Muesli and other grumbles
For years I made my own muesli. It was easy: to a base of rolled oats, wheat bran, and wheat germ I added raisins, sultanas, and sometimes cashews. At the beginning, I used to sprinkle pollen on top of the mix, which had marinated in milk (even from the night before), in the belief it would help reduce hay fever, but the pollen was added all the year round. Over the years I became more adventurous and would sometimes add chopped-up dates and blueberries on top as well. Eventually I gave up on the pollen.
All that changed in the 1990s, when I met David Southwick, a Melbourne entrepreneur, and though him Carolyn Cresswell, another innovative business developer. I should let her tell her own story:
“It’s amazing where life can lead you…One day I was told that I was to lose my job as the business was to be sold. I immediately thought, “You could buy this little business! You love the muesli and you make it already!” My offer of $1,000 was eventually accepted and Carman’s was born. It was a life changing decision. Finishing my degree proved challenging as I made deliveries before morning lectures and balanced the books in the library during lunch breaks.” I was to change from making my own muesli mix to buying Carman’s. There are many reasons for this: but principally it was delicious, and it was easier than making the mix myself. “
At the same time, Carolyn was committed to sustainable principles. To quote again:
“Good food shouldn’t have a harmful impact on anything. That’s why to us sustainability is about so much more than just the environment. It’s about caring for our suppliers and employees, nourishing local communities, and serving up delicious, nutritious goodies for you. Over the past 30 years, we’ve achieved some remarkable things on our sustainability journey. But our next chapter promises to deliver even more goodness as we support the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”
So, where’s the grumble? In relation to Carman’s Muesli, it has to do with buying it in the supermarket. The process should be simple. All I have to do is go into the local supermarket, and to the aisle that contains cereals. There are all of Carman’s varieties, including Untoasted Muesli – Natural Bircher. Great. Oops, that is the only variety that doesn’t come in the 1.5 kg pack! It used to be available, but it hasn’t been the case for some weeks now. The ‘toasted’ alternative is there, as it always is, but never the untoasted. Smaller packs are there, but at a higher price per 100 g. Grumble …
It’s not just Muesli. For years I have typed blogs, articles and other notes and letters quite happily, using Microsoft Word. For fifteen years (after a slightly fraught swop over) I have been an enthusiastic Apple user. I’ve kept my software up to date, and – but only when I had to – I have upgraded the system software. In the past year I graduated to a better Mac, a MacBook, and a new iPad. The oldest item right now is my iPhone. All good, all working seamlessly together. Happy.
Almost happy, but just recently, I carried out my usual software update on my lovely desktop Mac, following the prompt from Apple. I didn’t notice there were two options, one the next in the usual progression of versions, and the other something different with a much higher identifying number. I pressed the button to start the upgrade. That had two consequences. The first was, as they say, just bad luck, as the computer froze in the upgrade process, and I wasn’t able to ‘unstick’ it. The helpful people at the Apple Store managed to get it going again, with almost nothing lost. However, the second problem was a hidden snag!
In the process of getting my desktop computer going again, I discovered programs had been updated. One of these was Microsoft Word (I also discovered I had some strange new software packages, which I have tried to ignore – and I no longer use PowerPoint or Excel). I opened Word and was instantly baffled. Where were all those nice items across the top of the screen – those columns of options usually labelled ‘Home’, ‘Insert’, ‘Draw’ and so on. Some items were still in place as I clicked from one are to another – like format, text size, bold and italics, numbering – but others seemed to have disappeared. I couldn’t even find the icon to save my work!! Later I learnt that some of those options were available to the side of the text I was producing, and after a few very tense days I discovered you could get many other options back by resorting to Classic View (makes me think of old cars in one of those Concours D’Elegance …).
