The origins of the Irish Satellite Growing system (I): The crisis of the 1970s
By Francisco Arqueros (Francisco.Arqueros@nuim.ie)*[1]
Introduction In the previous chapters published in the mushroom people (April, July, and August), I have tried to give a brief overview of the history of the main two inputs, other than labour, needed to grow mushrooms: spawn and compost. Nowadays they constitute two separate off-farm industries in Ireland, but it wasn't the case in the past.
An introduction to the scientific and economic histories of these two industries was a necessary step in order to understand how the satellite growing system was set up in Ireland at the beginning of the 1980s, but it is not enough. The crisis that the mushroom industry underwent in the 1970s in Britain and Ireland is also essential to understand later developments. At a global level, that crisis affected the most developed economies of the world, but also the dependent national economies linked to them. That was the case for Ireland. The crisis brought to the forefront, among other issues, the question of labour costs in a new way for the mushroom industries in the British Isles.
An overview of the 1970s crisis will help us understand also the current crisis that has eliminated the satellite growing system in Ireland. Crises are ultimately unavoidable, but their outcomes vary. The Irish satellite growing system was set up as a response to the crisis of the 1970s, particularly a response to the high capital and high labour intensive English tray farm growing system; but it was also a national initiative promoted in Ireland by the Industry Development Agency (IDA) and the Department of Agriculture and Food through Teagasc. It was intended to help develop depressed rural areas in Ireland.
The fragmentation of the property in the Irish countryside and the recession that Ireland experienced in the late 1970s and throughout the1980s favoured a mushroom industry based on small family farms growing on plastic bags, with very low capital investment requirements. But the model entered into crisis in the mid 1990s and finally collapsed under market pressures that made a growing system based on the Dutch shelf farm and larger growing units more competitive. The small family mushroom farm growing on bags, as a model of rural development and as the alternative to large farms with large workforces, flourished and entered into a terminal crisis in just two decades.
The Irish Mushroom industry in the 1960s The first mushroom farm in Ireland appeared in Shanagarry, Co. Cork, in 1935 *[2]. That event marked the beginning of the history of mushroom farming in the Republic of Ireland. By 1956, there was an annual production of 500 metric tons (Department of Agriculture and Food 1969). By 1965, production has risen to 1,700 tonnes *[3] (Hinton 1982: 12). At the end of the 1960s, 80 per cent of the total production of mushrooms was concentrated in 7 large tray farms making their own compost. Another 22 small tray farms produced the other 20 per cent of the output. 66 per cent of the total production of the Irish Republic went to Britain (DAF 1969). As is the case today, from the beginning we can see that the Irish mushroom industry was export-oriented.
The larger farms followed the model of the large mechanised British two-zone tray farms. The rest were mainly small tray farms on the one zone system, pasteurising and spawn running the compost in the growing rooms. A study of the Irish mushroom industry commissioned by the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries in 1969 described how Irish tray farms prepared compost on farm (DAF 1969: 14). The period of fermentation (phase1), after the compost had been pre-treated, lasted about two weeks. Most of farms prepared their substrate with horse manure, but some growers used a mixture of pig and fowl manure, and just two were using synthetic compost. Subsequently, the compost went through a pasteurisation period of 3 or 4 days in peak-heating rooms. Finally, it was spawn run for about 14 days.
The mushroom industry in the Republic of Ireland resembled the British one during the 1960s and 1970s. The new concept of the satellite growing system that was so successfully applied in the 1980s, and which by 1985 had eliminated all tray farms in the South of Ireland, had its origins in developments that took place in the Northern Irish industry, on the one hand, and in the Kinsealy research centre in Co. Dublin, on the other.
The first step was the creation of a phase1 compost market in the North of Ireland in the 1960s and a network of small tray mushroom growers with it. But in order to compete successfully with large mechanised tray farms, small growers needed the commodification of phase2 compost and a low capital investment growing system. Ireland presented ideal conditions in the 1970s for the development of such a system because of the fragmentation of the property of the land and the high rate of unemployment and underemployment in rural areas. But an export-oriented industry also needs a market to export to, and a demand for its produce.
The British mushroom market experienced an extraordinary growth between 1960s and the 1980s. The output of the mushroom industry in the UK, for instance, expanded at an annual rate of between 10-15 per cent between 1960 and 1970. It doubled between 1958-59 and 1968, when annual output went from 12,121 to 24,788 tonnes, and doubled again between 1969 and 1971, the years of fastest growth, when output reached 48,200 tonnes in the UK. The growth continued then at a slower pace. In 1975, output reached 55,800 tonnes in the UK, and then it started to fall until 1977, when it only came to 51,000 tonnes. They were the years of crisis of overproduction and reduction of production. But after 1977, the industry recovered again, and by 1979 output hit 58,200 tonnes *[4]. The forecast at the beginning of the 1980s was that the British market for mushrooms was going to expand by 20 per cent between 1980 and 1990 (Hinton, 1982: 22). The expansion of production in the UK industry was possible because consumption was expanding even faster. The mushroom industry in the South of Ireland found, accordingly, its main market for mushrooms in Britain. Between the end of the 1950s and the end of the 1960s, exports increased from 400 to 1,300 tonnes annually, while consumption in the home market increased from 250 to 700 tonnes during the same period (DAF 1969: 16). Exports to Britain kept increasing until 1977 and then slowed down until 1979 (Hinton 1982: 19): Southern Irish exports to the UK '71 '72 '73 '74 '75 '76 '77 ' 78 '79 Tonnes 1.6 3.3 3.0 3.7 4.3 4.8 5.8 5.1 4.9 ('000) % UK 3.2 5.8 5.1 6.2 7.2 8.6 10.2 8.3 7.8 (market share)
The crisis in the UK mushroom industry affected more the North of Ireland than Britain, as we will see. But the in the table we can notice that when the British industry started to recover, the Irish industry started to lose market share. It is in that context that the satellite system was set up. The Irish mushroom industry became then more competitive than the British one, as we will see. That is how, the tonnes of mushrooms and the number of growers per year in the Southern Irish mushroom industry greatly expanded during the 1980s and the 1990s, while it didn't between 1975 and 1980. The highest rate of expansion took place during the 1980s, when output nearly multiplied by six.
Irish Production of Fresh Mushrooms (Source: Hinton 1982: 12, and CSO) Year Tonnes 1965 1,700 1970 2,200 1975 6,300 1980 6,800 1985 18,300 1990 36,800 1995 49,000 2000 61,200 2005 62,000
The expansion of output slowed down considerably between 1998 (62,000) and 2003 (69,000t), and the industry has entered a period of contraction since them (CSO):
Year Tonnes 2004 65,000 2005 62,000 2006 56,000
Periods of expansion follow periods of contraction. Crises are unavoidable. They are characterised by the destruction of productive capacity. Historically, in previous societies overproduction was a cause for celebration, but in the market economy (capitalism) overproduction leads to crisis.
In the early 1980s, however, the prospects for small mushroom growers in Ireland looked very good. Irish mushrooms grown in bags had lower costs of production and similar or better quality than British mushrooms. That, and a high demand, made possible an explosive growth. Lower production costs were based on lower capital investments and a very reduced work force made up of relatives and neighbours - the grower, his wife, and some part-time pickers from the local area. At that time, labour was also much cheaper and casual in rural Ireland than in rural Britain.
