I had a piece called “Beware of Hybrid Hype” appear in the Eureka Reporter on Tuesday. The previous link is to an unabbreviated version at the Green Wheels website.
aaron :: Mar.29.2007 :: Business, Sustainability :: 2 Comments »
My Friend Jeff got the ball rolling for a discussion about “big organic.” Here it is:
From: jsteuben@gmail.com
Subject: hain celestial group
Date: 23 February 2007 8:50:04 AM PST
Hey guys, a quick word from corpwatch.org
“Even though Hain Celestial is an organic giant in its own right, it has even bigger owners. According to research by Paul Glover and Carole Resnick of the Greenstar Food Coop (Ithaca, New York) the company’s investors include Philip Morris, Monsanto, Citigroup, Exxon-Mobil, Wal-Mart and aerospace military contractor Lockheed Martin. And in September 1999 the H. J. Heinz food conglomerate bought a 20% stake in Hain Celestial.
So who is the hain celestial group? Arrowhead Mills, casbah, health valley, walnut acres, celestial seasonings, soy dream/rice dream, Terra chips, garden of eatin’… and more.
What does that mean to us, on both a personal situation level, for something greater? Should I stop buying some of those foods because the money inevitablely goes to evil corporations? but I would be severely inconvenienced if I did that for every product I own. Is it impossible to avoid corporations in this day and age? I’m beginning to think so. So what do we do? Is organic, free trade products enough, even when it’s supplied by the forces of evil? Are we putting market pressure on those companies with the most power for change by buying those lines of products? I don’t have an answer.
Could we get a dialog started on this subject? I’m interested to see what y’all think. (reply all?)
Take Care,
Jeff
My response:
From: Aaron
Subject: Re: hain celestial group
Date: 23 February 2007 1:15:15 PM PSTJeff et all,
I highly recommend the article from Grist about big organic versus local food. I’ve also forwarded a few of my comments that I sent to my friend Clem, who originally sent this article my way.
http://www.grist.org/advice/books/2006/05/18/fromartz/index.html
My thoughts on the whole big organic question:
DON’T: bother to pay attention to whether or not your food is produced by a corporation, or who that corporation is
DO pay attention to:
- the farming practices used to produce your food
- the ecological impact of food production
- the health and living standards of farm workers and employees
- how far your food travels to get to your plate
- how it tastes
- how nourishing it is
- what it costs
- whether it is marketed honestly
- how much waste packaging surrounds your food
If “big organic” is offering food that is good according to these standards, then great: buy big organic — and support the growth of new corporate practices. I’m embarrassed to say I actually haven’t researched these questions for much of my food, but use a heuristic decision-making process that assumes food produced by smaller, more independent, local companies is truer to my values.
-aaron
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Aaron Antrim
Date: May 28, 2006 5:27 PM
Subject: Re: A couple things…
To: Clem FreemanGreat article. Thanks for sending. I like how the author acknowledges that we make all kinds of considerations dealing with our food, including price and convenience, but that many consumers are choosing to insert their other values into the economy, and this is having a noticeable and snowballing effect. I wish this happened more in the market system.Anyway, what I´m saying to people right now about the mainstream trend towards big organic and other mainstream pushes towards things that are supposed to be hip or sustainable is that it´s good rather than bad. I´m positively happy to see Walmart offer organic food and run adverts about how they´re working towards sustainability, even though I don´t trust it much, and I´m not going to shop at Wal-mart. But there actions legetimize what a minority of consumers are supporting right now, and they probably aren´t going to hurt other, smaller-scale, more honest, and better efforts under foot. Pategonia found that after they started offering organic cotton garmets other manufacturers followed suit. Pategonia then lost their competitive edge and has continued to pioneer new sustainable features for their product line to recapture their competitive edge. The point is, certain people and organizations and companies are going to be leaders and others are going to be followers. Whole Foods, for example, is both a leader (to Walmart) and a follower (to the Co-op).
Kristy (works at a Co-op in Oregon) had a great response to Jeff’s original message:
Greetings everyone,
Thanks (Marieke) for adding me to the discussion. I’m really excited about what you all have to say.
So, I work at People’s Food Co-op in Portland. I was the bulk buyer for awhile and have worked there in various capacities for about three years. Talking to many, many (too many) customers has given me an opportunity to see how little even people who are trying to know, actually know about the food we eat, and how much they trust the co-op to make their choices for them. I feel like there is this idea that co-ops are “good” and chain grocery stores are “bad”, organic food is “good” and conventional food is “bad”, local food is “good” and global food is “bad”, small farmers are “good” and corporate farmers are “bad”–you know, so you don’t even have to think: four legs good, two legs bad. It is unfortunate that we do this, because when we stop thinking critically about our choices, we stop thinking about who is giving us these choices in the first place. Co-ops are businesses too, organic agriculture destroys habitat just as much as conventional agriculture does, “local” still depends on fossil fuels, and many small farmers wish they could be farming thousands of acres.
