Posted on 24-10-2002

What Is Success?

Below is an articles which clearly point to the primary contradiction
manifested in organic business, the meaning of `organic' and the much wider
problem of the meaning of `success'. There are already organic producers
who are rejecting the industrialisation of organics because it's viewed as
contary to the heart and soul of what organic means. As usual the human
dilemma is to spend a half-life fighting over the meaning of names and the
other half chasing them. (Ed.)

California Wake-up.
By Kim Severson* Chronicle Staff Writer, Sunday, October 13, 2002

When Warren Weber and a band of other shaggy Northern California farmers
started growing organic lettuce in the 1970s, they never thought it would
come to this: organic Cheetos.

Frito-Lay, maker of the popular neon-orange snack food, is plowing into the
organic market. So are dozens of other mega-producers -- the very companies
that organic farmers once derided as part of a chemical-dependent,
agri-industrial complex choking the American food supply and deadening its
farmland. H.J. Heinz Co. has a new organic ketchup. Gold Medal sells
organic flour. General Mills Inc. owns Cascadian Farms, an organic brand
started by a rag-tag group of Seattle-area free thinkers 30 years ago.

The idea is to make profitable use of a new national law, rooted in the
California organic movement, that will bring an avalanche of new grocery
products bearing a simple, U.S. Department of Agriculture logo -- a stamp
of approval that means no genetically modified raw material, no irradiation
and little, if any, chemicals or antibiotics.

But for California organic farmers who've fought big agriculture for years,
the move from the fringes of the co-op produce bin to the shelves of
Safeway is something of a shock. When the law takes effect Oct. 21, it will
be a victory, to be sure, but one that comes with plenty of skepticism.
Some worry that the big operations will offer more organic food at lower
prices, pushing out smaller farmers. Others, who believe organic is as much
about culture as it is about chemicals, wonder whether the government will
cater to the big boys from corporate agriculture instead of protecting
local, sustainable, earth-friendly food as the original organic movement
envisioned.

'BEYOND ITS WILDEST DREAMS'

"I think what's really happened here is the industry has succeeded at the
economic level beyond its wildest dreams," said Weber, the father of the
modern California organic movement and one of the first to sell organic
food to Chez Panisse's Alice Waters. "In the early years, we were trying to
woo bigger companies and they wouldn't have anything to do with us. Now
they're embracing it, but you've got a lot of people who are very hostile
to the industrialization of the organic farmer." Weber urges people to look
beyond organic Cheetos and see the big picture. "Putting more ground into
organic production is just that much less land being put into pesticides."

Already, however, the owners of Knoll Farms, a small organic Brentwood
grower whose products are beloved by chefs and respected by organic
farmers, won't seek the federal stamp because they think the new guidelines
aren't strict enough and will mire them in bureaucracy instead of promoting
sustainable practices. In other words, the law simply isn't organic enough.

This sentiment was summed up by national nutrition activist, author and
farmer Joan Dye Gussow in the September/October issue of Organic Gardening:
"This isn't what we meant. When we said organic we meant local. We meant
healthful. We meant being true to the ecologies of regions. We meant
mutually respectful growers and eaters. We meant social justice and equality."

To big food processors, it means money.

Food giants are hungry for a slice of the fastest growing segment in the
food business. Last year, consumers spent $11 billion on organics, compared
to $1.5 billion in the late '80s and early '90s. That's still barely 1
percent of the nation's food sales, but it represents several years of near
20 percent growth. In a business where 1 percent growth in any sector is
considered good, organic food is the rock star of the food supply. "It's
not a value judgment for these companies; it's a business decision," said
Larry Hamwey, vice president of Earthbound Farms, which started in Carmel
Valley in 1984 and grew into North America's largest grower and shipper of
organic produce. "Look at Dole. They realized they needed to get into this
market and do it fast. Organic wasn't on Dole's radar 10 years ago."

Not everyone who was in the organic game before it was popular thinks the
national law is the devil in overalls. In fact, all the hand-wringing makes
people like Kelly Shea roll her eyes. Shea is the director of organic
agriculture for Horizon Organic, a multimillion-dollar corporation that has
been called the Microsoft of the organic business. "We're always most
critical about that which we love the most," she said. "Nobody talks about
your new hairdo more critically than your mother does. It's just that we're
all so personally invested that no rule could have been published that had
no questions about it. We won. Do you know any religion where people
convert and someone is unhappy about it? All it says to me is we were right
all along."

