Organic Middlemen on a Mission

Did you ever wonder where your organic, local food might come from when it appears in a supermarket or restaurant?

In this article I wrote for Edible Portland, I highlighted a couple of wholesalers who are proving vital to the local and organic foods movement. Too often, middlemen are derided in sustainable agriculture circles, where the emphasis is usually on buying direct from farmers markets and the like. But selling wholesale works for a lot of farmers, as the article points out. A shout out to Portland's EcoTrust for requesting this story!

Here's the lede:

It might be hard to believe that this cold, dank, 27,000-square-foot warehouse in Eugene, Oregon, across the road from several natural gas storage tanks and a giant commercial composting operation, represents a distant ideal of food distribution. But it just might. The cement loading docks of Organically Grown Company are quiet at 8 a.m., but earlier in the morning, well before dawn, workers here and at another facility twice as big in Portland were pushing pallets of organic produce into waiting trucks. Some are stamped with the LADYBUG label, indicating produce grown on farms in the Pacific Northwest. (read on...)

Comments

[Johnson]

Lots of gloss, little substance in this story... But that's bound to happen when you interview a hungover "guiding spirit." The only good thing about OGC is the product they sell. Their corporate infra-structure is a sham and they are as green-washing an organization that has ever existed. Character and credibility are words without meaning there.

[Samuel Fromartz]

Sounds like a comment from a disgruntled former something or other with an ax to grind and no evidence backing up the assertions.

Their "corporate infra-structure" is an employee and farmer-owned company, but regardless, I'll let readers of the article judge by themselves.

[Bob Segraves]

We are going to move the the Raleigh Durham area and plan on a 2nd career in organic farming. We were wondering, is there a similar an OGC equivalent in the Research Triangle area?