The crisis that swept the mushroom industry in Britain and Ireland in the mid 1970s called into question the high capital cost and high labour intensive (with a large workforce) British tray farm, but also the small tray farm*[5] . High inflation increased production costs, including labour, and slowed down demand.
The crisis affected mainly the less mechanised and more inefficient small tray farms, and pushed scores of growers out, but some large ones also had to reduce production. That crisis can help us to understand the context in which the Irish satellite growing system arose, but also the current crisis of the Irish mushroom industry.
In the long run, however, the satellite growing system based on plastic bags, and later blocks, couldn't compete for the British market because of the arrival of new competitors. They were the Dutch growers based on the mechanised efficiency of the Dutch shelf system and the Polish growers, with lower production costs because of lower labour costs in that country.
At present, the satellite growing system has disappeared in Ireland and the few remaining small farms growing on bags or blocks, or both, are on their way out. In the last few years, the dilemma has been to go Dutch or disappear.
1. Developments in the North As I already have said, the first step towards the development of the satellite growing system in Ireland took place in the North. According to DAF (1969: 13, 22), some commercial compost stations, which in fact were mushroom farms, started to sell compost (phase1) to small growers at the end of the 1960s. That is how some 250 small farms were built in the North at the end of the 1960s.
New industries sometimes start very small. Then the snowball starts rolling, if there is enough snow on the way. According to the mushroom people (August 1986), the origins of the satellite growing system could be traced back to early 1956, when a dairy farmer from Co Armagh, Malachy Kernan, decided to take a job running a mushroom house in Armagh city *[6]. The idea was to bring home some extra cash. The business of growing mushroom seemed to have gone well because at the end of 1956 Malachi negotiated a move to a new site in Gillis Mill Yard, on the Loughall Road. He went on to manage four mushroom houses after that move. In 1958, Malachy Kernan decided to be the owner of his own business and built three custom-designed houses at Battleford Road, in Benburb, Dungannon.
At that time, there were no commercial compost producers in the whole of the British Isles and Malachy Kernan had to make his own compost. According to The Mushroom People (August 1986), there was a lack of local knowledge about growing mushrooms and making compost. How did he learn the business then? As I have mentioned, he started by running an existing mushroom house. So there were some mushroom farms in the North of Ireland. The Mushroom Growers' Association had been set up in Britain in the 1940s and spread the knowledge existing at the time through the Mushroom Journal. In the 1950s, the British mushroom industry was, together with the French, the most advanced in Europe. Nevertheless, Malachy Kernan was a pioneer. To make compost, he had to bring horse manure from Kildare and water from the Blackwater River, two miles away from the farm. He also employed some workers to manually turn and wet the compost, with "graip" and fork. His spawn supplier was Somycel, which later turned into Darmycel. Malachy seemed to be always looking for ways to expand his business, because he became the Somycel agent for Northern Ireland as well.
In relation to distribution, Kernan's mushrooms started supplying the local market in Northern Ireland, but in the 1960s they were also despatching mushrooms to the Glasgow market through a Scottish agent. The mushrooms went by train to Belfast and by steamer from Belfast to Glasgow. That move put Kernan ahead of the rest of growers in the area in terms of marketing.
By then, some nearby farmers had been observing, and learning from, the evolution of Kernan's mushrooms enterprise and decided to start growing mushrooms too. Kernan's thriving enterprise expanded its production of compost and began to supply these new local mushroom growers with compost (phase1). By 1966, there were more than two-dozen mushroom growers in the area (South Armagh). As the compost operation expanded, it moved to 270 Battleford Road (Benburb) in 1970. Kernan's growing division also expanded with mushroom houses in Cookstown, Co. Tyrone; Darkley, Armagh City and Benburb, in Co Armagh. A canning operation of mushrooms was added in Benburb.
Not all the small farms in Ireland at that time bought from other farms the compost they consumed. Reen, a mushroom farm in Middletown (Co. Armagh), prepared its own. In the late 1960s started to sell compost to other growers. In the 1980s, the company had abandoned its growing sections. Reen Compost Ltd. is still in business, selling phase2 to the remaining bag and block mushroom growers in Ireland. Monaghan Mushrooms bought Kernans in 1991, and soon after that the compost yard closed down.
Across the border, in County Monaghan, there were also a number of small mushroom tray farms. These farms bought compost from a large tray farm in the area, already in the late 1960s (DAF 1969: 13). Some other farms were set up in the 1970s in Co Monaghan following the same model. That was the case of Frank McKenna (Irish Farmers Journal, 10 March 1979). In 1975, he was in the quarry business but had a bad accident. While recovering in hospital, Frank started thinking on getting a new livelihood, and decided to use part of his 15 acres of land in Glaslough, Co. Monaghan, to start a mushroom farm. He first contacted his local horticultural instructor, Noel Howlin, to prepare a plan for a brand new mushroom farm, and later applied for grant aid under the FMS. His was a small tray farm consisting of 2 Nissen hut type mushroom houses with a capacity for 20 tonnes of compost each one. He bought phase-1 compost and peak heated in the growing rooms. In 1979 the price of one tonne of compost, phase 1, was GBP20. He marketed his mushroom trough the Tyrone and Armagh Marketing Group (T.A.M).
The development of a network of small growers around the border was, without a doubt, the basis on which the satellite growing system could arise. Farmers in the area could set up these farms because they could get compost from larger farms. The larger farms were the forerunner of the custom compost companies that proliferated in the 1980s and created a market for compost (phase2). On the other hand, this network brought forward the questions of group transport and marketing. In the early 1970s, Malachy Kernan's sons Martin and Patrick decided to set up a transport division to take to the market place the produce of Northern Irish growers. They had in mind to set up a full-fledged market operation, but that didn't happen until 1980. It was also in the early 1980s when Kenan's turned its network of buyers of compost into a satellite growers' group following the examples of Walsh Mushrooms in Wexford (1979) and Monaghan Mushrooms in County Monaghan (1981).
In the early 1970s, Kernan Mushrooms sold compost to nearby growers, collected their mushrooms, and took them to the market place. But they didn't organise a full-scale central marketing operation linking up the supply of compost with the marketing of mushrooms. A satellite growing group lead by Kernan didn't arise. Growers, particularly those exporting to the British market, however, felt the need of a centralised marketing system.
The TAM, already mentioned, was set up only in March 1975 when a group of 28 growers in the North of Ireland decided to have their own cooperative of marketing (TMJ, August 1975: 276). The negotiations to set up the co-op had started one year earlier, in August 1974, when the Ulster Agricultural Organization Society Ltd. of Portadown called for a meeting of mushroom growers with the support of the Department of Agriculture and Horticulture. Around 200 growers attended that meeting. Between August 1974 and March 1975, a series of meetings took place in order to formalise the co-operative. But in the end only 28 growers decided to go ahead. The idea of a centralised marketing structure was attractive for a majority of growers, but when it came to make it work in practice it didn' take off. It remained the choice of a minority. In the long run, private companies rather than cooperatives of growers set up successful marketing groups.
