Organic®

[This post is a bit patch-work really, but I'm posting it as is since I find my tangible world is overwhelming my virtual world for the time being].

Kevin at Crytogon.com recently reported this news (from MSNBC):

"Now companies from Wal-Mart to General Mills to Kellogg are wading into the organic game, attracted by fat margins that old-fashioned food purveyors can only dream of. What was once a cottage industry of family farms has become Big Business, with all that that implies, including pressure from Wall Street to scale up and boost profits."

To which I would add this recent corporate announcement:

"Target Corp. said Thursday that it's entering the growing market for organic foods by starting its own brand, Archer Farms."

And perhaps you even remember this news piece from Nov. of 2005:

"...last week, Senate and House Republicans on the Agriculture appropriations subcommittee inserted a last-minute provision into the department's fiscal 2006 budget specifying that certain artificial ingredients could be used in organic food

The Organic Trade Association, an industry lobbying group that proposed the amendment and spent several months pushing for its adoption, says that the measure will encourage the continued growth of organic food.

...The amendment injects Congress directly into the debate over whether certain artificial ingredients and industrial chemicals should be allowed in products labeled organic."

...which is no doubt just where they would like to be. It's surprising how quickly grassroots social movements get co-opted by Big Bureaucracy--the theory seems to be that if a large enough group of people begin to adopt a new way of acting, there must be a need to manage them. BTW, the Organic Trade Association is largely the string-puppet for pushing the corporate organic® agenda.

Now admittedly none of this is actually going to be "news" to most readers, but nevertheless I think it's always helpful to bear in mind that for every positive effort people adopt as a society there are powerful forces that wait at the ready to pounce the new opportunity this presents, and they invariably seem to pervert these efforts in the name of profit. It's not a conspiracy of evil-doers, it's simply built into the nature of our Empire culture to turn everything and anything to our advantage.

Perhaps you've already seen this wonderful graphic outlining how the Organic® food industry is organized (visit the linked website to see the larger version doesn't appear to be saving properly with my server):

I suppose it boils down to a question of convenience really, which might be defined here as "the path of quick advantage". I mean, on one hand it's certainly very convenient that Wal-Mart will soon be offering Organic® food to people in rural Kansas, where there may well be no co-ops or fair-trade coffee houses to be found. But then we begin to approach the question of whether communities should be responsible for nurturing their own organic movements? If a community has traded its family-farm base for supermarket distributorship, then to what degree is it up to them to revive that base?

Then too there's also a larger question of just how many people can the more "purebred" organic movement really support? Commenter auntiegrav posed the question just the other day: "...there is no way to have everyone eat well. There simply isn't a way to mass produce good food. The two concepts are mutually exclusive." More and more people are beginning to wake up to the need for real, unadulterated, nutrient-dense food. "Organic" is really just an initial step in this transition. But as auntigrav points out, organic is not compatible with mass-production. And certainly, if we wish to have "pastured" chicken in every local Safeway there are more than a few corners that will need to be cut. And for many chicken-factories this means hustling the birds outside the warehouse for 10 minutes once a day. And even then that's likely only if someone is actually keeping watch....

Once again, it seems to me, we come back to the need for localized, de-centralized economies. Regionalized economics inherently serves a higher purpose than mere profit or convenience.

I've always liked this Adbusters anthem on consumption:

"BUY NOTHING.

And if you cannot buy nothing, then
BUY LOCAL.

And if you cannot buy local, then
BUY REGIONAL.

And if you cannot buy regional, then
BUY NATIONAL.

And if you cannot buy national, then
BUY INTERNATIONAL.

And if some crazy reason you cannot
buy any of the above, then go ahead
BUY A CORPORATE BRAND"

I should create a bumper-sticker that says "Question Convenience"--but I won't because I really dislike bumper-stickers. Instead then I'll quote this longer-than-a-bumper-sticker Shakespearean meditation on convenience, which he termed "commodity":

"...rounded in the ear With that same purpose-changer, that sly devil,
That broker, that still breaks the pate of faith,
That daily break-vow, he that wins of all,
Of kings, of beggars, old men, young men, maids,
Who, having no external thing to lose
But the word 'maid,' cheats the poor maid of that,
That smooth-faced gentleman, tickling Commodity, Commodity, the bias of the world, The world, who of itself is peised well, Made to run even upon even ground,this vile-drawing bias, This sway of motion, this Commodity, Makes it take head from all indifferency, From all direction, purpose, course, intent;

...And why rail I on this Commodity?
But for because he hath not woo'd me yet"

An for those who're interested I believe the full King John soliloquy comprises the single longest run-on sentence in the Shakespearean portfolio, which makes for a heckuva challenge on the actor.

So I would propose then that the opposite of convenience is responsibility.