What was this about? It seems, if I’m not mistaken, that the program has been ‘simplified’ for the sake of the average user. I realised that I was being encouraged to use one of the set formats. There was a layout for a job application, a letter to the boss, a recommendation for action by a company member, and even a layout for a recipe and a travel diary. I couldn’t find one for the 4-page Sheldrake blog. Why not? Well, I slowly realised that the latest version of Word is meant to be easier to use, simplified, reducing confusing choice. I suspect that is another way of saying ‘dumbed down’. You can restore an alternative version with most of the options I’ve come to love, but it seems unfamiliar users want it all made simple. Until one of the choices is ‘Peter’s 4-page blog’ format, I am back to grumbling.
People in their 80s do grumble a lot. I am aware of that weakness. However, I don’t need to have it pointed out to me that I leave two spaces between a full-stop and the beginning of the next sentence, littering my text with many gaps with warning lines below. Spelling corrections – fine. Some basic inelegant forms of expression identified. Fine again. Trying to push me into conformity with other users’ over use of spaces. No way.
Then the penny dropped. The troubles I’d been facing over Carman’s Muesli, and the challenges of the ‘new Word’ are the same. This is all about meeting the needs of the supplier, not the shopper. Leaving the shelves of the supermarket laden with slow selling options, cramming all the Word options onto the row of icons above the page you’re typing, this is wasting the company’s time and energy, when they should be focussing on maximising returns and reducing costs. All that stuff I used to explore in workshops about ‘the customer is king’ has gone, past history, archaic thinking. Now the company is king, and the shopper in the store is merely a slightly annoying element at the end of the line. I’d been aware of how this was changing the lives of suppliers, whose product sizes, shape, and colour usage had to fit what the store wanted (alone with increasingly complex product and cost codes). Now those at the other end of the retail cycle are expected to meet the company’s needs.
I should have seen what was happening. A prescient warning sign had the fate of product returns. There used to be a place in the store where you could return a faulty product and talk to a staff member over what the problem was – giving helpful feedback to pass on to the suppliers. A few years ago, I notice that these ‘Returns’ spots were occupied by a single person and a large waste bin: too much trouble to return any items to a supplier or fix whatever was wrong. Now the Returns counter has just about disappeared. Why waste money and space on that. Much easier to simply get the checkout and shelf filling staff to take whatever is at fault and that they can throw it away. The ‘wastage rates’ at many businesses are extraordinarily high, and only a part of that is the so-called natural wastage of years ago (stealing) as more of it has to do with helping ‘overworked’ staff.
As I was getting rather tetchy about muesli and various computer programs, I decided to eat a banana. Good, but it reminded me of another example of the impact of companies. This is the story of bananas in the Western Hemisphere. While plantains and bananas have much more to be said about them across the world, one part of that complex story begins in the 1870s in Jamaica. There a sea captain, one Lorenzo Dow Baker, bought 170 stems of bananas which he had acquired in the hope he could sell them back in his home town, Philadelphia. It was a gamble that worked, and soon he had a growing business, eventually setting up the Boston Fruit Company (which later became the United Fruit Company, and then Chiquita Brands International, one of the big two fruit companies in North America, along with Fyffes).The success of his venture relied on refrigeration, keeping the fruit from ripening while being transported.
From that small beginning, a mammoth business emerged, with two companies developing a series of monopolies that ensured they controlled the banana business, and the economies of several Central American countries. The two businesses obtained land concessions and growers, took over the subsidiaries of some shipping companies, and built and controlled the rail infrastructure. In the end they dominated the economies of several countries, actions that became the source of the phrase a ‘banana republic.’ As holdings grew, they acquired more and more control of land, and more and more control of the governments and their policies in the places where they operated.
They faced challenges. The dominant banana variety in the first half of the 20th Century was the Gros Michel Banana, but the variety slowly succumbed to the virulent Panama disease. As a result, the two companies switched to the Cavendish banana, which was a resistant strain, and which now dominates banana growing in the West. They also used their economic strength to ensure advantageous deals in the producer countries, keeping costs, transport, wages, and other expenses low. Market power was unrelenting, and soon most other banana varieties disappeared from grocery and supermarket chains. Today most chains, like Coles and Woolworths in Australia, only sell Cavendish bananas.