Satellite-growing groups developed in the 1980s around mother companies selling compost to growers and buying mushrooms from them for a set price. The agreement was that growers in the satellite group would also get training and technical advice and wouldn't buy compost from any other company or market mushrooms through any other marketing group, or by themselves. But growers never signed a written contract to formalise their relationship with the mother company; there were only verbal agreements. The relationship between Kernan's and its network of growers was open, and it remained like that until the early 1980s. Kernan's sold compost at a market price, charged for the transport service, but didn't market the mushroom of other growers until 1980. Looking back, it seems it took a long time for the Kernan group to establish a satellite growing group, and certainly when they did so they just followed the lead of others, both compost makers and marketing agents, in the South. Why didn't they constitute the first satellite-growing group in Ireland?
There are several reasons that can help us understand that. As I have said, the grounds for the satellite growing system were the low capital investment bag growing system and the creation of a market for phase2 compost. But now I would like to concentrate on another factor; the economic crisis that affected the mushroom industry in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, which by 1974 had eliminated two thirds of all the existing growers in the late 1960s (Hinton 1982: 11). That crisis probably put off the question of a full-fledged Kernan's marketing group for a while. The Kernans claimed that the 1974 Ulster Workers' strike was the chief reason of the crisis (TMP, August 1986: 17):
"[It] brought the commercial life of Northern Ireland to a virtual standstill and practically wiped out the booming mushroom industry. The highly perishable product couldn't reach the market and load after load had to be dumped. Many farmers were unable to continue and hard times descended upon the growing fraternity."
The perishability of the fresh mushroom commodity The 1974 Ulster strike was without a doubt a causative factor in the crisis the mushroom industry in the North underwent. It also highlighted the very short shelf life of fresh mushrooms, one peculiarity of the fresh mushroom commodity chain. Four days after they are picked, at ambient temperature (15-20C), mushrooms start to deteriorate (Gormley 1987). Its perishability makes fresh mushrooms vulnerable to heat, delays, and, also, workers' strikes. But the perishability of fresh mushrooms is also an advantage since it reduces competition for a given market to nearby countries.
In 1974, 82 per cent of the consumption of mushrooms in the British market consisted of fresh mushrooms compared to 48 per cent in France and 39 per cent in the USA (TMJ, Sept 1976: 282). In the 1970s and 1980s, USA started to lose ground to processed mushrooms imported from the Far East (Machuca 2004). In Europe, tariffs were high for processed mushrooms from Asia, but they still made it into West Germany.
British growers tried to protect their market by promoting only the consumption of fresh produce. A predominant processed mushrooms market in Britain would have opened this market to highly competitive producers from France and Holland, displacing British growers. In the words of George Corrin (TMJ, Nov 1977: 383), controller worldwide for the mushroom interests of the Heinz Company, "The day we begin to promote processed mushrooms in the UK is the day we write our own death warrant."
The mushroom market of West Germany, for instance, traded 125,500 tonnes of mushrooms in 1974, but fresh mushrooms only represented 26 per cent of the total. The imports of canned mushroom represented 109,700 tonnes, mainly from France (38.500t), Holland (24,900t), China (21,600t), and Taiwan (15,800t). In the fresh market, imports amounted to only 3,700 tonnes. The national production (29,200t) was distributed wholly in the fresh market (TMJ, Sept 1976: 284-82).
Until the end of the 1970s, British growers faced competition only from Irish growers. After World War II, they had managed to keep high prices for fresh mushroom with a protective tariff on imported mushrooms from the Continent, mainly from France - a country that British growers feared. The tariff was soon to be abolished under ECC Regulations in the 1970s, but by then the price of mushrooms in the British fresh market had gone down to a level (or had been decreased thanks to productivity improvements) similar to France. So, it didn't pay French growers to export fresh mushrooms to Britain (TMJ, Sept 1976: 282). However and in spite of this market closure to foreign competitors, the mushroom industry in the UK suffered a serious crisis of overproduction in the mid 1970s.
In the 1980s, mushrooms from the Benelux and France entered the British market. In the 1990s, Polish growers also started to supply that market. The improvement in refrigerated transport had made it possible to get fresh mushrooms in the British market from as far away as Poland. A world market in commodity chains such as beef or grain makes Irish farmers compete in a market where prices tend to be lower than their production costs. Only by means of subsides can a majority of Irish farmers remain in business. But this is not the case of the markets for fresh mushrooms, whose size is limited by the short shelf live of fresh mushrooms.
The 1970s crisis in the North of Ireland Back to Northern Ireland, it is plausible that the Ulster Workers strike of 1974 had a part in the crisis this industry suffered in the 1970s due to the perishability of the mushrooms. But the crisis in the mushroom industry had actually started earlier than 1974. The UWC strike could not be the reason why two thirds of Northern Irish growers exited the mushroom industry in the 1970s. So, let's have a brief look at the character of this crisis.
After the proliferation of mushroom growers in the late 1960s, up to 250, their number went down to 219 in 1972 and to 128 in 1977-78 (Hilton 1982: 9)*[7] . Total output went down from 5,461 to 3,260 tonnes also between 1972 and 1978. The crisis mainly affected the smaller growers. Those with a bed area between 0 and 10,000 sq. ft. represented 85 per cent of all growers (187 out of 219) in 1972 but only 75 per cent (97 out of 128) in 1978. Those with a bed area of over 10,000 sq. ft. represented 15 per cent in 1972 (32) and 25 per cent in 1978 (31). That is, the number of growers with over 10,000 sq. ft. remained stable while those with less than 10,000 sq. ft. were halved. On the other hand, the crisis in Britain particularly affected the North of Ireland because most of mushrooms were exported to Britain, 76 per cent in 1972 and 80 per cent in 1978.
According to Hinton (1982: 9-10), mushroom growers in the North at the end of the 1970s were small and part-timers. For up to 25 per cent of them, growing mushrooms represent only around 20 per cent of their incomes, and only 25 per cent of all mushroom growers were specialist growers:
"The small enterprise predominates in both number and size. There is an absence of large growers and only half of the largest growers are in year round production. In Northern Ireland other farming activity might displace mushrooms during the summer months, when prices are generally lower and mushroom production is more difficult to manage because of summer temperatures, and when demands by other crops are greater. Only a quarter of the mushrooms enterprises are specialised, but these enterprises account for half of the production. Mushroom holdings associated with farm enterprises account for rather more than a third of mushroom production. A quarter of the enterprises are on mixed horticultural holdings with a little over one fifth of the production. Income from mushroom growing is a third of the total income, but most of the specialist growers depend entirely on mushrooms. Mushrooms come first place in order of importance on horticultural enterprises where it is important to maximise income on a small piece of land."
The description above refers to the situation at the end of the 1970s. In 1972 the average farm was even smaller (7,641 sq. ft compared to 9,257 sq. ft in 1978). Therefore, the number of part-time growers must have been higher. The 91 growers who gave up between 1972 and 1978, representing 41 per cent of all growers in 1972, were those under 10,000 sq. ft that I have already mentioned above. For them, having mushroom growing as a secondary or tertiary occupation made it easy to exit the industry in times of crisis; it didn't represent a big deal. In the same way that they would stop growing during the summer months when prices were low and higher temperatures combined with low-capital-investment, poorly-insulated mushroom houses made mushroom growing less or non profitable at all, they would exit for a longer period and wait for a return of better prices when a big crisis hit the industry.