What I think most people don’t know is that many grocery stores don’t know where their food comes from either. Both Whole Foods and Safeway have their own national distributors: this means that for each individual store, the buyers choose products available to them from their regional distribution warehouse, which stocks products from a contracted list of vendors already decided upon by their national distribution office. In the same way, co-ops and other smaller natural food chains order at least half of their products from a publicly-traded, independent national distributor called United Natural Foods Inc. (UNFI–formerly “Mountain Peoples”). Buyers can choose products from a regional warehouse, which stocks products from a contracted list of vendors already decided upon by their national distribution office. UNFI is cheaper than smaller, more local distributors, and this is why both struggling co-ops and successful natural food chains buy from them. This is how big Organics have broken into the market.
Why do we have companies like Hain-Celestial? Because we have corporate national distribution for organic foods, and we’re supporting it. Because they are the only ones who can provide enough uniform product to satisfy on a national scale. There is a trend now of big corporate food giants buying out small, organic/natural producers. Hershey’s recently bought out Dagoba chocolate, Cadbury bought out Green and Black’s chocolate, Colgate bought out Tom’s of Maine. Whole Foods is not going to continue to buy Dagoba chocolate unless they know the company will grow with Whole Foods’ anticipated growth, right? It is in their interest for small producers to get big. A Native-run, organic wild rice producer in Canada told me that Whole Foods tried to buy out their whole inventory last year, but they actually refused because that would mean they could no longer supply their regular accounts (like People’s Co-op and other co-ops and small natural foods stores). Many small producers do not refuse. But, as co-ops and natural food chains get bigger (e.g. First Alternative Co-op in Corvallis, Olympia Co-op, New Seasons Stores in Portland, Whole Foods who just bought the Wild Oats franchise) they will look to corporate national distribution and/or force small, organic producers to sell-out or get bigger when they can’t “consistently” supply the whole franchise. For example, a Portland farmer I worked for was told she could not sell her extra produce to New Seasons (a five-store natural foods chain in Portland) because she didn’t have enough for all five of their stores. She farms organically on 10 acres, less than 20 miles away. New Seasons claims to feature local produce, but they’d rather buy their potatoes from a larger organic farm in northern California.
When things get bigger, they become less accessible. They source their ingredients from further and further away. Their main goal becomes making a profit and it is no longer to serve their communities. “Organic” doesn’t mean so much anymore. Yeah, they don’t use synthetic fertilizers or pesticides, but an organic farm thousands and thousands of acres strong is still a factory farm. They’re still using huge tractors, still exploiting their workers and still eroding the soil. We aren’t maintaining small-scale distribution networks, and so we’re losing our small scale producers and our choices. Co-ops started as community food buying clubs, now they’re surviving as retail storefronts for UNFI. What happens when UNFI is bought out by Phillip Morris or General Mills?
I try to buy direct from farmers as much as possible, learn how to grow my own food, learn what growing organic food means, learn how to cook my own food, learn what food can be grown here and when it is seasonal, and try not to support corporate food. It’s harder to do this sometimes, but I think it’s healthy for us to build community around food, to ask questions and to think critically.
My 2 cents,
kristy
aaron :: Mar.29.2007 :: Business, Sustainability :: No Comments »
My friend Ajay sent me a link to the post on the Google blog about their corporate campus going 30% solar-powered. The blog post says that not only is it a moral imperative that business, organizations, and individuals reduce their dependence on fossil fuels, but makes the point that its simply good business sense to reduce costs into the future and be prepared for a world in which energy shortages will become more common.
Google is a truly awsome company. The routinely exceed my expectations in delivering excellent products and serving their customers needs with truly generous services and feature sets. Many of the services and features they offer customers don’t even know they need yet, but soon realize afterwards what the Google difference is (free POP access for gmail, labels with gmail, etc.) Anyway, before I go to overboard in my praise for Google, I should mention the video Epic 2014, the original flash online movie made by Robin Sloan for the Museum of Media History which coined the word Googlezon. That’s all I’ll say at this point…
Here at Humboldt State University, we’re working to go solar, too. The Humboldt Energy Independence Fund, the project to put solar panels on our buildings and make HSU energy independed by 2040, just had a benefit concert at the Arcata Bike Library this weekend. Too bad even though 85% of students supported this new fee, Chancelor Reed of the CSU system has has refused to sign off on the project. Just like Google, as a higher education institution, we need to be leading the way towards clean energy and to be prepared for an uncertain energy feature. And the same benefits Google benefits from in terms of public relations are benefits HSU will get too — notice from bloggers like me, and from big, recognized news sources. Sustainable business is profitable business, for higher academia as well as Google!
aaron :: Oct.23.2006 :: Information tech, Business, Sustainability :: No Comments »