, the British- government supported Ethical Trade Initiative (ETI), which seeks to develop codes of conduct that will ‘improve labour conditions around the world’. This is not by any stretch a grassroots movement; although groups such as Oxfam and Christian Aid and several trade unions are involved, some of the strongest supporters are the UK supermarkets, who seek to ward off the charges of exploitation that have plagued the athletic apparel industry, among others. Still, ETI codes of conduct concerning on-farm pesticide use, sanitation, worker housing, and medical care have been adopted by fresh produce suppliers in Kenya, Zimbabwe and Zambia. In all three countries, of course, the mostly white-owned vegetable farms have not only the financial means but also good political reasons (in the context of domestic tensions around race and land) to maintain an image of social responsibility. To the extent that codes of conduct do not account for the very different circumstances in countries with little or no corporate farming, ‘ethical’ trade risks becoming exclusionary trade. But this possibility is not inevitable, because the ETI has become a forum for discussion – at conferences, in print, on-line – between supermarkets, suppliers, trade unionists, activists and researchers (Source: Freidberg 2001, p.364-5).

A rival commissioning editor from Channel 4, David Lloyd, described this film as ‘a great example of how wit and imagination transformed something from a sterile topic to something that made great watching’ (Source: Connor 2000, np).

The response of the corporate world to the new public concern about retailers’ global supply chains appears to be the emergence of the new ethical trading programmes which have appeared at a remarkably rapid rate. A range of approaches have been adopted in the implementation of these initiatives. While come companies adopt a ‘case by case’ approach to ethical sourcing, the most common starting point is the establishment up front of a side of conduct … Such codes are guidelines drawn up by a combination of actors and serve to formalise issues of business responsibility by constructing a set of minimum standards and procedures for industries to follow in their routine business. … While there is emerging opposition to the whole idea of having such voluntary initiatives for business responsibility … globally supply chains are nonetheless operating in a world trading environment in which the role of their regulation has effectively been handed over to the private sector amidst progressive liberalisation … This has effectively encouraged the growth of private sector solutions to ethical trading problems (Source: Hughes 2001, 426).

One of the key ways in which UK retailers have responded to the ethical challenge presented by the media, NGOs, and consumers groups has been to play a role in creating a new alliance with some of the very groups who have criticised and campaigned directly against their global supply chain practices. The ETI has become the largest and most strategically significant organisation in the UK for developing ethical trade. Critically, both its composition and philosophy are framed by the notion of stakeholding. In terms of composition, its membership comprises the private sector, trade unions, and NGOs, with endorsement from the DFID [the Department for International Development] of the UK government … Philosophically and strategically, it attempts to build revised global supply chain practices that conform to models of stakeholder capitalism and to meet goals associated with what has come to be known as the ‘triple bottom line’, i.e. ‘the notion that companies should be concerned with not only the traditional bottom-line associated with profitability, but also goals related to environmental protection and meeting social needs’ (Utting 2000, p.5). The contrasts starkly with models of shareholder capitalism that have hitherto dominated the workings of UK companies, in which a single bottom line of profitability has traditionally determined the organisation of business (Source: Hughes 2001, p.426-7).

The effect of Mangetout on Tesco’s membership of the Ethical Trading Initiative and efforts to reform labour practices among its African suppliers demonstrates the ability of film to intervene in the foodscape, especially when leveraged against a brand name and harnessed by advocacy groups (here, Christian Aid) who can position themselves as being able to speak on behalf of the afflicted groups. It is also worth noting here that the intended audience of such documentaries is not necessarily ‘the consumer’ of (un)ethical food, but rather a broader and polyglot figure that encompasses the retailer, the politician, the industry expert, and the shopper besides (Source: Richardson-Ngwenya & Richardson 2003, p.344).

Five years after Mangetout supermarket fresh produce managers and importers still referred to it as an example of the kind of media coverage they dreaded. Even if it did not have the ‘stampede’ effect of a food scare, it created an image problem, and not just for Tesco. One importer said he still ran into people who knew nothing about mangetout peas except what they saw on Mangetout, and such people could not appreciate how the filmmaker’s technique had, in his view, dramatized and distorted the truth (Source: Friedberg 2004a, p.180).

[Supply chain a]ctors who worked in the fresh-produce export, import, and retail sectors clearly dreaded any form of bad media coverage, whether as a result of a charity’s ‘name and shame’ campaign, a food scare, or simply an influential journalist’s muckraking. As they saw it, such coverage could shape consumers’ day-to-day shopping habits. Although a story about child labor on an African fruit farm was unlikely to have the ‘stampede’ effect of a food scare, it could potentially ‘tarnish’ a retailer’s overall brand, as one supermarket manager put it, and cause consumers to ‘migrate’ to a competitor’s stores. One veteran produce importer claimed that the newspapers were `the driving force’ behind the adoption of ethical trade standards by supermarkets in the 1990s. Yet certain televised reports also shook the industry. Several actors in both Zambia and the United Kingdom, for example, said they could not afford another Mangetout, a documentary screened on public television in 1997. Mangetout contrasted the harsh surveillance and precarious livelihoods of workers on a Zimbabwean horticultural export farm with the affluence and complacency of the British consumers who bought Zimbabwean mangetout at Tesco, the largest supermarket chain in the United Kingdom. Although the narrative did not explicitly criticize, the military music soundtrack that played during a Tesco representative’s visit to the farm made a less-than-subtle comment on the retailer’s neocolonial control over its supplier. Exporters’, importers’, and retailers’ preoccupation with the media pervaded not only their descriptive accounts but also, in some cases, their interactions with me. In Zambia, for example, I was aggressively interrogated by company personnel intent on determining (I later found out) whether I was an undercover ‘BBC agent’. Such attitudes were especially striking compared with the relative nonchalance I had encountered during earlier research on the fresh-vegetable trade between Francophone West Africa and France (Source: Freidberg 2004b, p.515-6).

One day, the man from Tesco assures me, there will be the mother of all mangetout price wars. Just as happens nowadays with mushrooms or tomatoes. No longer 99p, a pack of mangetout will be slashed to 30p or 20p — for our benefit, of course. When that day comes only the fit and the strong will survive. Only the most efficient suppliers, able to shrink their margins for weeks at a time, will endure. Of course, if the man from Tesco is not convinced that any of his four suppliers is up to it, then it’s off to the next farm or the next country, to the next welcome dance from another group of eager third-world schoolchildren (Source: Phillips 1997, p.18).

Tesco deserve credit for opening their doors to journalists, but their seeming lack of recognition of the new human agenda that is being driven by campaigning groups may worry their shareholders. The social environment now starts at the supermarket check-out (Source: Bellos 1997, p.4).