Even so, to go back to growing at a later stage, when prices were higher, was becoming more difficult because increases in productivity were making it more difficult for small enterprises to be profitable*[8]. However, at the beginning of the 1980s there was a spectacular increase in the number of small farms in Ireland, both North and South. The explanation for that phenomenon lies in, to a large extent, in technological developments at Kinsealy Research Centre, in Co. Dublin and the development of custom compost phase 2.
Those developments made small satellite growing farms based on the bag growing system more competitive than large tray mechanised farms. In the South of Ireland, for instance, there were only 5 large tray farms by 1981 and the last existing one, Top Quality Produce in Co. Wexford, disappeared in 1985. The number of farms, however, had swelled to 107 mainly by the creation of a satellite network of 80 small contract growers in Counties Monaghan and Cavan. Monaghan Mushrooms Ltd, a compost maker and market agent, led that development. In the North of Ireland there was a similar revival. I will deal with those developments in subsequent chapters.
Crisis, at this time, fully affected the mushroom industry of the British Isles, and therefore Northern Ireland. But to my knowledge it was only documented in Britain, in the pages of The Mushroom Journal. The crisis swooped down on the British mushroom industry first, and later on the North of Ireland. The South was also affected since Southern Irish growers exported most of their produce to Britain.
The 1974-76 Crisis in the British Mushroom Industry In November 1975, the Mushroom Journal published an article produced by the Manpower and Economic Committee of the MGA. It was entitled, "Will inflation destroy the UK Mushroom Industry?" *[9]The main problem, according to the article, was that while the cost increases caused by inflation, the Retail Price Index, and the Retail Price of mushrooms had increased uniformly between February 1973 and January 1975, between February and September 1975 the cost increases caused by inflation increased faster than the Retail Price Index, and much faster than the Retail price of mushrooms.
Base 1973 = 100 Feb '73 Jan '75 Sept' 75 Cost increase due to inflation 100 140 165 Retail Price Index 100 132 155 Retail Price of mushrooms 100 138 142
Clearly, and according to the table above, the mushroom commodity chain took the worst blow in the decrease in margins as the price of inputs (including wages) soared while the price of mushrooms fell in comparison. The main effects of the crisis were reduction of production, closures of farms and lay-offs (TMJ, November 1975: 419):
"It is estimated that as much as 18 per cent of the total production capacity has been shut down and that a minimum of 12.5 per cent of those engaged in the industry at all levels have lost their jobs. The continued pressure upon our national economy with more general unemployment may have the further effect of lowering the demand for our produce, creating an over-supply situation in spite of reduced levels of output. This will be aggravated by any imported mushrooms and will undoubtedly lead to the further recession of our home industry with all its tragic consequences."
The MGA Manpower and Economics Committee concluded that the prices of mushrooms had to increase by 20 per cent and that "if we do not do it this winter [1975-6] we will not have another opportunity." *[10] Denis Locke, The marketing director of Country Kitchen Foods *[11], went as far as saying that, "Unless mushroom prices rise by 40 per cent in the next year, an increasing number of growers will face bankruptcy" (TMJ, July 1975: 239).
The crisis of 1975 certainly didn't kill off the mushroom industry in the UK, but it was real. As we have seen above, total output went down between 1975 and 1977, from 55,900 to 51,000 tonnes (a fall of 8.1 per cent), but started to rise again in 1978 (56,200t) and 1979 (58,200t)*[12] . However, the fall in output in 1975 (54,600t), when The Mushroom Journal raised the alarm, in relation to 1974 (55,900t) was a mere 2.7 per cent. Between 1975 and 1976, it was more serious - 6.4 per cent. The article in The Mushroom Journal didn't say when the "18 percent production capacity shut down" took place, or between which months. As they didn't give any references, it is not possible to know whether it was just an exaggeration. On the other hand, the figures I have given above referred to the UK, and don't show any break down according to countries or regions. We don't know where the crisis hit worse. Those figures were widely used to highlight the crisis in the mushroom industry. But if we have a look to the figures referring only to Britain and Wales, we will see that the crisis only slowed down the growth of the industry in those two countries, although it brought about a reduction of growing area, and accelerated mergers, takeovers, and the exit of small and inefficient growers. The figures referring to Britain and Wales were only disclosed in the mushroom journal after the crisis was over (Hinton 1982: 7, 12):
Total production (tonnes) '71 '74 '77 '80 Britain and Wales 42,666 49,212 49,903 North of Ireland 5,460* 3,260** 4,540 UK 48,200 55,900 51,000 60,100 South of Ireland 2,200*** 6,300**** 6,400 6,800 * (1972), ** (1977-78), *** (1970), **** (1975).
According to figures of output of the North of Ireland, we can guess that either they were not included within UK output or that total output for UK was not accurate. For instance, Northern Irish growers produced 5,460 tonnes of mushrooms in 1972 and only 3,260 tonnes in 1977-78. However, it is clear that the crisis was much worse in Northern Ireland. By 1980 the industry in the South of Ireland hadn't recovered from the crisis yet.
The crisis in Britain and Wales brought about a reduction in the number of growers and production area, but not as significant as the reduction in the number of growers in the North of Ireland. Between 1974 and 1977, the years of the crisis in terms of total mushroom output, only 12 growers went out of business, a reduction from 224 to 221 (1.4 per cent). The production area fell 9.1 per cent (from 38.2 to 34.7 million sq ft). Instead, between 1971 and 1974, 73 growers exited the industry (24.6 per cent), while total output grew by 15.34 per cent (from 42,666 to 49,212 tonnes) and production area increased by 6 cent. That is, a lower level of demand, margins, and total output between 1974 and 1977 provoked a lesser number of casualties among mushroom growers. This indicates that the crisis was preceded (and precipitated) by expansion of production and mergers. The more rapid increase in output than in surface area also indicates an increase in the productivity of compost. As most farms prepared their own compost, we can guess that there were high capital investments at farm level behind the productivity increases.
The crisis of the 1970s was the first big crisis in the history of mushroom industry in Britain and the North of Ireland, and was related to the world recession of the 1970s. It wasn't, though, only the product of a strike in the North of Ireland or a decrease in margins motivated by increases in costs due to inflation. It was mainly the product of an excess capacity build up in the 1950s and 1960s, when profits where high and capital flew generously into mushrooms. An editorial in The Mushroom Journal (August 1975: 261) showed it in a straightforward manner:
"It is quite true that, periodically over the last thirty years the industry has appeared to be in dire straits from time to time... True enough many growers did disappear in such periods but it is equally true that, as in most industries, it was the inefficient or maybe the under-capitalized who predictably went to the wall. For sure during those earlier years and even up to a few years ago it was possible for even the inefficient to make a living, but as competition increased, mostly from within may I add, so the weaker producers were eliminated. Much of the expansion which caused the greater competition came from growers who, in the early years were efficient and, quite rightly, made a lot of money.
"Inevitably times changed, unwanted capital came in from outside sources, farms either merged or were taken over, so that today around 60 per cent of production is controlled by half a dozen firms *[13]. Capital at least in part flowed in because capital grants to the horticultural industry as a whole amounted to as much as 40 per cent. Unquestionably beneficial to many growers in the short run, and spectacularly so to some, it is doubtful whether, in the long run, such grants were in the interests of the mushroom industry as a whole. Basically they encouraged large concerns, able to find the 60 per cent capital balance, to get larger and larger (my italics)."
