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Is Big Organic a Big Flop?

by · June 26th, 2007
Community Agriculture, Grocery, On The Web, Organic, Supermarkets, Vegetables

carrotslineup.jpgOne of the hottest questions circling around the sustainable food world (besides, “Is it possible to eat meat sustainably?“) is , “What happens when the organic and local food movements meet big business?” Can large corporations like Walmart in America and Tesco in the UK go green without radically undermining the integrity of foods’ localness?

The answer, according to an article today in The Guardian, doesn’t seem promising.

In this case, farmer Patrick Holden’s locally-grown organic carrots were shipped an extra 230 extra miles to a processing center to be “polished” by a machine before shipped to the store. Additionally, his farm (and therefore yields) were too small to be processed effectively by the industrial system – and suffered as a result.

“Mr Holden claims that in fact the supermarkets are unintentionally making it impossible for the kind of small family farms their customers imagine are behind their organic labels to supply them. “Supermarkets are preaching localism but it’s just tokenism, their systems are still going in the opposite direction, and it’s disastrous,” he said.”

Ultimately, the jury is still out about the potential for well-meaning (or market-driven) big businesses to effectively go green – but it seems for now, when it comes to your veggies, the middle man still mucks things up.

Read the full article (which is far more nuanced than my little blurb does justice to) here.

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2 Responses to “Is Big Organic a Big Flop?”

  1. Michael Green Says:
    June 26th, 2007 at 6:19 pm

    The fact that lots of organic food is sold via supermarkets is, in some way, fantastic. It means more availability for consumers and, most importantly, more organic farmland. But it also means that sustainable farming is being delivered by unsustainable market structures. Patrick’s carrots are just one example, but especially notable as an organic pioneer and director of the Soil Association.

    Can UK supermarkets ever be ‘green’ or ‘ethical’? In their current state, the answer has to be ‘No’. They have made a mess of both the British countryside and many towns and cities. That doesn’t mean they can’t change. But for now, it’s only their spots that are changing.

    The flipside is that since the (supermarket-led) UK organic explosion in the late 1990s, more people are buying organic food direct from the farmers from home delivery box schemes and the like. Some were set up by particularly enterprising growers, others by farmers who were simply squeezed out by the ever-decreasing returns from supermarkets and took control over their own businesses. Most deliver fresh organic veggies to a few hundred households a week, others reach tens of thousands. Not only is their food fresher and tastier than supermarket organic, but it often costs the same as non-organic grub in supermarkets. Everyone’s a winner.

  2. Aliza Says:
    June 29th, 2007 at 11:35 pm

    The issue of the middle-man is an important one, aside from the debate about “big organic.” At least in the US, there is a lack of infrastructure in processors and distributors for small to mid-sized farms that want to serve local populations. The Farm and Food Policy Project has been working on a program called the Healthy Food Enterprise Development program, to solve this very problem, and we are currently working hard to get this program authorized in the Farm Bill.

    The program is still in the works, and there will shortly be more information available about it at http://www.foodsecurity.org (I need to put it on the website!). Please contact me if you are interested in more info about this.

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