The Sad Death Of 'Organic' - By Mark Morford

[Kadie]

The Sad Death Of 'Organic'
How weird and depressing is it now that Kellogg's and Wal-Mart are hawking 'natural' foods?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Friday, October 13, 2006

Iwas a little unprepared. The commercial came on and I heard the familiar ukulele strums of the late Hawaiian singer Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's famous and famously beautiful version of "Over the Rainbow" (I know, but it really is quite lovely) and my first reaction was merely to cringe and wince as yet another exquisite and plaintive song was whored out to the advertising demons, just one of thousands.

But then came the barrage of images: the requisite shot of the Perfect Mom feeding her Perfect Child some sort of Perfect Food, all bathed in soft morning breakfast-sy light with happy trees peeking through the windows of the Perfect Kitchen in some utopian hunk of Perfect America, a bizarre scene that of course does not exist anywhere on this planet given how there weren't three empty wine bottles and some used underwear and a stack of dirty dishes and a fresh bottle of Xanax and an open newspaper offering up giant headlines about murders and nuclear warheads and Korean sex slaves anywhere in sight.

And then it happened. The logo. The product shot. The soothing voice-over. It was a commercial for a brand-new product: Kellogg's Organic Rice Krispies. And your heart goes, Ugh.

You say it aloud and the words tend to catch in your throat and make you sort of gag. Kellogg's Organic Rice Krispies, with "organic" in big scripted flowing font across the top of the box, all steeped in bogus warmth and happiness and false notions of health and nature and protecting your Perfect Child from the millions of icky poisons and unhealthy crap churned out by giant megacorps exactly like, well, exactly like Kellogg's.

Kellogg's Organic Rice Krispies. It's sort of like saying "Lockheed Martin Granola Bars" or "Exxon Bottled Spring Water." Self-immolating, and not in a good way.

more...
http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/

[Caoimhe]

1. I can't help but think of

the Road to Wellville. lol

[nam78_two]

2. Recommended/nt

[Warpy]

3. Kellogg's started out as a health food company

but my guess is that "organic" is just a buzzword for using low pesticide hybrid corn together with all the usual chemicals.

[eallen]

4. It's hard to work up much sympathy for this writer's idealism...

It is hard to imagine what is less sustainable, or less capable of feeding the world's population, than the "true family-run farm within 100 miles of your home." The food industry had gotten well beyond that by the 19th century. What this article shows more than anything else is that many of the green crowd are still in desparate need of economic education.

[ThomCat]

6. Funny.

I buy almost all of my produce from farmers markets most of year, and save a considerable amount of money by buying directly from the farmers. I live in NYC, one of the places supposedly most dependent on industrial agriculture. Yet farmers markets are thriving and undercutting the huge producers.

It's a niche, sure, but it's growing. So generalizations by people who claim to know economics don't mean much.

[nam78_two]

7. Also I am no expert on economics

But it seems to me that the food industry is one of those most affected by all the lobbying done by special interest groups in Washington.

Does it make any sense that 5 hot-dogs are cheaper than a bag of lettuce (not even talking about organic here-just vegetables vs. meat)? The CSPI had an interesting series of reports on that and how the meat industry lobbies for this.

I really don't think the "free market" is as "free" as claimed...

[Wilber_Stool]

12. When I make a ham and cheese sandwich

the cheese costs more than the ham.

[Ravy]

8. I think that the point is that if *everyone* in NYC tried to buy their

food that way, there would not be enough farms within 100 miles of NYC to produce enough food to feed the population. You have to remember that each of these farms would also be selling food to other people (non-NYC residents) within the same 100 mile region.

[TygrBright]

Yes, and no...

...if you want to bring economic feasibility into the debate, you have to go all the way. Once you realize the truly vast amount of money poured into subsidizing industrially-produced food-like products, it begs the question: Stop subsidizing them, and put the subsidy money into helping small producers of real food proliferate, and then what happens?

How much food does the average American household throw away yearly in 2006? How much food did the average American household throw away in 1926? The costs to Americans of "cheap" industrially-produced food-like substances are huge and pervasive, but well-hidden. If those costs were known, we might think very differently about what methods of food production to subsidize and how much to spend on our food.

tiredly,
Bright

[nam78_two]

11. Thanks/nt

[Ravy]

13. I wasn't trying to bring economic feasibility into it.

I was trying to bring geographical feasibility into it.

There are many parts of the country where there is not enough farmland to sustain the entire population given a 100-mile radius test.

[ThomCat]

10. True. There would still be need for some food

imported from a distance. But that doesn't mean that industrial farming methods are absolutely necessary, or that they are good for the economy, or good for the customers.

If we ended food subsidies to the few big corporations that dominate industrial food production and instead subsidized small farms so that they could afford to keep their equipment up to date we'd see a huge improvement in food quality.