One lesson from this excerpt is that crises push out "the inefficient" and "the under-capitalized", those who could make money when prices and margins were high. But "inefficiency" and "under-capitalisation" are relative terms. While in low intensity crises "the inefficient" are minority; in big crises they may be the majority. In the 1970s it wasn't, according to TMJ, "the inefficient" but the "weaker" that were being eliminated. Yet, the fact is that in time of acute crises there are those who can still do quite well. And editorial in The Mushroom Journal spelled it out (February 1976: 60):
"Obviously there is a complete range from farms which were on marginal profits basis even at the best time last year, who must now be in dire trouble, through those which were quite profitable then but now suffering from inflation to those, probably only a few, which because of their efficiency and very high productivity in every sense of that over-used term are still profitable and may be so even after January 1976 *[14]."
The outcome of crises is that prices rise again when the excess productive capacity is eliminated after the inefficient are eliminated, and a new period of growth starts. The same editorial in TMJ put it like that:
"The only remedy which can save all these farms is the substantial rise in market price... If that rise does not materialise and inflation takes its toll by closing farms, the resultant fall in the quantity of mushrooms on sale will eventually cause a rise in price, possibly quite large and possibly for a much smaller total volume than is sold today. The last group of farms mentioned, the highly productive, will survive to enjoy those conditions. The middle group may do so, but the least efficient must have little hope of still being in business by that time."
An interesting point to make here is that big supermarket chains were not to blame for the 1974-76 crisis. The high buying power of supermarket chains nowadays in Britain and the fact that only four of them controls most of the retailing market explain away for Associations of Growers and Producers Organisations the low price that growers get for their mushrooms. But in the 1970s it wasn't the case. As we will see later, marketing groups and growers' association put their hopes in getting contracts with large supermarket chains as a way to improve prices. In the 1970s, however, wholesalers still dominated the market although not as overwhelmingly as in the 1960s (TMJ, Feb 1976: 44; Hinton 1982: 13):
The second lesson is that competition leads to mergers and expansion of individual firms, as a way to fight back the decrease in margins brought about by competition. Expansion also leads to crises of overproduction. Between 1960 and 1970, the British mushroom industry expanded at an annual rate of between 10-15 per cent. Between 1971 and 1974, however, the British mushroom industry only expanded at an average rate of 4 per cent per year. And during the crisis the growth was virtually zero.
In relation to the size of average farm in terms of output of mushrooms per year, it increased from 219 tonnes in 1974 to 235 tonnes in 1977. In 1971 it was 143 tonnes per farm. The results of the censuses of 1971, 1974 and 1977, therefore, show a tendency towards concentration and centralisation of production in England and Wales.
In a closed market, with very little competition from other countries, the editorial of The Mushroom Journal could blame capital investments and expansion as responsible for the crisis. However, the idea of a closed and controlled market was a pure utopia, particularly after the entry of Britain in the ECC. Later, during the 1980s and 1990s Irish and Dutch growers caught up with the British, and even surpassed it in mushroom production technology and productive capacity. The Mushroom Journal then blames under-capitalisation in the 1980s and 1990s as the main reason for the lack of competitiveness of the British mushroom industry. The third lesson is the important role that the state plays in helping agriculture to expand production, modernise or just survive. But capital investment grants go mainly to the larger and more efficient growers, who meet the conditions to get them. On the one hand, the State follows policies of expansion of production in a situation of expansion of consumption, like "the horticultural improvement scheme" in the UK until 1973, when mushroom growers received important grant aid from the state. But that scheme came to end in 1973 when the British mushroom industry entered a period of recession because of an excess of productive capacity in an industry that distributed its entire output in the home market.
On the other hand, grants can be directed in times of crisis to increase productivity and make the industry more competitive, particularly as it is the case of the Irish mushrooms industry with the scheme of "investment aid for the development of commercial horticulture" in the present decade. A similar role was played by "the Farm and Horticultural Development Scheme", which the British Government introduced to help horticultural growers to modernise farm structures in January 1974 (TMJ, May 78: 166). The Development Plans approved grew from 146 grants approved in 1974 to 6,437 in 1977. The Government approved a total of GBP303.4m in the latter year. Under this new capital grant the ECC reimbursed 25 per cent of the Government's payment.
In conclusion: the crisis brought down the output of the UK industry, but it only slowed down growth in England and Wales. An aspect that The Mushroom Journal didn't explore was the competition with Southern Irish growers.
Until 1980 Southern Irish growers were virtually the sole exporters of mushrooms to the UK*[15] . The percentage of total mushroom imported grew from the 3.2 per cent of the total supply to the UK market (not including the North of Ireland) in 1971 (1,600 tonnes) to the 10.2 per cent in 1977 (5,800 tonnes). How could Irish growers increase their exports in a time of crisis, or slacking demand, unless they were more competitive in price?
Consumption per head in the UK actually increased from 0.4 oz to 0.5 oz per week between 1971 and 1978 (Hilton 1982: 23). There were, however, two years in which consumption went down: in 1970 in relation to 1968 and 1969, and in 1974 in relation to 1973. When the crisis struck in 1975, consumption was up again.
After production adjusted to demand, the recovery of the British industry came with an increase of the market share of the most efficient farms due to the elimination or absorption of small and inefficient growers but also with an increase in productivity that made the British industry more cost efficient and more competitive in relation to the Irish mushroom industry. For example, between 1971 and 1974 yields per square feet increase from 1.13 to 1.28 kg (13.27 per cent), and from 1.3 to 1.45kg (11.5 per cent) between 1975 and 1978 (Hilton 1982: 18). In total, there was an increase in compost productivity of 28.3 per cent between 1971 and 1978.
This increase in productivity motivated by the crisis took its toll in the end on Irish growers. We have already seen that Irish exports went down to 5,100 tonnes in 1978 (5,800t in 1977), and down again in 1979 to 4,900t. That happened after a period of extraordinary growth between 1971 and 1977. The recovery of the Irish mushroom industry came with a steady increase in demand in the British market for fresh mushrooms, but also with the introduction of the bag growing system based on small satellite farms.
The crisis of the 1970s in Britain also showed how important the labour question becomes in time of crisis. It is to this question that I turn to now.
The 1975 crisis and the labour question The labour question was one of the most important issues raised during the 1975 crisis. There were complaints in The Mushroom Journal about increases in the cost of fuel oil, particularly after the mushroom industry lost the state subsidy for heating costs in 1974. In first six months without the subsidy, TMJ calculated that mushroom growers' costs in Britain had increased in the overall around GBP1.5m only over heating expenditure (April 1975: 119). Mushroom growers felt unable to control the prices of inputs like oil, spawn, or the raw materials to prepare compost, and they just accommodated to them. And they were already increasing compost productivity. The main focus, therefore, became controlling labour costs. Growers could reduce labour costs by mechanising operations, by intensifying the work process (ie. by getting pickers to increase their picking speed), or by lobbying the government to keep wage increases at bay. The Mushroom Journal, as the public face of growers and organ of the MGA, described in its pages the effort of the MGA in that latter regard.