In seventy years, the Cavendish reigns supreme in the region. Producers make small profits (and for many producers their economic situation is marginal), but the big two companies continue to make extremely healthy profits, aided by steady improvements in transport, refrigeration, and disease mitigation strategies. At the other end of the supply chain, shoppers find that bananas seldom go down in price, spite of all the innovations and the latest technologies adopted by the two big suppliers.
It seems a common story. Just as with the software industry, where it is Microsoft and Apple, or the very profitable supermarket industry in Australia, with Coles and Woolworths, it is neither the suppliers nor the customers that reap the benefits, but the giants in the middle. Is this the economic world of the future? Those at either end of the economic system are largely excluded from the benefits of latest technologies in such areas as production, logistics, marketing, and finance: customers continue to pay what the large companies demand, producers sell to those same large companies at close to production costs. The riches are gathered by the intermediaries, controlling both supply and distribution.
Does this mean the staff of these intermediaries are well paid, that they, at least, get the benefits of this distorted supply chain? Well, you know that is a trick question. Companies keep staff costs low in warehouses, manufacturing, and service areas. The people who benefit most from the current system are the managers at the top of the major companies, and the investors. What they want to do is ensure continuing dominance, by excluding as much competition as possible. Just in case you haven’t realised this, it is especially easy in a small distant country like Australia, where two major supermarket chains are to be found, Coles and Woolworths, which are said to have their most successful subsidiaries ‘down under.’
Perhaps I should stop coming up with examples and draw a rather long bow. It appears we are heading towards a very asymmetrical society, in countries like the USA, Australia and several others in Europe. That society comprises a small elite of extraordinarily rich people, running and owning shares in increasingly protected major enterprises. The elite employs a significant number of staff, on far less attractive salaries, who run and support the elites various companies: those staff are under three types of pressure, as the companies seek to keep their wages under control to replace them by automatic systems and robots, or, if absolutely necessary, outsource the work to people in low income, third world countries. The rest of society falls into two groups: those working in low paid service roles of one kind or another, and self-employed workers who carve out areas where they offer support and help, in roles that range from gardening, plumbing and electrical work, through to tutoring, child minding and cleaning; and those that rely on charity.
Is this the new world? We have scrapped the old form of society with its four classes – aristocrats, upper class, middle class and working class (with various grading within each sector) – for a new structure – comprising the ultra-rich, the marginally paid workforce, the self-employed and the rejected poor. At the same time, we have scrapped the sense of community, of common concerns, where integrating activities from church to clubs and societies have been replaced by mass spectacles, with participation carefully structured with each group in its place, and no sense of common interest.
Just to complete this gloomy perspective, it seems we have lost our sense of the relationship between generations. The Boomers are slowly fading from view, now resorting to spending their saved money on booze, holidays, and electronic toys for the home. The next three generations are fighting hard to survive (unless they are members of the ultra-rich). That leaves the youngest generation, where they confront yet another challenge. As they mature more rapidly than generations before, often physically mature by the time they reach their teens, they simultaneously confront social development and learning needs that continued on into their twenties. All this, of course, rests on the presumption of continuing growth.
If you stand back from this situation, you would conclude we are facing collapse or radical change, as the present model appears unsustainable. History suggests that collapse is more likely than radical change. Those at the top will hang on for as long as they can, and those at the bottom seem to have lost revolutionary fervour. If the West collapses, will the East save us? Not Russia, for certain. China perhaps. Maybe India. Born just before the Boomers, my path is clear – drink gin and tonics and red wine while I can, and watch Rome burn. Oops, I mean watch the coming chaos with interest, aware I am completely powerless to do anything to stop the disaster in front of me.
PS: I am not running for parliament, seeking to establish a new political party, nor am I able to advocate a path out of the mess. Just another person sitting in the Coliseum, watching.
