Can alternative economics create good food? 

Diana Finch reflects on the legacy of the now-defunct Bristol Pound and, in this opinion piece, explores potential alternative economic models to enhance access to good food. Diana is stepping down as a director of Bristol Food Network, having taken responsibility for the finances for the last few years. Formerly the managing director of Bristol Pound CIC, she recently published ‘Value Beyond Money‘, a book exploring alternative economic approaches through the story of the Bristol Pound.

Bristol is pretty famous in the world of new economics, thanks to the (now sadly extinct) Bristol Pound. It was a localisation currency, encouraging shoppers to spend their money with local businesses, and asking businesses to localise their supply chains. Sadly the Bristol Pound no longer exists – it never got to the scale where it could be financially self-sufficient, and eventually the grants dried up. The currency became famous for a few reasons: it was the first city-wide scheme of its kind, it had digital and paper money from the outset, and you could pay your local taxes with it. These were all ground-breaking. 

Learnings from the Bristol Pound 

There are several reasons for Bristol Pound not growing to the volume of transactions needed for it to succeed.  

One of the main reasons was the marketing. Bristol Pound’s public messaging went something like this: “We believe localisation is important – if you agree, join us!” This approach to marketing is often used by social movements. It’s great at getting people on board initially, but tends not to lead to wider adoption. By the time you’ve attracted all the people who agree with you, your identity in the outside world is fixed, and the people who don’t agree with you are unlikely to listen to anything you have to say. 

Another reason is that it was a hassle. People had to plan ahead – to swap their sterling for Bristol Pounds, or to top up their Bristol Pound digital account. Shoppers had to work out where they could spend their special money. Businesses had to specially train staff on the till, managing their cash flow was more complicated, and changing suppliers is fraught with risk. There was no obvious benefit in using the currency for anyone involved – no great need was being met, and there was no financial incentive. It was something to do if you really believed in the merits of localisation, for economic, social or environmental reasons. 

This lack of scale in transactions didn’t just mean the currency scheme ultimately had to close. It also meant that the currency didn’t really achieve the impact it had hoped. When 0.02% of the population (i.e. one in 500 people) do something – like spend a small proportion of their overall expenditure with local shops – the effects are so small as to not even be visible.  

The learning is that for a currency to work it needs to operate at scale, both to be viable and to make an impact. And to achieve that scale: 

1. Don’t make your currency scheme ideological, and 

2. Don’t make it a hassle – or if hassle is unavoidable, create some kind of positive reason for it. 

Is there a potential future for alternative currencies? 

Let’s assume we’ve found a way to achieve scale with an alternative currency. Would an alternative currency really change anything? 

As I see it, we’ve only scratched the surface with the sorts of alternative currencies we’ve experimented with so far. Localisation currencies like the Bristol Pound are all very well, but they only tackle a fraction of the problems we face. They might help us reduce food miles and perhaps improve the fortunes of local traders, but they are unlikely to do more than that. Timebanks (exchanging skills without money changing hands) and LETS (Local Exchange Trading Scheme) currencies encourage community collaboration, but they can’t address deeper social issues like food and fuel poverty. More recently, there have been schemes like Citizen Coin, rewarding people with discounts at local shops and leisure centres for volunteering and participating actively in their communities. These are great for social cohesion and community engagement, but are not a solution to our wider socio-economic problems. 

But some people are thinking much more radially about how we can use special sorts of money to tackle the big problems systemically. The Food Farming and Countryside Commission (FFCC), Island Power and Promoting Economic Pluralism have all suggested potential ways forward, particularly focusing on commodity-based currencies.  

I’d like to leave you with a currency approach to food poverty that could also help us make progress in the transformation to agroecology.  

At the moment we rely on foodbanks to deal with food poverty. These are reliant on grant funding as well as free supplies of food from commercial producers – food that would otherwise be wasted. The foodbank approach costs lots of money to deliver. Meanwhile, those in food poverty have little choice over what they eat, often having to accept highly processed foods with low nutritional value. Foodbanks undermine local food producers, while letting large-scale industrial food producers off the hook for creating food waste.  

Imagine an alternative solution. Instead of spending the funding on foodbanks, how about investing it in local farms, enabling them to shift their business model towards serving local food needs using agroecological farming methods. The farmers don’t have to repay the investment – instead they have to agree to distribute food to local markets and shops, and accept an agreed amount of a special currency (FFCC coined the term Beetroot Bond) for some of the food they produce. In effect, they are repaying their investment in kind.

This currency is inflation proof – in that a Beetroot Bond would always be worth a specific quantity of food (which might be, say, 500g of potatoes or 100g of cheese). The Beetroot Bonds could be given to people struggling with food poverty, but instead of having to go to a foodbank, they could go to local shops and markets, using Beetroot Bonds to buy local, well-produced food. This solution is better for the environment, better for people’s wellbeing and physical health, and better for local food producers. And the pernicious problem of industrial food waste is seen for what it is. 

So, a decade on from the heyday of the Bristol Pound, is there still a scope for alternative currencies to help create a qualitatively better economic system? Yes indeed, but it’s going to take a very different mindset from funders and local governments to get investment into the kinds of currencies that could really make a difference.  

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