If we subsidized organic and ethical farming methods we would see big improvements on farms of all sizes.

Instead, we simply give millions of dollars to the biggest farming corporations, essentially guaranteeing them enough profit to drive the small guys mostly out of the market. We are allowing and encouraging a system that borders on state sanctioned monopoly.

[eallen]

14. Yes, let's end the subsidies. For any sized farm.

Why do you think that small farms are inherently better than large ones, either in the methods used or their impact on the environment, or the health of their produce? Some kinds of food will be more efficiently produced on large farms. Some, on small.

[ThomCat]

15. I think subsidies are important so that small family

farms can compete with the huge corporate farms. I don't think corporations should ever be subsidized.

[eallen]

16. Do you think we ought to subsidize small, family auto makers?

What about small, family paper mills?

There is this myth, much deployed by politicians from all points of the compass, that there is something economically unique about farming, that it ought to be done by families. It's as if people believe Little House on the Prarie has anything at all to do with how they get food to eat today. BTW, well-subsidized farmers make great use of this myth to keep their subsidies flowing.

It is true that there has been a good increase in niche food producers. Which I welcome. Part of what has spurred this are two things that Mark Moford seems to hate: cheap food transportation and efficient downstream retailers. Stores like Whole Foods, and better shipping, have helped smaller food producers who sell everything from apples to salsa. Personally, though, I don't care whether these producers employ their cousins or people outside their family. That's their business, not mine. And some kinds of food lend themselves to large-scale production. There's no more reason to bemoan that than to bemoan the absence of small, family automakers.

[ThomCat]

17. I think there IS something different about farms.

Farming is a necessity. Historically it is something most families did.

Businesses incorporate to get liability protections and all the benefits of being a business, but then whine to the government to get guaranteed profits. They want all the benefit and none of the risk. Farm families are taking the risk, and they're doing it not only because it is a good way of life but because people depend on farms. I think we would be much better off if family farms got some help and corporate farms didn't.

[eallen]

19. I don't follow that argument at all.

All of the following activities are necessities, that historically most families did:

• hauling water
  
• making shelter
  
• gathering fuel
  
• making clothes
  
• tending wounds and childbirth
  

We now buy water through utility pipes and in bottles. The vast majority of people live in a building they themselves did not build. Few people rely on wood they themselves collect or chop to keep warm in the winter. Even fewer make their own clothes. The notion of doing all this has a certain romance. And if anyone wants to live life closer to the earth, I encourage them to buy ten acres in the backwoods of Vermont and do so.

But it would be impossible for everyone today to do so. And I see no reason at all to somehow treat these activities as economically special, just because they were staple activities prior to the modern era.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. Then they obviously picked the wrong name to begin with

"Organic," according to the lobbyist-friendly USDA, does not have to mean the food is grown using sustainable (read: nondestructive) farming practices. It does not mean locally produced. It does not mean the ethical treatment of animals. Nor does it mean the companies that produce it need be the slightest bit fair or trustworthy or socially responsible. All it means now: no pesticides, no chemical fertilizers, no bioengineering.

Well, if you wanted it to mean 'sustainable', 'local', 'ethical' or 'fair', then you should have picked a word with some of those connotations. 'Organic' is to do with 'organisms', and has a specific meaning in chemistry of 'carbon-based' - which fits nicely with the 'no chemical fertilizer' meaning (because you use manure instead of something like ammonium nitrate), but should never have been held to mean 'local', or any of the other meanings Morford has wanted for it. From my 1988 dictionary:

produced without, or not involving, the use of fertilisers and pesticides not wholly of plant or animal origin

So 18 years ago, there was nothing about where the food should be produced, or how big the company should be. This is not really a sudden change in the use of the word; it's just that Morford has read all sorts of fluffy meanings into it, for his own pleasure.

Maybe he should have asked for it to be called 'nice' food when it first became a label, rather than waiting until Kellogg's saw a market opportunity.

[TygrBright]

9. "Organic" doesn't mean much anymore...

...at least, not on the label of a new industrially-produced food-like substance from some folksily-named division of a megacorp.

Those of us who care about eating real food have to be very, very careful NOT to create another easy-to-market shorthand term to describe real food, or it will in its turn be co-opted by the Giant Marketing Machine to sell yet more industrially-produced food-like product.

So we are resigned to the jaw-cracking, somnolence-inducing descriptions like "locally-produced using sustainable agricultural models." Which don't exactly fit on a cute MadAve-designed label. But if you DO care, look for those jaw-crackers.

At your local Farmer's Market, hippy-dippy Co-op, etc.

Respect your food.

evangelically,
Bright

[MISSDem]

18. Read the labels, read the labels, read the labels

and go on back to Wild Oats and buy your groceries.