According to Hinton (1982: 16) labour represented 35.8 per cent of all production cost in a sample mechanised tray farm with an output of 825 tonnes of mushrooms per year in 1981. That farm employed 12 full-time men and 45 part-time regular female pickers. Each picker averaged 30 hours a week. As mechanised tray farms didn't change much between 1975 and 1981, I consider that these figures are representative of modern trays farms in the mid 1970s.
There were labour inputs such as growing, maintenance, and administration that could be greatly reduced through mechanisation and computerisation. They represented 15 per cent of all costs of production in our sample farm. We have to remember that the large tray farm prepared their own compost and that labour input, although greatly reduced through mechanisation as we have seen in previous chapters, had to be added. The sample farm produced 150 tonnes of compost per week *[16]. But picking and packing were a highly labour intensive activity that represented 20.4 per cent of all production cost; it was the highest labour input. To this day, harvesting for the fresh market hasn't been mechanised.*[17]
The galloping rate of inflation in 1975 also threatened the livelihoods of millions of wageworkers across Britain. Workers, represented by their trade unions, started to put pressure on the government and the employers to get wage increases in order to balance up with increasing living costs. The conflicting interests of workers and employers, therefore, became obvious.
Mushroom growers had two main reasons to be really worried about immediate increases in labour costs. On the one hand, wages in the mushroom industry were lower than in other economic sectors, so growers feared that they could potentially increase at a higher rate than average industrial wages (TMJ, May 1975: 190). On the other hand, the government was due to introduce the Equal Pay Act 1970 on the first of January 1976 (TMJ, April 1975: 149). That meant that the wages of women couldn't be lower than the wages of men. As mushroom pickers and packers were women to a large extent, and as we have seen picking and packing represented around 20 per cent of all production costs, equal pay meant that labour costs were definitely going to rise.
The lobbying capacity of the MGA was then quickly set in motion. In April 1975, the Mushroom Growers Association created The Manpower and Economic Committee in order to deal with the labour issue. The first action of this committee was to request to every grower in the UK, member of the MGA, to co-operate in a labour use survey in farms. The idea was, according to an editorial of TMJ (July 1975: 225), "to bring to the notice of all concerned, and more particularly the Agricultural Wages Board [AWB] through the appropriate National Farmers' Union [NFU] channels, just how labour intensive was the mushroom industry and, by doing just that, to emphasize in the strongest possible terms the effect on the industry of increased wages demands and particularly, the impact on the industry of equal pay for women."
The editorial contradictorily stated that it was fair to get equal pay for equal work but that the intention of the MGA was, nevertheless, to oppose it arguing that the industry was facing its two most traumatic two years. By July 1975, the response of growers had been very uneven. Apart from the large growers council of the MGA, only 10 per cent of all growers had manifested its willingness to co-operate with the survey (TMJ, July 1975: 225). The MGA had to insist that a third party was going to examine the data supplied, and that no grower's name would be disclosed.
The MGA didn't have any member in the AWB, but the NFU did a fine job on behalf of the British mushroom growers according to TMJ. In spite of "excessive wage settlements in other sections of the industry", according to the TMJ, the AWB ruled "after prolonged opposition" that equal pay would not apply to workers employed for thirty hours or less per working week. The wage level for part-time workers was fixed at 87.5 per cent of the hourly rate of those employed for more than thirty hours (TMJ, Sept 1975: 301). The new rate for a full time worker had been increased by GBP6 per week to 36.50 but overtime rates remained at the same level. While the AWB fixed the hourly rate of full-time workers at 91.5p per hour, the hourly rate for those employed 30 or less hours per week was only 80p/h. Furthermore, the AWB also ruled that the lower rate of 80p/h would also apply to full time workers not regularly employed. A picker employed regularly by two different employers (ie. shifted continuously between two or more farms) would be also considered a casual one.
At the same time that they were finding ways to make void the equal wage act, growers also were trying to reduce the cost of labour by making pickers work more intensively by paying piece wages. The editor of TMJ (February 1976: 66) reported the concerns of growers over wages, particularly having to pay the minimum wage also to pickers doing picking rates lower than those established by the farm. The editor (TMJ, January 1976: 10) mentioned that for an average picking rate of 25 lbs/h the piece rate for a fulltime picker had to be 3.66p/lb, while it would be only 3.2p/lb for a part-time picker. However, pickers doing below 25 lbs/h had to get the equivalent to the minimum wage in its hourly rate. For example, a grower would have to compensate a picker doing 10 lbs/h, giving her in practice a piece rate of 8p if she was a part-time picker. That was the fear of growers, but in practice they trying to force higher picking rates than before, and fire those who couldn't make them (TMJ, February 1976: 66):
"Although this was not disclosed at the meeting [of MGA growers of East Anglia] it is known that, on one farm, the picking rate has been set and agreed at 35 lb. per hour. It seems that no provision, other than sacking, has been made for the slowest pickers unable to achieve the standard rate."
It might be argued that as only one case is mentioned in TMJ it is not enough to say that growers were generally increasing picking rates and sacking those pickers who couldn't make them. However, that is the only particular instance of the discussion that the editor mentioned about the MGA regional meeting. We could conclude that it was a clear message to the growers who read the journal.
In conclusion: the argument that the mushroom industry would not survived equal pay rates had been won. The AWB backed off. For the MGA it was a great victory. The ruling was clearly made to suit mushroom growers despite the fact that they were not directly represented in the AWB.
A shut down in production capacity of some large mushroom enterprises in Britain probably strengthened the negotiation power of the NFU on behalf of the MGA. In its August edition, the TMJ (1975: 364-6) announced that the American-owned Country Kitchen Foods Ltd was closing down two mushroom farms in Suffolk for an indefinite period of time, with a loss of over 400 full and part time jobs. The company informed that "a long period of unprofitable trading, which had continued despite increased efficiency" had motivated their decision:
"The last two years of inflation have adversely affected the mushroom industry, in common with agriculture and horticulture generally; but the wages-led inflation of the last year has had a particularly disastrous effect on mushroom growing where 50 per cent of costs are incurred in labour... Given better trading conditions at some future date reconsideration will be given to re-opening these facilities.*[18]"
In April 1976 (TMJ, April 1976: 111), Country Kitchen Foods also announced the imminent closing down of a third farm, in Derbyshire: this time with a loss of over 500 jobs. Clorox, the Californian based company that bought Country Kitchen Foods in 1973 for GBP4.25m, issued an statement in May 1976 (TMJ, June 1976: 192) saying that its UK operation was going to lose around GBP2.25 m in 1976, and that was why they were closing, in total, three of the five farms they owned in the UK. The company was writing off GBP3.8m. However, as Cronox wasn't selling any of the closed farms, it could bring them back to production when market conditions improved.
