[Scpg] permawalletculture

[steven sprinkel]

from ACRES,USA





T R A N S I T I O N S





by Steven Sprinkel

Ojai, CA





May 2004





Leading off:  Five positions are now open for nomination to the National
Organic Standards Board, which advises the USDA on the National Organic
Program. Some competent folks have expired terms and Dennis Holbrook, an
important figure in organic farming in South Texas has resigned. Positions
open are: 2 representing producers; 1 handler; 1 environmentalist; and 1
retailer. Applications must be submitted to the NOP by June 14, 2004. Terms
are 5 years. Applicants should be from the organic sector, and should
solicit letters of support on their behalf. Complete information can be
found at www.ams.usda.gov/nop/TodaysNews.html. We need to have strong
representation on this board from committed organic adherents who will not
compromise basic principles.

We note here also the untimely passing of Betsy Lydon, an important leader
in the safe food movement, who served for many years with Mothers and Others
for a Safe Planet, going back to the 1980s. She also served with
distinction, representing consumers, as a member of the National Organic
Standards Board.

Perhaps the most valuable information contained in Constance Hays' new book
about the Coca Cola Corporation, The Real Thing (Random House, 2004) is her
analysis of why Corporate Coke decided to replace its core product in 1985.
When they tried to insert New Coke in the place of standard Coca-Cola, a
bottle of Americana nearly as sacred as Old Glory, the blunder was compared
to Ford Motor Company's roll-out of the Edsel-by a factor of around five.

Hays' telling of the tale throws some harsh light on the monopolistic form
corporate commerce seems to inevitably take, and if anyone has been
observing what has been going on in the past decade in the natural
foods/organic sector the warning signs have been in plain view for quite
awhile, indicating  that we may experience the same fate. To be honest, I
have to admit that we already are.

 New Coke was not created as a taste competitor to Pepsi-Cola, which had
been steadily gaining on the world's number one soft drink since the late
1970s, but that rationale served as a convenient smoke-screen. According to
author Hays, the corporation issued New Coke also as a way to sever ties to
the regional and local Coca-Cola bottlers, to diminish their standing and
eventually seize the power and profits once shared by hundreds of individual
franchisees.

In the old days, Big Coke's Atlanta headquarters, made the secret-formula
syrup, created advertising and promotion and contributed around 30% of the
finished product. A lot of money motivated the change, certainly, but
perhaps the most compelling incentive for Coke was that Roberto Goizueta,
the man who ran Coke back then, foresaw a whole a new era in product
merchandizing on the horizon. That future was one that was already being
dominated by Wal-Mart and it would prove to be not the only mega-retailer to
demand business relationships with its suppliers which would require more
centralized control, price-shaving and discounting; so antique fixtures like
regional bottlers were doomed. The multi-national fast food juggernaut was
also flexing mighty muscle.

This trend plays itself out in the distribution of fresh and processed
products designed for the market which organic producers are growing for. At
the Natural Products Expo in Southern California this past March, a number
of smaller companies in attendance who do not distribute through wholesalers
were trying to recruit retailers directly. They instead use FEDEX and UPS to
get stuff out there. The reasons for direct-marketing were varied: there
were too few distributors ( only three seem to be distinctly serving this
sector: Natures Way, Tree of Life and United Natural Foods Incorporated,
(UNFI) )  and product lines were too limited for the carriers to consider,
scale of manufacture too small to mount the kind of merchandizing campaign
required that distributors want, fees are required at the retail end for
product placement. Certain product lines are already oversupplied and even a
superior product can not break in unless the label is well established.
Except for the emerging Raw Food mania, innovation has hit the wall: exactly
how many sun-dried tomato vendors do we need? Observed the linear feet taken
up by the olive oilers? Sometimes you can have too many choices.

On the other hand, the ice cream selection seemed to have  shrunk-even
though Ben and Jerry's ( finally) is releasing a limited line of organic ice
cream and Natural Choice ( Oxnard, California) is also expanding their line,
notably with a coconut ice cream that was among the best new products
offered at the Anaheim Expo. Conversely, I have been trying to discover why
San Francisco-based Howler Ice Cream was discontinued by its new parent
company, New York-based Ciao Bella, a maker of Italian-style ice cream, a
little more than a year after the takeover. Now the Howler brand, which was
widely considered to be inferior to no other ice cream is gone and Ciao
Bella distributes nothing at all through Mountain People's Warehouse, which
is now a UNFI subsidiary. Perhaps you can sense why conspiracy theories are
so attractive to me.

If you have been buying food at natural food stores or cooperatives for
awhile you also may have been charmed by the variety and novelty of all the
different products and labels on the shelves, made by hundreds of small
companies. Fresh produce warehouses as well used to be filled with funky
down-home labels created by ingenious back-to-the-landers like Full Belly
Farm, Bakbraken Acres, Earthtrine Farm and Be Wise Ranch. That aspect of our
business seems to have peaked some time ago. When Whole Foods Markets rather
unnecessarily brought out its generally conventional-foods 365 label, room
had to be made somehow on the shelf. And produce distribution is dominated
by a handful of row-croppers now. Many of us don't even bother to call
distributors any more, nor plant with the shipping trade in mind.

