Tipping and EU Laws

Merry Christmas Food Junglers! We know our little writing escapade won’t EVER compare to what Santa puts under your Christmas tree, so consider this a little something extra for the festive spirit. Let’s dig in.

This week:

🌍️ We have a full picture from this year’s climate summit, COP28.

💵 The anti-tipping movement has begun in the US.

☕️ The European Union gets real on coffee.

🌽 Small-scale farmers take a beating in the UK.

🧑‍🌾 A new generation of farmers gains momentum in California…

POLICY
LET’S TALK COP

To kick things off, let’s discuss the world’s largest climate summit: COP28. Here were the most important financial moves:

• $7.1 billion was raised to encourage innovation in the food sector.

• Private funders pledged $389 million to support food producers and consumers.

• The Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate issued $3.4 billion in aggregated funding for climate-smart food systems and agriculture.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation also issued a list of mandatory targets:

• Methane emissions from livestock must be reduced by 25% by 2030.

• All the world’s fisheries should be sustainably managed by 2030.

• There should be safe and affordable drinking water for all by 2030.

• Traditional biomass for cooking must be eliminated by 2030.

• There should be a complete restriction on child-targeted food advertising by 2030.

• 50% of food waste worldwide, per capita, should be eliminated by 2050.

ZOOMING OUT: As the old adage goes, the first step to solving a problem is realising you have one. So, while these steps are far from what is necessary to eliminate food-related emissions outright, this is a move in the right direction.

BUSINESS
TIPPING POINT

Bad news for American hospitality workers: consumers are tipping less. Worse still, the trend doesn't seem to be slowing down.

As of this November, workers in leisure and hospitality roles made an average of $1.28 an hour in tips, down 7% from 2022.

The oft-cited reasons are twofold. Firstly, the number of workers ASKING for tips has increased. Doordash, for example, have notified customers of LONGER delivery wait times if they don’t tip.

Secondly, the pandemic may have reshuffled some things. After Covid, many consumers have resorted to home-cooking, pushing hospitality workers to ask for larger tips to make up for waning demand for dine-in.

ZOOMING OUT: In October, Chicago became the second-largest U.S. city to vote to require tipped workers to make the full minimum wage ($7.25 per hour) instead of the federal tipped minimum wage ($2.13 an hour). Could this be the start of a movement to scrap the tipping system altogether?

SUPPLY CHAIN
EU TIGHTENS ITS GRIP

Starting in 2024, The European Union (“EU”) will be banning the sale of coffee, cocoa, soy, palm and cattle that have been linked to the destruction of forests.

Called the “Deforestation Regulation”, this new law will require companies to digitally map their supply chains down to the plot of land where the raw materials were grown.

While this could completely RESHAPE the commodities market to tackle deforestation, many wonder how this supply chain shock will affect the farmers who rely on exporting to Europe.

How will this affect food prices within Europe that are already sky-high? Could this lead to a black market situation, in which goods are just imported illegally?

ZOOMING OUT: It doesn’t stop there. From January, companies incorporated in the EU will be obliged to report the carbon footprint of their ENTIRE supply chains.

So, all in all, this could either be a daring move to tackle climate change or a “right choice, wrong time” kind of deal.

CLIMATE
BRITISH FARMERS TAKE COVER

The UK is facing an ethical dilemma: food security or sustainable farming.

As the country strays further from EU regulation, European farming subsidies, which had previously benefitted small-scale farmers, are now being slowly rolled back under new British farming law.

Now UK farmers are being incentivised to “adopt sustainable farming practices”, which both come at the cost of food security AND are quite pricey for the independent farmer.

ZOOMING OUT: A poll of 2,135 adults in England and Wales has shown that 84% of people think food security is either as or more important than environmental targets.

With the war in Ukraine still raging and the conflict in Palestine heating up, the question of food security vs. sustainability will be an important one to answer for not just the British, but all those affected by current food shortages.

THE BRIGHT SIDE
FARMING = INDEPENDENCE

For African-Americans farming offers a great economic opportunity to build generational wealth. But research has also found that African-Americans have been regularly deprived of equal access to loans, grants and crop insurance to scale their farming operations. 

As recently as 2021, for example, only 1.4% of farmers in the US were Black or of mixed race.

This is where Dennis Hutson comes in. Having purchased 60 acres of land in Allensworth - the first Black-founded and governed town in California - he aims to give farmers of colour a “hands-on teaching experience” in organic and sustainable farming.

His program entails teaching young farmers how to enrich their soil, preserve water, reduce manpower, while also helping them gain access to loans for their own projects.

Through all of this, Hutson believes he can introduce a new generation of farmers who will not only be able to build their own wealth, but also be armed with farming knowledge that will help preserve the long-term health of the Californian landscape. Food Jungle approved ✅ 

SHARE FOOD JUNGLE

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This could be you when you share this newsletter to anyone interested in food. So basically everyone…we think 😅 

BEFORE YOU GO…

• Rapid Support Forces – a powerful Sudanese paramilitary group – captured Wad Madani, the agricultural breadbasket of the country.

• Greek-yoghurt maker, Chobani, has bought ready-to-drink coffee maker, La Colombe, for $900 million to expand its beverage business.

• Quaker Oats recalls granola bars and granola cereal over Salmonella concerns.

• More than 240 people in North Carolina have been struck with norovirus that has been linked to sushi restaurant.

• Sweetgreen opens another restaurant in California with its famous automated “Infinite Kitchen” robots.

• UK champagne sales are down 20% as shoppers are looking to spend less this Christmas.

• Caviar Co. and Pringles are creating a caviar-flavoured pringle crisp after a caviar-pringle trend on Tik Tok.

TAKE A BREAK

Hi there everyone! If you’re interested in a little bit of escapism this holiday season, we would thoroughly recommend you check out CULTURE CURATED, written by our dear pal Neema Naficy.

From food recipes and art to cocktails and cool YouTube clips, Neema shares things from the creative world that are definitely WORTH listening to, trying out, and watching. Food Jungle approved ✅