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Boulder Weekly Tackles Organic Milk Story

The Boulder Weekly had one of the best explanations of the controversy over Aurora Organic Dairy and the battle for organic milk that I've seen. But you'll get more context if you read Organic Inc.

Organic Film in the Works

A couple of years ago, an NYU grad student interviewed me on camera for a student project on organic food. Then I kept running into her at various organic events as the project has blossomed into a real film. And now the former student, Shelley Rogers, has won some impressive help for her project, What's Organic About? I am not endorsing it -- having not seen it -- but the preview clip is compelling and hints at some familiar fissures, such as local v. organic, big v. small.

If you're in the organic food industry, you'll recognize some of the figures, including the inimitable Marty Mesh of Florida Certified Organic, whose usual antics (opps, I mean statements) at National Organic Standards Board meetings are only matched by the inimitable Jim Pierce of Organic Valley (whose brief statements to the board should be collected and published as organic poems, haikus and parables. In the future, he should try limericks.) In any case, Marty's in the movie and I look forward to seeing more. Now without further adieu, a promo clip:

Workin' in the New Year

I got this great quote by Studs Terkel in a holiday email. He's the one-time radio interviewer, journalist and oral historian who was required reading when I first training to be a reporter. Something to think about for the new year.

“Work is about daily meaning as well as daily bread. For recognition as well as cash; for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying... We have a right to ask of work that it include meaning, recognition, astonishment, and life.” - Studs Terkel

Writing a story about a restaurant a few years ago, I asked Anthony Bourdain, the renegade chef and writer, "Restaurants always die. What's the secret to longevity?"

Bourdain replied: "The secret to longevity is to decide early on what one does well and then do it relentlessly, fanatically well, never wavering, never letting things slide, never allowing oneself to lose sight of one's original standards and intentions, and not falling victim to trends or unreasonable fears."

Advice that could be applied to far more than restaurants...

The Price of One Penny

In the long and sordid history of farmworkers, a few glaring examples manage to jump out of the background noise and make national news. Such is the case with the decision by Burger King to refuse handing out a one penny price increase to tomato pickers in Florida because it has been so vehemently opposed by conservative growers.

Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, weighed in in on this issue in the N.Y. Times:

Migrant farm laborers have long been among America’s most impoverished workers. Perhaps 80 percent of the migrants in Florida are illegal immigrants and thus especially vulnerable to abuse. During the past decade, the United States Justice Department has prosecuted half a dozen cases of slavery among farm workers in Florida. Migrants have been driven into debt, forced to work for nothing and kept in chained trailers at night. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers — a farm worker alliance based in Immokalee, Fla. — has done a heroic job improving the lives of migrants in the state, investigating slavery cases and negotiating the penny-per-pound surcharge with fast food chains.

He pointed out that the pay increase was tiny compared with the bonuses reaped by Burger King's equity owners. It would also be tiny in comparison to the amount spent at this season's charity balls, which gather the  wealthiest to raise money for the needy. Were the root of the problem - poverty - addressed head on with decent wages, fewer feel-good band aids would be needed.

I would venture that this decision by Burger King's management - disastrous from a public relations point of view - will not go away soon.

Chefs: Eat Your Own Dog Food

In the high-tech world, they used to have a saying, "eat your own dog food." It's the equivalent of walk the talk. Here's the foodie world equivalent in a wonderfully considered piece on Alice Waters, who lent her good name to a controversial gated development in Montana. Charlotte McGuinn Freeman, who lives nearby, writes at Ethicurean:

I cannot see how a gated development of second-homeowners who will fly in and out on their private jets can be called sustainable or viewed as contributing to the health of our community. So I cannot understand why Alice Waters — someone who has always seemed to be deeply invested in the health of real communities, someone who wanted to build a restaurant that was like a home, someone who is creating gardens in underserved elementary schools, someone who is actively promoting real, slow, actual food purchased from real farmers – I cannot understand why she has lent her support to a developer who seems to represent everything that is antithetical to real community-building.

As I commented on the post, the food world has been caught in a closed-end loop on sustainability for some time, since it is accessible to so few. It needs to break out beyond this "leading" edge if it is going to get anywhere. And I think, in this piece, Freeman is offering a reality check. Are mission and values aligned in the work? A question, obviously, not just for companies who get most of the heat.

Cornography: New Doc Reveals All!

King Corn might be part of a new genre, cornography, in which row after row of yellow haired, crunchy, leggy babes reveal all.

