The bulletin is going global!

We launched this bulletin nearly a decade ago at a time when supermarkets and convenience store chains were expanding faster in Asia than anywhere else in the world and rapidly changing the face of Asian food markets. We were alarmed by how the region's long tradition of fresh food markets, which provide consumers everywhere in Asia with vegetables, fruits, meat, fish and all kinds of healthy, prepared foods, were dwindling in number -- in large part because of the growth of supermarkets and government policies to support that growth.

But this supermarketisation of food markets is not only happening in Asia. It is already well advanced in the Americas and Europe, and is now slowly spreading in Africa, from South Africa and a few countries in North Africa to the rest of the continent.[1]

Supermarkets do not just push out traditional, local markets. They have dramatic impacts on people's diets and the ways in which foods are produced. They marginalise locally produced food and encourage the consumption of unhealthy processed foods. In countries where supermarkets and convenience stores have taken over food markets, like Mexico, you get a paradox where millions of people suffer from hunger or malnutrition while at the same time millions of others are affected by obesity, diabetes and other food-related illnesses.

Fortunately, there is a growing, strong resistance to this supermarket expansion. People in different places around the world are organising to defend food distribution systems and local markets that are rooted in the community. They are taking actions against laws and regulations that undermine the presence of fresh food markets and harass and criminalise street and market vendors. Public markets that were once a decentralised space for street and market traders, have become battlegrounds for economic justice and livelihood.

In this context, we believe it is critical to share information emanating from the struggles of small farmers and food producers, street and market vendors, and cross-border traders around the world and to deepen connections between these struggles to help foster a global movement.

This bulletin has served as an information tool for social movements about developments in food retail and distribution in Asia, and during that time it has made some connections with realities in other regions and continents. We now feel it is time to broaden the scope of the bulletin, and starting next year, the bulletin will be expanded to cover the state of food retail and distribution not only in Asia but in all parts of the world. We are happy to be able to do this further in collaboration with others. We hope the bulletin will continue to serve as a tool for social movements in defence of food sovereignty!

International Day of Street Vendors is celebrated worldwide on 14 November to address the common needs and challenges of street vendors, hawkers, and street merchants and to give them social recognition and dignified working conditions. This day was initially started by StreetNet International in 2012. Since then, 14 November is celebrated across the globe to express solidarity among them, to work together to fight against their social exclusion and to strengthen their network to build respect for this work. On this day, street vendors stand in solidarity with their collective struggle for the creation of public spaces and decent working conditions that adequately support street vending. According to StreetNet International: “we envision a world where all street and market vendors and hawkers are legally recognised workers, empowered, democratically organised, who live with dignity and enjoy decent work.”

For many years, police and municipal/city administration, irrespective of whether it is in a developed, developing or least developed country, have been criminalising street vending in the name of traffic congestion, obstructing vehicular traffic, pollution, religion, disturbing public administration or even causing climate change. Across the globe, a large percentage of street vendors especially women vendors continue to face discrimination, persecution and violence in their working spaces regularly. Their plight goes unnoticed or has no popular support because they are usually unorganised and have no safety net which makes them more vulnerable to police/ municipal corporation officials' extortion and oppression. Vendors often pay bribes to police to flee eviction drives ordered by municipal officials who see them as a stain on a city’s image or its beautification drive.

Law enforcement authorities and municipalities have often discouraged street vending because they consider it part of an underground economy that undermines the formal economy. This perception often leads to clashes over market space, licensing and sanitation. Moreover, street vending is also adversely affected by low purchasing power, non-designated market space, and difficulties with access to finance. In India, the rapid expansion of digital retail and e-commerce has recently drawn the government's attention due to its impact on unorganised employment and petty businesses. The Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal expressed concerns about the impact of e-commerce on around 100 million traditional retail businesses and employment and questioned the predatory pricing strategies employed by e-commerce giants, like Amazon, which could harm the broader economy rather than contribute to it.

Rising temperatures and natural disasters (like flooding) caused by climate change are making working conditions harsher for India's street vendors, and causing more losses of fresh/ perishable produce (like fruit, vegetables, fish or fresh milk) that affects their incomes. A recent survey, conducted (between April-May 2024) by Greenpeace India and the National Hawkers Federation (NHF) of India, to assess the impact of extreme heatwaves on street vendors’ health, productivity, and livelihoods in the city of Delhi, found that half of the 721 streets vendors surveyed experienced a loss of income during the summer months and 80% experienced a decline in customers.

The report also found that vendors were suffering numerous health impacts from higher temperatures, such as headaches and dehydration. Women street vendors reported experiencing high blood pressure and also delays in their menstrual cycles.

Due to the increasing climate issues and its impact on the poorest of the poor, the Supreme Court of India recognises ‘security’ from extreme climatic events as a basic human right, and the state has to secure its citizens from climate change-induced disasters, such as heat waves and extreme temperatures.

Street vendors in other parts of the world face similar issues with climate change. In Malawi, for instance, women fish sellers are losing income because of heat waves and drought. Low water levels in the small lakes where they source fish are causing scarcity of some species and impacting the fish catch. Even though street vendors contribute barely anything to global greenhouse gas emissions, they are the first to be impacted by climate change.

This year’s International Day of Street Vendors coincides with the 29th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan. But the voice of street vendors is not being heard at the COP. An analysis reveals that hundreds of industrial agriculture lobbyists representing the world’s largest food and farming companies were given access to the climate talks in Baku, and over two-thirds of these companies got privileged access to diplomatic negotiations. The urgent concerns of street food vendors are being drowned out by the big corporations who use the COP to push food models that destroy markets for locally produced food and small vendors and that worsen the climate crisis.

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Amid China's economic downturn and geopolitical tensions with the US, Wall Street trading behemoth Jane Street has recently invested in Micro Connect, a new Hong Kong-based fintech platform that sells a new financing model to China's small enterprises.

China has 70 million small companies. Over the last decade, the rapid digitalisation of the small business sector has piqued the interest of global investors and fintech firms seeking to explore new investment models and get access to the country's economy. As of November 2023, Micro Connect has provided financing to 11,190 stores in over 30 provinces across China. The key targets are small shops in four industries: food and beverage, retail, services, and culture and sport. It covers various small enterprises such as noodle shops, karaoke bars and hair salons, which represent the most active business sectors related to community life.

In some ways, Micro Connect is just another form of micro-credit, except that it operates through a digital platform in which small shopkeepers must make daily payments via an electronic system to repay their loans.

The big difference from most micro-credit providers, however, is in what Micro Connect does with these loans. The company bundles the "streams" of daily loan repayments it gets from small shop owners and then sells these bundled loans to financial companies on the Financial Assets Exchange (MCEX) of Macao, a special administrative region of China. The bundled loans are supposed to be "securitised" but they are based on thousands of high-interest loans (15% to 20%) provided to small shops without any collateral. This kind of risky financial engineering and lack of regulation is what led to the 2007 US housing market meltdown, and the larger global financial crisis.

Micro Connect also intends to sell the data that it collects on its customers to other companies, raising alarms about data privacy and legal controversy on lender’s data access. All borrowers must give Micro Connect full access to their operating data, daily cash flow, transactions and other core data. Such granular data could then easily be bought by large corporations, like supermarkets and food companies, and used to further squeeze and displace smaller shops.

Lately, Micro Connect’s financing has centred on the growing of “fast franchiser” type of companies in China’s retail market. These companies aim to quickly expand through franchising and profiting from franchising fees while also providing franchisees with equipment and resources. They care less about whether specific outlets are lucrative. Consequently, it will further squeeze other small retailers’ margins, causing more small businesses to become unprofitable or face economic hardship.