During this Christmastime of good cheer and peace to all men, I had the opportunity to chat with my local traditional Maltese baker. Having always favoured local traditional food, fruit and vegetables over imported stuff I was shocked to hear that the local production of bread and cakes in small bakeries across Malta has fallen drastically in the last few years.
From around 160 bakeries in Malta and Gozo 10 years ago there are only 60 active bakeries still open. Of course, with the influx of foreign people in Malta in large numbers, the local traditions remain unknown to most of these and they opt for the rubber like white soggy slices of bread or pre-baked and heated baguettes that one finds in the supermarkets.
Fishermen too are suffering and need attention as the recent interview with a professional fisherman in the programme of my long-time friend and schoolmate and lawyer colleague, Emmy Bezzina highlighted.
The same conversation takes place often with the farmer who comes around twice a week with his van to sell local and many times ‘imported’ fruit and vegetables. He finds it almost impossible to supply local produce at decent prices since what he finds at the pitkali market and what many of his recently arrived foreign residents ask for are out of season fruits like grapes in winter, cherries in January or strawberries in February, all coming thousands of miles away from South Africa or South America at a huge cost to the environment.
These are often grown in plantations, sprayed with heavy forbidden pesticides, harvested by slave labour paid at a few cents an hour and flown by the international conglomerates across the world to tiny Malta. Instead of helping our farmers to continue producing seasonal vegetables and fruit and transporting them a day away from the field to us, we must stare at these terrible, yet lovely looking, products.
This is coupled with the mushrooming of large or even mega supermarkets, some belonging to global chains. The pressure on prices is felt not only in Malta. In fact, my wife hails from a 10-generation family-owned farm in central Germany. Until two generations ago, the family lived comfortably on the produce of their fields and animals but in the last 40 years competition there too pressed the local farmers to extreme conditions and price pressure.
Modern families expect to pay less and less for their food each year and the large multinationals have provided that. Yet, at what price to the environment, the traditions, the livelihood of farmers, the good wholesome tastes of freshly harvested and marketed products has this happened?
Tutto il mondo è paese, say the Italians when they refer to similar events happening globally. Unfortunately, it is a trend that may be hard to stop but we can at least try our best to restrain these multinationals and their local importers from using government measures to their advantage.
This is very much a case of unfair competition since, with their lobbyists, their barrage of tax lawyers and planners they get subsidised transport, local tax benefits and volume advantages that the small, often minute, local farmers and bakers have no chance to obtain.
Local traditions remain unknown to most of the foreigners in Malta who opt for the rubber like white soggy slices of bread or pre-baked and heated baguettes- John Vassallo
But there is a bit of movement in the larger European countries. The French have obtained UNESCO World Heritage status for their baguette.
The German farmers blocked the deputy chancellor and leader of the Green Party from landing on the German mainland from a North Sea island house last week, forcing him to return to the island. This has been criticised by the agriculture minister, who is also a member of the Green Party in the same coalition government. The minister, himself an immigrant of Turkish origin, does not sympathise with his own constituents who are angry, unhappy and up in arms as they see their livelihoods threatened.
Yes, the EU subsidises farmers heavily since they are an essential industry to feed ourselves in case of war. Forcing many to leave the profession for economic reasons threatens our defence.
When will the Maltese bakers and farmers organise themselves and go out in protest over the energy subsidies given to the larger bread makers who use fuel or gas in their ovens and in their transport vans in cahoots with the big supermarket owners owned by companies outside Malta?
Such companies have special corporate tax rates of less than five per cent unlike the traditional farmer who burns wood, pays 35 per cent corporate tax and finds no new apprentices to carry on the hard work to give us that delightful Maltese crunchy ħobża ta’ kuljum.
This is unfair and the government should care for and listen to the Maltese people, who are the only ones who have a vote.
The same applies to farmers who toil in all weather conditions, at inhuman hours to get their produce collected and taken to the pitkali in time and then find that they are undercut down to below subsistence levels by the larger importers of unseasonal tasteless fruits and vegetables grown in mega greenhouses in Holland or on plantations in South America or South Africa.
Look good produce dazzles the eyes of our imported populations who do not cook their foods at home in the traditional way. Catering for them may be accepted as long as the system caters in a sustainable way for us voting Maltese citizens who desire most of all to live comfortably, wealthily and healthily in our traditional ways.
This would normally be an election-winning theme for any party. I hope both parties take this up and act urgently and favourably.
John Vassallo is a former ambassador to the EU.