The first blockbuster in the genre was actually literary, via Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma. Now two innocents, Ian Cheney and Curtis Ellis, follow in Pollan's footsteps, relying on the often-used but still effective device of dropping into the picture. They decide to become corn farmers, albeit on a very small, one-acre, site. Filmmaker Aaron Woolf follows the two on their highly entertaining quest to find out how corn really grows, enters our national diet and what it all means.

Unlike other in-your-face shock documentaries of the recent past, the camera keeps a respectful eye on the midwestern farm and the choices such endeavors entail. More than a couple of farmers admit, in effect, that they are growing crap - whether in cornfields or feedlots - but that they have no choice. The doc also shows how amazingly easy the venture is, given chemicals and genetic breeds, but that the profit only comes by dipping several ways into the taxpayer's pocket.

The film opens in several markets, including Washington, D.C. Go see it and find new meaning in that bucket of popcorn you're eating.

- Samuel Fromartz

Interview with Pollan

There's an interesting interview with Michael Pollan over at Grist. Gives a preview of his new book and tidbits on food, farming and politics.

Bought the Farm and Other News Bites

The Wedge Co-Op in Minneapolis, one of the oldest and largest natural food co-ops in the nation, inks a deal to buy Gardens of Eagan organic farm. The farm's owners, Martin and Atina Diffley, have farmed organically for 35 years. "Martin and I knew we didn't want to keep farming into our senior years and that our children did not want to take over the farm," said Atina Diffley. "So, in recent years, we asked, 'how can we protect the integrity of the farm without owning it?' The answer was a deal with the Wedge, which plans to run the farm as an educational center for its members and customers.

Stonyfield Farm converts its entire product line to organic, completing a 25 year dream, according to President Gary Hirshberg. The company sources its milk from Organic Valley, the dairy cooperative that has seen a huge rise in supply with the conversion of a record number of farms last year.

The Galveston County Daily News has a good read on what's driving the current price rise in conventional milk (everything from the Australian drought to demand from China). "Debbie Loman of Texas City said she stopped buying fluid milk altogether after watching prices creep up week after week. Now she buys evaporated milk and mixes it with water. 'You learn to economize,' she said."

Organics in China & Other Blog Rants

Here's what I'm reading lately:

China Bound. Jim Harkness, the president of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (who is also fluent in Mandarin), is blogging about organic food and farming from China, including a fledgling organic store with its own farm and CSA-like business in Beijing. Speaking to a store clerk, Harkness reports: "I ask how he likes working for an organic business and he said, 'It’s wonderful!' And then, with a dramatic gesture sweeping his hand across his face, 'They’ve torn away the masks!' When I looked puzzled, he explained that most people hide their problems, cover up bad news or talk behind other peoples’ backs. 'Here if something’s wrong we have to acknowledge it and deal with it.'” Sounds a bit different from recent China headines.

Sustainable Business? Mark Powell, who works at the Ocean Conservancy making sure fish have a future, blogged from a Stanford Business School seminar on business strategies for environmental sustainability. Specifically, he looked at the possibilities of collaboration between environmental groups and corporations. "Flexibility of mind may be the hardest thing to ask people to do. If you've always hated big business, then you need to spend some time with people who work in big business. I assure you, they're not as evil as you think. If environmental groups leave you angry, then find someone who can talk about the real goals of the environmental movement. It's not the end of corporations, even though some people might say that."

Small Farm Voice. Simon Huntley, who has a novel venture setting up web sites for small farms, blogs about the difficultly of principled small-scale farming. "People want adjective-laden food (micro, local, sustainable, et al) instead of chemical-laden food, but it takes extra care and smaller scale to bring these products to the marketplace. Small farms are well suited to the task of producing high-quality food, but the costs are higher. Will Americans pay the extra price that sustainable, small-scale production requires? If not, can farmers find a way to bring down the price to point that the general public can pay? Or failing the first two options, will farmers be forced to scale up to survive?" My humble opinion: The answer to these questions is yes, yes and yes. There is no single monolithic market or producer but many producers that can meet our various needs. Let a thousand organic flowers bloom.

Rural Divisions. Bruce Cole, who edits Edible San Francisco, directs us in this engaging post to John Ikerd, who is the Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics, University of Missouri. Ikerd exposes what CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) are doing to rural America. "CAFOs completely disrupt the community life of rural people. Some have labeled this the most divisive rural issue since the Civil War. In many communities, multigenerational family farmers are leading the opposition, often pitting neighbor against neighbors who have been their friends for years." (Thanks Tana!).

Holy Cow! And for a more spiritually enlightening take on the Aurora Dairy dust up, check out Amanda's post on Ethicurean, "Confessions of an Organic Mega-Dairy."