organic food

Umbra on canola oil

Dear Umbra, I recently saw “organic canola oil” on a salad dressing bottle. I looked up the origin of canola oil, and it looks like it is a genetic modification of rapeseed. I thought organic certification disallowed genetically modified foods. What’s the scoop? Tom Grundy Nevada City, Calif. Dearest Tom, Have you noticed yet that […]

Umbra on the cost of organics

Dear Umbra, How come it’s so expensive to go organic? I could swing it by myself by eating a bare minimum of food, but I’m charged with feeding consume-mass-quantity types who favor the traditional American diet, and they eat meat. I would be in debt buying just half the monthly food consumption. One would have […]

Beyond organic: A new label

If you haven't been following the discussion under this post about Wal-Mart selling organic food, I recommend you catch up. It's quite insightful, with a range of views well-expressed.

One note of consensus seems to be this: "Organic," at least as denoted by the USDA label, falls well short of genuinely sustainable agriculture. Tom is better qualified than I to give a comprehensive description of the latter, but one important element is locality. Food that is grown, sold, and eaten within a single regional foodshed is closer to sustainable than organic mega-farms.

So, as a couple of people have suggested, perhaps one step in the right direction is a new label, to supplement "organic." This raises two questions:

An innovative Alabama CSA shows the way forward.

When Wal-Mart announced plans to become the world's biggest purveyor of organically grown food last week, the polite applause from the enviro gallery grated on my ears. (Here's a spirited recent debate on Gristmill.) Even the New York Times editorial page could see through this move. While some greens cooed at at Wal-Mart's magnamity, the Grey Lady unleashed an appropriately cynical analysis:

There is no chance that Wal-Mart will be buying from small, local organic farmers. Instead, its market influence will speed up the rate at which organic farming comes to resemble conventional farming in scale, mechanization, processing and transportation. For many people, this is the very antithesis of what organic should be.... For "Wal-Mart" and "organic" to make sense in the same sentence, the company will have to commit itself to protecting the Agriculture Department standard that gives "organic" meaning.

I have no doubt that Wal-Mart's greenie admirers will hold the company's feet to the fire on that one. But the USDA's organic standards are already being drained of meaning. Rather than chide Goliath to behave nicely, enviros should consider helping David get his shit together. Check out what they're getting up to over in Birmingham, Ala.

Wal-mart’s organic bomb

Melanie Warner at the NYT reports today that Wal-Mart is about to dramatically increase its organic food offerings.

In very understated fashion, she says, "Wal-Mart's interest is expected to change organic food production in substantial ways."

Um, yeah, it sure will.

Wal-Mart's plan is to sell organics ~10% over the price of non-organics -- a much closer premium than you can get elsewhere. It's also getting brands like Pepsi, Rice Krispies, and Kraft Mac 'n' Cheese in the game.

There's good back and forth in the article about the pros and cons of further industrializing organics -- availability and expansion of the market in the pros, weakening standards and increased overseas production in the cons.

Umbra on organic cashews

Dear Umbra, I work in a grocery store. Recently a customer refused to purchase our cashews because they weren’t organic. Does it really matter if nuts are organic? Are they sprayed with chemicals during production? Did the customer have a point, or should she have sucked it up and bought our cashews? Brianna Farmington Hills, […]

Under the Covers: Getcha grub on

Grub, as defined in the book of the same name by Anna Lappé and Bryant Terry:

grub* (grəb), n.

1. Grub is organic and sustainably raised whole and locally grown foods;
2. Grub is produced with fairness from seed to table;
3. Grub is good for our bodies, our communities, and our environment.

*Grub should be universal ... and it's delicious.

Last night, I went with a cadre of social Gristers to a book reading and signing by Lappé and Terry at the Elliott Bay bookstore. Their book, Grub: ideas for an urban organic kitchen, is half scary facts and figures about our food system and the chemicals therein, half earth- and people-healthy menu plans (complete with soundtrack suggestions and short poems and essays to compliment the meal), and 10 percent resource guide. (And apparently I suck at math.)

Much like the book, the reading was a good mix of factual bits and personal stories about the authors' relationship with food, spiced with bits of humor. Lappé, coauthor (along with her mother, Frances Moore Lappé) of Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet and cofounder of the Small Planet Institute and Small Planet Fund, joked about a book she reads when she needs a laugh, Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastics. Terry, a chef and founding director of b-healthy!, chuckled about his past forays into fruitarianism and even breatharianism before realizing he was a "grubarian," adding that "to embrace grub, you don't have to give up anything -- except maybe a mouthful of pesticides." The real fun, however, began after the bookstore event.

Michael Pollan digs into the mysteries of the U.S. diet in The Omnivore’s Dilemma

In The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, Michael Pollan diagnoses the national attitude toward food: angst. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan, Penguin Press, 320 pgs, 2006. Channeling the modern middle-class shopper wandering vast supermarket aisles, Pollan asks: “The organic apple or the conventional? And if […]

It may not be as eco as you think

The Cornucopia Institute, an organic watchdog organization, has released a report (PDF) on the "organic-ness" of 68 dairy name brands and private labels. While cow-conscious consumers might assume that the word "organic" on the label means that their milk mustache comes from a happy cow grazing in non-pesticide-laden pastures, that's not always the case; guidelines for organic certification can be variously interpreted, and the USDA is lax on enforcing regulations. Says the Cornucopia press release:

[The report] profiles the growth and commercialization of organic dairying and looks at the handful of firms that now seem intent upon taking over the organic dairy industry by producing all or some of their milk on 2000- to 6000-cow industrial-style confinement dairies.

The report finds that while the majority of name-brand organic producers do hold to high legal and ethical standards, 20 percent garnered a "one-cow" substandard rating (out of a possible five).

A booming, lucrative $15 billion market for organic food and a severe national shortage of organic milk are two factors that industry observers mention as driving the "get organic milk from any source" philosophy.

The top companies -- Aurora Organic Dairy and Dean Foods, which owns Horizon Organic, Organic Cow of Vermont and Alta Dena -- did not respond to the survey that Cornucopia sent out, for which they received a score of no cows. The two producers control 60-70 percent of the organic dairy market.

Read a New York Times article on the report or search for your favorite organic dairy provider on this alphabetical list.