We need to be more responsible for what we do and for what we allow to be done. And also for what we eat. "Know What You Eat". It isn't trivial, if you ask me. Nearly everything flows from this.

Comments

[exnord]

Your Organic Industry Structure link doesn't work.

The Organic Industry Structure link you have does not link to a larger image of same. Can you fix this?

[George]

Try the "wonderful graphic" link, he states that it is not working from his server.

Perhaps you've already seen this wonderful graphic outlining how the Organic® food industry is organized (visit the linked website to see the larger version doesn't appear to be saving properly with my server):

[Mark]

My Grandmother told me when she was a young woman; every one had a garden, even rich and some city folk. It was just the way it was done before food was shipped all a crossed the world to the kitchen.

It would seem that the question that always comes up but is never said or not quite addressed is human population density and the earth's real carrying capacity.

Off question, but on theme, been reading, “ Nature’s Operating Instructions, The true Biotechnologies”, I like the part about Mushrooms.

[different clue]

Vast amounts of food could still be grown
by vast numbers of farmers and gardeners.
50 million suburbanites could put in gardens
if they wanted to. Many of them don't want
to. Very well. When the stores go empty,
let them starve.
When sectors of the Organic Movement ran
to Congress asking for a law to harmonize
Organic Farming Regulation across all the
states under one Grand Federal Law, some few
people tried warning them that asking the
Federal Government to regulate Organic Agriculture was like asking Adolf Hitler to
conduct a Jewish wedding. What did they think was going to happen?

A way around the planned corruption of
Organic standards by way of Federal subversion would be for the ethical farmer
to disclose totally and fully every last
tool, product, and process involved in his
farm operation. And if he can find an inspector to see if he has really truly fully disclosed, he could get that inspector
to certify that he has fully disclosed every
last little thing involved in his farming
operation. In which case, he could call himself Certified Full Disclosure. Educated
literate customers could read every Certified
Full Disclosure farmer's disclosure sheets
and decide which farmer is using the materials and methods that the educated literate customer is satisfied with.

[auntiegrav]

>>Vast amounts of food could still be grown
by vast numbers of farmers and gardeners.
50 million suburbanites could put in gardens
if they wanted to. Many of them don't want
to. Very well. When the stores go empty,
let them starve.>>>>>
Even if they could get the seeds, the smallholder training, and the physical conditioning necessary, millions will still starve who live in apartment buildings when the economic system collapses.
>>>>In which case, he could call himself Certified Full Disclosure.>>>>>>
How about we make the government do this with everything they do instead. Time to break down THEIR fences and find out what is going on behind the lies. Farmers already have it; it's called "Nosy Neighbors". I go to the local dump ('recycling station') not to get rid of trash, but to find out what Hank says I'm doing this week. I have a constant stream of aircraft over my farm, yet I couldn't fly over a government installation and see what they are up to. Organic certification is just a symptom that people want 'someone else' to do their thinking for them. Until you have a thinking public, you can't build any system that will make a bigger Spectacle than the current System of Systems. If you can't make a bigger Spectacle, you need intelligent customers, and that isn't part of the System's plan, as is demonstrated by the schools and their Pavlovian bells and factory model.

[mark]

As a former organic farmer, I found it to be just another way to identify and segregate a system that wasn't in the agenda of the PTB. It is one really good way to point a finger of miss compliance, say like, " His pest control measures are inadequate, just look at all those bugs and weeds". (When really 80% are of the beneficial kind). BTW this didn't happen to me, but I know of one farmer that it did. I did much better at farmers market as conventional, with my customer base knowing that I was organic, (the produce looks better, tastes better, and makes you feel better), than when I got certified and tried to go bigger. It costs too much being in the system.
A way to look at this food issue is, IMHO, The PTB will use it as a weapon, and the only way to use this tool of food if you can grow it is to share in the only power base one has and that is the community that one lives in. In as much, Gorilla farming is allowed, on roadsides, under over passes, in parks, etc. I am pretty sure that there have been other cultures that have grown there own food, by hand, in some really odd places that have produced enough for the community or tribes or clans, or gangs, or troops, or what ever one wants to call people whom are willing to band together for a common cause, like eating, it's pretty strong. And the only way to do so is organically, cause the oil and gas to make the crap that is killing us all will be gone or really expensive. As organically as one can in a polluted world that is. Compost my boy, compost.

[Jason DuMars]

I just saw the movie Our Daily Bread, and it made a huge impression... I wouldn't even know how to describe it. My own conclusions:
Humans are despicable

I'm glad I only eat local

there's going to be an unfathomable die-off when PO really hits

we're all trapped in a systen as insideous as the factory farm

If this is playing in your city, you should make a point of seeing it. It's what deconsumption is all about.