A second large mushroom company, Middlebrook Mushrooms, took a less radical measure, but argued similar reasons. Mike Turner, group's general manager said (TMJ 1975: 364-6): "We are unable to keep abreast of the colossal increases in costs... We have got to see some movement in mushroom prices. Unless that happens people will find that mushrooms will not be produced in this country." He added that mushroom growers were highly dependent on labour and that the wages of agricultural workers had gone ahead. As a result, they decided to reduce labour costs with the layoff of 40 people, out of 400, from their farms in Selby and Gateforth. At the end of January (TMJ, April 1976), Middlebrook Mushrooms announced that its entire 208 strong female labour force in its farm in Cromer, Norfolk, had become part-time on a 30-hour week. The company declared that the Equal Pay act had motivated their decision, and that to keep production at the same level they had to hire 45 extra workers, including school leavers. Mrs. Whiffen, the union shop steward and company's picking supervisor, said:
"We do not like to lose money but we have to accept the situation. We want to keep Middlebrooks on the map. Cromer would be a very sad place without it... Somewhere along the line there has got to be good sense. We don't want equal pay. If the firm had the money we would want it but they don't have it, so we don't want it. We're not under-privileged. We're willing to work without a rise but it looks as though we're not allowed to [referring to their trade union]."
The Mushroom Journal never gave any voice to mushroom workers, but it made an exception in this case. The reason - the voice of the representative of the workers is undistinguishable from the voice of the employer. There was a complete agreement. Mr Paul Middlebrook, the company's chief executive, added: "We're very pleased that the workers are taking this sort of attitude." The trade union, the National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers, disagreed with the attitude of the workers, but their position didn't get any print space in TMJ.
In times of crisis, the threat of a closure or relocation can be a real deterrent for workers to fight back at the lowering of wages and working conditions. However, companies might end up closing in spite of the workers' sacrifices. Mrs. Whiffen representing the workers in one of the Middlebrook's farms, in a context of farm closures, had accepted that the company didn't have the money to pay wage increases, but she didn't mention whether the company had opened the books to her. Her position was probably ambiguous. As a supervisor she was more concerned about the company; as a union rep she was in theory more concerned about the workers. At the end, her role as supervisor was more important. But labour relations within Middlebrook were not as harmonious as the company had projected them to be.
On the one hand, not all the workers were happy with losing money in one of the Middlebrook farms. In June 1976, TMJ reported that the Industrial Tribunal had put back to June 22nd a case concerning casual workers in the farms of Middlebrook Mushrooms in Selby (Yorks) and Cromer (Norfolk). The company announced in November 1976 in the TMJ that the union had finally withdrawn the case without further explanations. In the opinion of the company, the union had never made the workers "fully aware of the extent to which they would become personally involved and this caused some concern." For the company, the NUAAW had to recognise that "its grievance lies entirely with the Agricultural Wages Board... and not with Stanley Middlebrook (Mushrooms) Ltd."
The TMJ and Middlebrook were suggesting that negotiations and conflicts should be circumscribed to the AWB. They wanted to take away any legitimacy from shop negotiations or court settlements once they had achieved their victory in the AWB. There was a reason. A case in the tribunals had already worried the editors of TMJ in June 1976. A fruit farmer, who had cut the hours of some of his female workers to 30 hours, to pay them 80 pence per hour instead of 91.5p/h, had come into conflict with the National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers. The union took him to a tribunal under the Sex Discrimination Act, and the farmer offered to reinstate the women to a 42-hour week but at the "casual" rate of pay. The tribunal didn't rule the rate at which the women should be reinstated, but it gave ground to the union to demand the higher hourly rate. TMJ feared that a victory of the union in that case could have implications for mushroom farms. For Middlebrook Mushrooms, therefore, the NUAAW had been trying to bring that same case to its farms.
On the other hand, there are indications that the MGA had won the battle by using inflated labour costs. For example, the MGA argued that labour costs were in excess of 40 per cent of production cost. Country Kitchen Foods had put it even as high as 50 per cent. The sample from 1981 that I have shown above, however, gives the figure of 35.5 per cent of production costs, including administration staff (3.5 per cent) and pensions (0.4 per cent). The figures of 1981 must be much more accurate because they were not intended at stopping a wage increase but at showing other growers the average production costs in an average mechanised tray farm. In the sample farm, all 45 pickers and packers were women working an average of 30 hours per week, representing 20 per cent of total production costs.
The ruling of the AWB then reinforced a tendency that was already there. It pushed even further the process of casualisation and precarisation of the harvesting workforce. Aylesbury mushrooms, for example was a model tray farm in 1975. It held the farm-walk for the MGA conference that year. The farm employed 50 female pickers and packers, 14 full time and 36 part-time. The sample farm we have seen in 1981, six years later, had a fully part-time female labour force. According to the Manpower Committee of the MGA, 70 per cent of all the labour employed on mushrooms in 1976 worked 30 hours or less (TMJ, December 1976: 425). However, the editor of The Mushrooms Journal, WRA, considered in quite an inappropriate manner that the Government didn't need to include a Sex Discrimination Act with the Equal Pay legislation (TMJ, January 1976: 10):
"I, as a self-acknowledged male chauvinist pig, regard as a somewhat hilarious piece of legislation which, with the advance of education for male and female alike, should be and quite probably is, quite unnecessary."
But the crude fact speaks for itself: the mushroom industry in Britain was made up of a predominantly female part-time labour force on lower wages than the predominantly full-time male labour force. Picking was an exclusively female occupation, and the sex discrimination and equal pay acts didn't change that fact.
The reduction of the cost of labour by political means had been the main struggle of the MGA during the 1974-75 crisis. They had treated labour as another input. The claims were made in a context of economic crisis for the mushroom industry in which the cost of inputs for farms rose faster than the prices of outputs. Denis Locke, marketing manager of Country Kitchen Foods Ltd. and a regular columnist in TMJ, articulated the point of view of many growers (TMJ, May 1975: 190): "We have now arrived at the point where there is little or no flesh on the bone let alone fat. We have increased our yields, we have cut our costs, we have endeavoured to absorb the crippling increases in the costs of raw materials... Something must be done to increase the price of our produce in line with the ever escalating costs of production." The point was that in opinion of growers, in spite of getting everything right they couldn't make a living. Or they were not allowed. Why?
The arguments of the mushroom industry were not entirely economic. They also made heavy incursions in the field of politics, as we have seen, but also in the field of ideology. The AWB tried several times to abolish the different rate between full and part time workers in agriculture, but the NFU blocked it successfully throughout the second half of the 1970s. The minimum wage for regular full-time workers kept, nevertheless, increasing although at a much slower pace than the basic index price for mushrooms in the open market. But the MGA presented wages increase as the affront of left wing government to hard working growers. The Labour Party was in office at that time in Britain. The fact is that while the minimum wage increased 48.61 per cent between 1975 and 1978, the basic index price for mushrooms increased 89.24 per cent during the same period.
YearMinimum wage in agriculture Basic Index (GBP) for a 40 hours week(1971-72 = 1000) 1975 28.80 142.0 1976 36.50 186.2 1977 39.00 231.0 1978 43.00 268.72 *[19]
In second half of 1976, the worst of the crisis in the British mushroom industry looked to be behind it. The editor of TMJ, WRA, could argue that in spite of the hot weather, inflation, equal pay, and "the myriad of rule and regulations which continue to descend on the industry as a whole... the UK mushroom industry appears, by and large, to be doing fairly well and those growers who really know their business seem to be weathering the storms."