DEMOGRAPHIC DRIVERS

Beyond the politics of the law is the bigger question: Why has organic food
taken off with consumers, even though it can sometimes cost twice as much
as conventionally grown food? Much to many an organic activist's chagrin,
the success of organics may have more to do with taste and convenience than
any concern about the environment. A study by the Hartman Group in
Bellevue, Wash., showed only about a quarter of consumers buy organic
products because they want to save the birds and the bees.

Driven by a spate of food scares and swept up in the fitness movement of
the late 1990s, more than 65 percent of consumers said concern over health
and safety was the reason they bought organic. "Health is big factor,
especially for the Baby Boomers," said Earth Bound Farm's Hamwey. "I look
at my health care system. I have to increasingly manage my own health. In
the '70s, my doctor took care of my health. Suddenly we Boomers realize
that heart disease and cancer could hit us at any time. We realize we'd
better take care of ourselves."

TASTE A FACTOR, TOO

The next most popular reason was taste, with 38 percent of the people
surveyed citing the promise of better flavor as the reason to spend extra
money on organics. As chefs and cookbook authors will tell you, organic
produce can have an intensity of flavor that conventional vegetables lack.
In part that's because conventional crops are often grown using
nitrogen-based fertilizer, which causes fruits and vegetables to absorb
more water and thus dilutes flavor.

GROWING UP WITH ORGANICS

Younger consumers, who drive the market, also have a strong bias toward
organics. Many people in their 20s and 30s were exposed to organic food as
children, growing up with hippie parents and an increased sense of the
importance of healthy eating. "I remember going down to the co-op with my
mom to get cheese and a discount on organic food. I had a carob Easter
bunny. I had my first TV dinner when I was 17," said Horizon's Shea. Not
that all the organic food was good. "I was one of those kids eating the
really horrible peanut butter and dying to be invited to a friend's house
so I could have Jif and marshmallow creme," said Maria Rodale, who is a
founding editor of Organic Style and whose grandfather, J.I. Rodale, is
credited with coining the term "organic" in 1942 when he started Organic
Gardening magazine.

She points to two key changes driving the growth in organics. First,
organic producers finally have a viable system to manufacture and
distribute products to a wide market. Second, organic food is increasingly
offered in convenient, prepackaged forms that appeal to the way many
Americans cook and eat. "The organic food industry has realized that you've
got to meet people where they are," said Rodale. "The organic industry got
its act together for providing people with food and places to buy the food,
like Whole Food Markets and the rise of companies like Horizon and
Stonyfield Farms."

A PRICEY ALTERNATIVE

But she concedes that cost is still a factor, with organics costing
anywhere from 15 percent to 100 percent more than conventional products.
"Organic prices are dropping, but price is still probably the major issue
for most people. Taste comes after," she said. "For most people, they just
want cheap food that's not going to make them sick. It's, 'I only make so
much a week and I've got to feed my family.' "

Karen Klonsky, an agriculture economist at UC Davis, says it's too soon to
tell how the new law will affect prices. On one hand, prices might rise
because the law increases consumer confidence. On the other hand, she said,
growers are saying the premium price organics have garnered is dropping
because more and more companies are getting into the market.

Organic activists warn that people who decide to eat more organic food
shouldn't rely solely on the new label. As with any law, the organic
standard is only as good as the people who enforce it. Particular attention
should be paid to the wide-ranging companies now vying to become
USDA-sanctioned organic certifiers, said Bob Scowcroft, executive director
of the Organic Farming Research Foundation and one of the state's leading
analysts of the organic market.

In California, eight companies that certify organic food are based in the
state. Four are from out of state, from as far as Nebraska and Florida. The
questions are, how good are the companies and how much do they embrace
farmers trying to do more than simply milk the latest profitable food
market. "Changing the system is going to take a lifetime, and we've just
put down the roots to empower the consumer," he said. "The law has the
potential to change the food system, but that will require years of
additional commitment and personal accountability. You have to keep reading
the label and asking questions."

CAUTIOUS OPTIMISM

As farmers like Weber, who still works on 40 acres in Bolinas, watch the
organic culture become part of an industrialized food machine, they remain
skeptical but heartened. And, in classic California organic community
style, Weber encourages people to come together and support what can only
be a positive change. "The idea that somehow we're going to burn the baby
because we don't like this new regime is not going to work. It's going to
be very detrimental," he said. "These are good standards that need to be
monitored. If we don't, big corporations are going to walk away with the
whole organic name we created, and we will be out in the cold."

* E-mail Kim Severson at kseverson@sfchronicle.com.