Another example of the soulless sprint towards Bigness is the expansion of
Newman's Organics, which, when releasing its own brand of dog food at the
Expo, seems to have jumped into self-imposed parody. Perhaps Nell Newman
explains how their ambitions may save planet Earth in the book she co-wrote
with Joseph DAgnese, Guide to a Good Life ( Random House, again, 2003). One
book reviewer praised it because it teaches people to do merely what is
within their own reach in order to make a difference for the environment,
which is not bad advice. But these millionaires hit the ground with a plenty
big reach already, and I wonder if some little fig grower in Turlock,
California has bins of unsold fruit because Turkish product was a better
dollar-fit for Fig Newman. Price always matters, no matter the scale of
production, however, the paradox of seeking a better environment through
long-distance shipping is all too transparent. Maybe we should teach people
how to make their own dog food instead.

We could boil down the basis of the organic movement indeed as one big Do It
Yourself answer to one big need crying out to be filled. The mass-marketing
of organic does not continue to fulfill those earlier demands, but it does
serve another purpose, to expand organic acreage and reduce the chemical
load the earth strains under. Can't fault that. But small scale concerns can
not be brushed aside just because Tyson wants to get into the organic
chicken deal.

We can suggest that small scale retail can furnish market to small scale
producers if participants can be taught to make their own dog food, as it
were, and fly under the radar of the Big Box trend. If this is a theme we
visit frequently here that is because marketing is always the most crucial
aspect to your farming enterprise because at least you have an opportunity
to control your sales methods better than you can shift a hailstorm, end a
drought or make mold disappear.

 We note that with all the deep discounting offered to large scale retail,
smaller retailers and consumer cooperatives subsidize those benefits by
paying higher prices. That leaves an obvious target for price flexibility
and its that person making a wide turn at the end of a row down there by
that stand of oak trees. At the little corner market a mile from my farm,
they buy wholesale organic milk for a higher price than it is retailed at
Trader Joe's, the big West Coast niche retailer. How does Trader Joe get
that done? Are there, for example, two prices for wholesale organic milk?

While there is probably a limited supply of potential corner-grocery
operators willing to compete against the Big Boxers,  we do measure a lot of
consumer dissatisfaction with the retail shell-game: it looks organic, sort
of sounds organic, but its really conventional stuff sold in retro wooden
bins blessed with a little corporate holy water. Trust Us, this you may also
eat.

 However, if proprietors are lacking, consumers, cooperating, could pile up
enough capital to make their own store and go back to legitimizing the clean
food movement.

Some of those consumers, going against the trend and looking for
authenticity, founded a retail cooperative in Boulder, Colorado in 2002 with
over 3,000 members. They accomplished this not in Soretoe, Nebraska, but in
one of the most highly competitive natural foods market regions in the
country. The headquarters offices of Wild Oats Markets, with 99 large full
service groceries across the country is in Boulder, and Whole Foods Markets
also has a big store right in their competitor's front yard. Nonetheless,
the Boulder Coop has proven there was a need to fill and they did it
themselves, with first year annual sales of nearly four million dollars done
on 12,000 square feet.

On the other side of the mountains, Ukiah Natural Foods, a Ukiah, California
cooperative, has been operating since 1976 and has 4,100 members, which is
over ten percent of the residents of the Ukiah Valley. The City of Ukiah has
a population of around 16,000, so it would seem that these cooperators know
each other on the street. Feel free to let your mind wander through those
numbers as you envisage a similar employee and consumer-owned set up in your
own Ukiah. All the tools for doing so are available, for example, through
the University of Missouri:
http://muextension.missouri.edu/explore/extcirc/ec0941.htm,

the National Cooperative Business Association:
http://www.ncba.org/serv_confCCMA.cfm, or Cooperative Grocer Magazine
http://www.cooperativegrocer.coop/

A resurgent cooperative movement could well rescue foundering small scale
farms producing too little for the Big Boxers, and  too far perhaps from
suitable population centers to sell product at farmers' markets or through
Community Supported Agriculture programs. We also observe that the farmers
market deal could not be any more crowded.  Cooperatives (and small-scale
retail) will benefit through marketing an authentic product, probably grown
in a cleaner environment than where the big transitional acreage is located,
and emphasizing the authentic rather than the generic.



Too late for to take action this issue but worth noting: The Organic Farming
Research Foundation successfully led a late effort to have the USDA Public
Comment Period on GMOs and the environment extended. We got another two
weeks. 570 people had responded as of the 29th of March. Could/should have
been around 57,000 if the organic community has gotten its act together and
I will take some blame myself. We can always do a bit more but on this
action, much better, more coordinated and forceful effort was required and
we did not get it. While researching food coops, I noted that Ukiah Natural
Foods had a much more prominent advisory on the recent USDA Public Comment
period on GMOs than people paid a lot more to educate the public and yet did
next to nothing on this action. The Organic Trade Association, for example,
buried the issue three clicks deep on their website.

Another maddening example: The Campaign to Label Genetically Modified Foods
< http://www.thecampaign.org>is still trying to get a sidetracked piece of
legislation through congress. That is logical since labeling is their
mission and part of their name. But, isn't that more than just old news and
beside the point? The Campaign's website is static and new developments,
like the APHIS action, which should be given greater amplification are
buried in their newsletter. I mean no disrespect. Someone needs to maintain
a critical eye from within the anti-GMO movement or we will become
complacent.  The APHIS comment period was pretty hard to find on many
fronts. The Sierra Club, which has a GMO committee, worked on this as well,
however much of their management energy was dealing with the
anti-immigration arguments mounted by former Colorado governor Dick Lamm.

 With such poor participation from organizations and the public, I had to
reflect: did I misjudge the value of the USDA request for public comment? If
not, what can we do to invigorate the anti-GMO campaign? USDA handed us a
golden opportunity to make the country pay better attention, and we fumbled.