By the end of 1976 (TMJ December 1976: 425), the Manpower Committee of the MGA considered that the number of the farm closures had slowed down and that supply and demand were in balance. But it still made an appeal to the AWB arguing that there were many growers in financial difficulties due to losses caused by high temperatures in the summer of 1976. They concluded that any removal of the differential between full and part time workers would have "serious" consequences for the mushroom industry. The end of the crisis didn't mean a relaxation of the pressure on workers. But a new framework of social legislation had been created in the mushroom industry including the Sex Discrimination Act, the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act, the Health and Safety at Work Act, and the Employment Protection Act. The reason for this set of regulations was probably the pressure from the trade union movement, particularly with the Labour Party in office, in a context of a very low level of regulation and substandard labour conditions and wages in British agriculture and in the mushroom industry, in comparison to other sectors of the economy. Both increasing wages and social legislation worried mushroom growers, small and big alike. But it was in the large farms with a large workforce where any wage increase was seen as a huge loss of money and as a inadmissible intromission from a left wing government. G.A. Corrin (TMJ, Jan 78: 2-8), controller worldwide of the mushroom interests of H. J. Heinz Co. Ltd., related wage increases, "heavy" social legislation, and Trade Union growing strength. In his opinion this has forced the farm manager to be "equally divided between growing and labour relations. A mistake in either area can be equally costly", he said.
In his opinion, social legislation had become a religion. In his speech at the meeting of the MGA in November 1977, he showed his opinion about social legislation and his skill as a poet to the MGA members with a psalm on Industrial Relations of his making:
The Government is my Sheperd Therefore I need not work. It alloweth me to lie down on a good job It leadeth me beside the still factories It destroyeth my initiative It leadeth me in the path of the parasite For politics' sake Yea, though I walk in the valley of laziness and Deficit spending I will fear no evil For the Government is with me. It prepareth an economic Utopia for me By appropriating the earnings of my grandchildren. It filleth my head with false security My inefficiency runneth over. Surely the Government shall care for me all the days Of my life And I shall dwell in a fool's paradise for ever.
Clearly, Mr Corrin, blamed the government for trying to introduce legislation in order to protect workers rights. At that time, the Labour Party was in power and there was a slight shift in the balance in favour of workers. At the level of ideology, Corrin's ideas correspond to the neo-liberal rising tide against Keynesian state interventionist policies that started with the USA-backed coup against the Allende Government in Chile in 1973 and brought to power Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the USA (see Harvey 2006). That ideology suited better large corporations such as Heinz. But the MGA, played its role as well in promoting it. The psalm was printed twice in the TMJ. The Journal (Nov 77: 383) also praised Corrin's speech at the conference of the MGA in these terms:
"[It] proved one of those rather special conference contributions which brought home to the growers, in quite simple but forceful terms, the immediate past, the present and the possible future of the UK mushroom industry."
Corrin forgot to mention that growers got heavy subsidies from the government and that on top of that they had the cheapest and most docile labour force in the UK. During the 1970s, the TMJ didn't ever mention a single case of a worker's strike in a mushroom farm in spite of a severe economic crisis in the UK.
Now we must turn to the steps that preceded the birth of the satellite mushroom growing system in Ireland. The issue of labour costs and the introduction of new social regulations in the 1970s will help us understand the new emphasis on small-scale farming. In the next chapter, I will deal with the role that the Kinsealy Research Centre (DAF) and the IDA played in the creation of the satellite system.
Reference list: Department of Agriculture and Food (1969) Report of the Survey Team established by the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries on the Mushroom Industry, The Stationary Office: Dublin Harvey, David (2006) The New Imperialism, Verso Hinton, Lynn (1982) Mushrooms in Britain and Ireland: an Economic Study, Agricultural Economics Unit: Department of Land Economy, Cambridge University Mac Canna (1984) Gormley, T. Ronan (1987) Handling, Packaging and Transportation of Fresh Mushrooms in An Foras Taluntais, Proceedings of the 5th National Mushroom Conference, Kinsealy Research Centre, Dublin
Periodicals: The Mushroom Journal The Mushroom People
Footnotes: [1] Work towards this series of articles has been possible thanks to a three-year Government of Ireland Scholarship, 2004-2007, from the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and the Social Sciences.
[2] It was based on the old American model consisting of wooden growing rooms without windows. The rooms could hold two tiers of six high shelves or beds. In America, these rooms used to be built in pairs with a single sloping roof. The structure was called standard double (Mac Canna 1984: 9).
[3] Between 1964 and 1966, the annual output of the UK was 27,000 metric tons; Holland produced 16,000 tons; the USA, 75,000 tons; and France, 50,000 (DAF 1969: 23-25).
[4] These figures come from Hinton (1982) and from TMJ (Feb 1975).
[5] The crisis particularly hit the industry in the North of Ireland hard, as we will see, where the small tray farm predominated.
[6] A report about Kernan mushroom was published in the mushroom people (August 1986) to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the company.
[7] What was the situation in the South? I must introduce first the period of growth in 1950s and 1960s.
[8] Nevertheless, when prices increased, production also increased again. In 1980 output reached 4,540 tonnes (3,260 tonnes in 1978) (Hinton 1982).
[9] TMJ, November 1975: 418-420
[10] The retail price of mushrooms was 42p/lb in September 1975. The claimed was that it should increase to 48.25p/lb by March 1976.
[11] A US corporation that owned 5 large tray mushroom farms in Britain before the 1975 crisis.
[12] Hinton 1982: 18
[13] In 1977, according to Hilton (1982: 18), the six largest growers (2.9 per cent) produced 27,753 tonnes of mushrooms (55.3 per cent).
[14] In January 1976 the British government put in force the Equal Pay Act, according to which women had be paid the same as men for doing similar work. See below. The message is that "efficient" farms could afford increases in wages.
[15] The percentage of mushrooms imported from the Republic or Ireland represented nearly 100 per cent of all mushrooms imported during the 1970s. In 1978, they represented 99.5 per cent, but in 1980 they were only 86.5 per cent of the total. In 1980, Dutch growers started to export mushrooms to Britain on a higher scale (Hinton 1982: 20).
[16] Hinton doesn't specify whether it was phase2 or phase3 compost. Since he says that 150 tonnes of compost were "laid down" each week, we can assume he's talking about a two zone tray farm in which compost was laid down in the growing rooms after been pasteurised and spawn run. But he could be also referring to phase1 compost laid down for pasteurisation. Actually, in the 1970s in Britain, it was more common to account for compost productivity in pounds per tonne of phase1 compost. As I have already said, compost shrinks up to 30 per cent during pasteurisation and spawn running. That is why, among other factors, the productivity pounds per tonne is much higher for phase3 compost - less material produces higher yields.
[17] In the 1970s, the Dutch introduced mechanical harvesting. They were able to harvest up to 1,000 kg of mushrooms per hour (TMJ, August 1978: 250). But the quality of mushrooms harvested in that way was not suitable for the fresh market; they could only go to processing. In the 1980s and 1990s mechanical harvesters were developed but growers never adopted them beyond experimental levels. I will deal with that question and with more recent work on the development of picking robots in subsequent chapters.
[18] The company only reduced capacity in adverse market conditions. As they were big enough to do that. See the case of Sylvan reducing production over wages.
10/21/2020 9:40:51 AM Fantastic company. I was there to see it all begin, Gillis and then you all went to Benburb. Well done. Mrs Kernan, EE and all the family great people.
Anne Hart,
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