Local or Organic? A False Choice
By Samuel Fromartz
A couple of years ago, I visited an organic vegetable farm in southeast
Minnesota, not far from the Mississippi River. Nestled in a valley that
sloped down from rolling pasture and cropland sat Featherstone Fruits and
Vegetables, a 40-acre farm.
Featherstone was part of a local food web in the upper Midwest, selling at
a
farmers' market, through a CSA (community sup****ted agriculture) and to
co-op stores in the Twin Cities. But the partners, Jack Hedin and Rhys
Williams, who began in 1995, were having a tough time economically and
realized they would have to boost sales if they were to become viable. The
farm earned about $22,000 a year -- split between the two partners -- so
they had to take on debt to keep going; this, after a 60 to 70 hour work
week.
Hedin told me he made some calls and eventually landed a deal with Whole
Foods to supply the natural foods chain with organic heirloom tomatoes.
When
I visited, they were in year two of the contract, picking the tomatoes
before their peak ripeness, then ****pping them to Chicago for stores in
the
Midwest. The deal had become the biggest sales channel for their farm;
while
still "local," they were not as local as when they sold in their backyard.
There was a lesson here, one that often gets lost in the debate about
which
is better, local or organic? Too often this is understood as a zero sum
game -- that the money you spend on organic food at the supermarket will
mean less for local farmers. After all, the food you buy is being ****pped
from who knows where and then often ends up in a processed food product.
I've heard the argument that if all the money spent on organic food
(around
$14 billion) were actually channeled to local food, then a lot more small
farms would survive and local food networks could expand. Well,
Featherstone
was doing precisely the opposite: it had entered the organic wholesale
marketplace and then sent its tomatoes hundreds of miles away to survive
as
a small and, yes, local farm.
As consumers, it's hard to understand these realities since we're so
divorced from the way food is produced. Even for conscious consumers who
think about values other than convenience and price -- avoiding
pesticides,
the survival of small farms, artisan food, and, of course, the most basic
values, freshness and taste -- choices must be made. Should we avoid
pesticides at all costs or help small local farmers who may use them?
Should
we reduce food ****pment miles, or buy food produced in an ecologically
sound
manner regardless of where it's grown? These questions arise because we
want
to do what's right.
The problem, though, is that these questions set up false choices. What
Hedin and others showed me was that when it comes to doing the right
thing,
what really mattered was thinking about the choice -- to be aware, to stay
informed, and to be conscious of our role as consumers. But what you
actually chose -- local or organic -- didn't really matter.
Hedin, for example, was competing against farmers he actually knew on the
West Coast, who also supplied organic produce to Whole Foods. I met one,
Tim
Mueller of River Dog Farm, in the one-bar town of Guinda, California. His
farm sold produce at the Berkeley Farmers Market about 90 minutes away,
but
he was also tied to wholesale markets. (I saw River Dog's heirloom
tomatoes
in western Massachusetts.) For these organic farmers, selling wholesale
was
a foundation for economic sustainability.
Moreover, by expanding the organic market, we may be actually helping
local
farmers. The USDA surveyed farmers' markets and found that about a third
of
farmers selling direct were organic -- local and organic, that is. In
comparison, just one percent of all American farms practice organic
agriculture. So for smaller-scale farmers selling direct, organic food has
become a key component of their identity. By bringing more people into the
organic fold, through whatever gateway they happened to choose, the pool
of
consumers considering local food would likely increase too.
That's at least what Jim Crawford, a farmer from south central
Pennsylvania
believed. His 25-acre operation, New Morning Farm, works two farmers'
markets in Wa****ngton, D.C., and Jim played a key role in the growth of
local foods in the region, having started out as an organic farmer in the
1970s. He told me he worried when Whole Foods opened a supermarket near
his
farmers' market location in Wa****ngton because he thought he would lose
customers. But over time, he noticed, sales kept rising. He thought the
supermarket, which stocked a lot of organic produce from California, was
actually converting customers to organic food and they in turn were
finding
their way to his market.
But what about companies that have pursued the organic marketplace without
any concern for local food? What about, say, Earthbound Farm, which has
grown into the third largest organic brand and the largest organic produce
company in the nation, with its bagged salad mixes in three-quarters of
all
supermarkets? The company fiercely competed with other organic growers who
later went out of business; its salad was grown organically but with
industrial-scale agriculture; and the trucks that ****pped the salad around
the country burned through a lot of fossil fuel.
But Earthbound was competing with the likes of Dole, Fresh Express and
ReadyPac in the mainstream market to offer consumers an organic choice. It
did little for local food (a saving grace, since it left the market to
smaller players). But Earthbound farmed on 26,000 acres of certified
organic
land, which meant that 267,000 pounds of pesticides and 8.4 million pounds
of chemical fertilizers were being removed from use annually, the company
estimated. And as studies repeatedly show, organic farming also saves
energy
(since the production of fertilizer and pesticides consumes one-third of
the
energy used in farming overall). Earthbound's accomplishments should not
be
ignored -- even if they are anything but local.
Which brings me to a final point: How we shop. Venues like Whole Foods are
not fully organic because people are often unwilling to spend more than a
small ****tion of their grocery budget on organic foods. It's too
expensive.
This is one reason why organic food accounts for just two percent of food
sales -- one percent if you include eating out. Similarly, local foods,
though im****tant, total 1-2 percent. So arguing over local or organic is a
bit like two people in a room of 100 fighting over who has the more
righteous alternative to what the other 98 people are doing. It doesn't
really matter, because the bigger issue is swaying the majority.
When I shop, visiting the Dupont Circle farmers market in Wa****ngton,
D.C.,
on Sunday morning and then going to the supermarket, I make choices. I buy
local, organic, and conventional foods too, because each meets a need. Is
the local product "better" than the organic one? No. Both are good choices
because they move the food market in a small way. In choosing them, I can
insert my values into an equation that for too long has been determined
only
by volume, convenience and price. While I have nothing against low prices
and convenient shopping, the blind pursuit of these two values can wreak a
lot of damage -- damage that we ultimately pay for in water pollution,
toxic
pesticide exposure, livestock health, the quality of food and the loss of
small farms. The total bill may not show up at the cash register but it's
one we pay nonetheless.
So what's my advice? Think about what you're buying. If you want local
food,
buy local. If you want organic, buy organic. The point is to make a
conscious choice, because as we insert our values into the market,
businesses respond and things change. There's power in what we do
collectively, so is there any reason to limit it unnecessarily?
© Samuel Fromartz 2006, reprinted by permission
Author
Samuel Fromartz is a business journalist who has written for Fortune,
Business Week, and Inc. Organic Inc. is his first book. He lives in
Wa****ngton, D.C.
For more information, please visit www.fromartz.com
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