E-Malt.com News article: World: The “globeerization” undercuts the role of homebrew beer production and reflects badly upon the sustainable development throughout the world

The world’s vast repository of cultural brewing capital is under attack by global corporations. The top five brewing companies, all of which are American- or European-owned, control 41 percent of the world market. Perversely, economists and politicians calculate the conquest by industrial breweries as economic growth while the value of small-scale traditional brewing goes uncounted. Much will be lost if this global "beerodiversity" is lost to the forces of corporate-led homogenization, Chris O'Brien from the Foreign Policy in Focus (a joint project of International Relations Center & Institute for Policy Studies) wrote October 24.

The globalization of beer not only destroys the social, spiritual, and health-related benefits of small-scale home beer production. It also undercuts the vital role that home brewing plays in sustainable development throughout the world. For 10,000 years, brewing has been conducted at home, primarily by women, who were entrusted with safeguarding traditions that strengthen social bonds and build community identity. As an important component of diet, beer was distributed by female household heads according to the values of the community, which moderated consumption to socially acceptable levels. As an inherently small-scale and local endeavour, brewing also has had a low impact on environmental resources, relying on renewable energy sources and requiring little or no packaging or shipping.

Effervescent Growth

The Sumerians, circa 4,000 BCE, established the world's first urban trading society by growing surpluses of barley and emmer wheat, which they fermented into copious supplies of beer for their own consumption as well as for trade with neighbors. Sumerians, and their successors the Babylonians, adopted policies to promote and regulate the beer trade, such as the Code of Hammurabi, which dealt specifically with matters regarding beer (and the agriculture that made it possible), fixing a fair price per unit, and setting daily rations for workers, civil servants, and religious ministers. It was a recipe for success. Sumer and Babylonia thrived for over three millennia.

Egypt followed suit, constructing a powerful civilization fueled largely by promoting the growth of brewing and trading beer. The pyramids were essentially vast beer storerooms, symbolizing Egypt's power over its neighbors, with whom they conducted large-scale trade in grains and beer. Brewing, and its regulation, eventually spread north into Europe where it became progressively more controlled and regulated by church and state.

In 1516, the city of Ingolstadt issued the Reinheitsgebot, or purity law, governing the production and sale of beer in the Duchy of Bavaria. The law effectively excluded foreign and small-scale domestic brewers by banning the ingredients customarily used in their beers. This law was finally repealed as the result of a 1987 European Court ruling, by which time it had become the world's longest-standing food regulation. During the intervening half millennium, Germany became the world's premier beer-producing country, in part because it had protected domestic brewers from foreign competitors.

Beer was similarly important to America's success. The Pilgrims, who quickly adapted to locally available brewing ingredients, eventually became heavily dependent on British beer imports because their population grew faster than their ability to produce adequate volumes of beer. This colonial economic dependence became a key lever in the war for independence. George Washington himself devised strategies for the brewing industry to help loose the yolk of Britain's economic enslavement.

Washington, whose penchant for English-brewed porter beer is well-documented, made the ultimate patriotic sacrifice when he supported the non-consumption agreement, a bill drafted by fellow patriot Samuel Adams (whose name now graces the labels of America's leading craft beer). The agreement encouraged the colonial population to abstain from imported goods such as ale and encouraged the consumption of American-brewed beer.

After the Revolution, brewers carried banners in victory parades proclaiming, "Home Brew'd Is Best." Washington immediately set about crafting policies to stimulate local brewing, exclaiming: "We have already been too long subject to British Prejudices. I use no porter or cheese in my family, but that which is made in America ..." In 1789, James Madison designed one of the first bills passed by the new House of Representatives to keep taxes low on beer production in order to trigger local brewing. Less than a hundred years later, in 1873, America could boast 4,131 commercial breweries, plus countless private home breweries.

Brewing Solutions

As Herman Daly wrote in the September 2006 issue of Orion magazine, "Globalization serves not community among nations, but corporate individualism on a global scale." So how might we protect local, traditional beers from "globeerization?" Daly contends we need "a new protectionism that protects us not from efficient competitors but from destructive, standards-lowering competition." Emerging economies should utilize tariffs to counter-balance unfair advantages gained by countries that externalize social and environmental costs and rely on heavily subsidized agriculture and artificially low fossil-fuel energy costs.

Government-backed export investment and foreign credit, and huge agricultural subsidies, continue to help American and European multinational brewers enter and dominate developing markets. Industrial products compete for market share against traditional, indigenous beers that, when gone, will have taken important cultural capital with them. Domestic policies that favor small-scale, local production, just like the ones that now support the American craft-brewing renaissance, must be applied to foreign policy as well. Policies that burden small brewers with regulations must be reduced or removed, while tax incentives and public giveaways to industrial brewers are halted. Proven strategies can be used for promoting small business, such as low-interest loans and other community investments tools. Small-scale technology and structures must be prioritized in order to benefit the greatest number of domestic brewers, while subsidies favoring large-scale production and distribution should be eliminated.

What we stand to lose is more than just a tantalizing array of exotic beers. As is usually the case, women stand to suffer the most, since they will lose control over drinking when industrial products owned by foreign corporations replace their homebrews. If traditional drinks disappear around the world, the societies that produce them will lose a part of their identity as well as the intellectual property that can serve as a wellspring for future economic growth.


27 October, 2006