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Body Care for the Summer

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Living Green

Has Big Business Turned Organics Into "Yuppy Chow"?
   By Michael Valpy
   The Toronto Globe and Mail

   Wednesday 30 May 2007

   Saskatoon - Organic food is being taken over by big business, marketed as "yuppy chow" for the privileged, and increasingly packaged with as little concern for the environment as conventional food production, says a York University academic researcher.

    In a paper to be presented on Friday at Canada's largest gathering of social sciences scholars, Irena Knezevic says that most of the major organic brands on the North American market are now owned by large corporations such as ConAgra, Cargill, Kraft, Coca Cola and Pepsi.

   She says their products - along with those sold by retail giants such as Loblaws and Wal-Mart - are turning organic agriculture into product brands that are becoming "a marketing tool more so than an assurance of quality, let alone an assurance of a fair and sustainable production process."

    Officials from Loblaws and Wal-Mart were unavailable for comment last night.

   This trend, says Ms. Knezevic, is driven by consumer demand, with the food industry's eager willingness to jump on the bandwagon and make organic consumption efficient and slightly less expensive by mass-producing - creating only a slightly "greener" version of the dominant industrial food system but separating organic agriculture from its central concepts.

   She says consumers are demonstrating a phenomenal enthusiasm for organic products - the Canadian organic industry is growing by 15 to 20 per cent annually - and a readiness to pay premium prices for the products.

   But what research shows, she says, is that organic products are becoming what she describes as a food fetish associated with individual health and body image - status food linked to high disposable income and the leisure time to shop - but ignoring "the heart of organic agriculture."

   "Organic agriculture is by definition intertwined with environmentalism, resistance to corporate globalization and the 'back to the land' movement," she says. Organic food is conventionally defined as free of chemical inputs - pesticides and artificial fertilizers - and genetically modified organisms, produced with sensitivity to the land, the crops, the animals and the surrounding ecosystems, and providing a fair economic return to small growers who produce food as an alternative to mass commodity production.

    It is the environmental and social-justice issues that Ms. Knezevic says are being ignored by consumers and government regulators.

   "Most of the organic food supply in Canada travels to consumers from California and includes convenience foods like individual-sized and single-serving granola bars. Transportation and packaging involved result in environmental consequences comparable to those of conventional food production."

   In her paper, she quotes George Siemon, the founder of the largest North American co-operative organic producer, California's Organic Valley - a non-corporate grower - as wryly telling a recent conference: "We expect any day now that our consumers will ask for organic Twinkies. Individually wrapped, of course."

  Ms. Knezevic says the Canadian federal government's proposed national labelling for organic foods will tell consumers little about how organic food is produced - little about who produced it or the farmers' environmental and sustainable stewardship of the land, whether the food was locally produced or what economic return farmers got for their labour.

   The proposed labelling, she says, will only continue to distance consumers from their food and are mainly aimed at encouraging both mass production and exports into a globally harmonized market.

   Indeed, she says, the regulations will encourage corporations to take over more and more of organic agriculture because government subsidies favour large producers over small ones.

   Achim Mohssen-Beyk, an organic farmer from Picton, Ont., said that big companies may meet the basic standards for organic certification in Canada, but the consumer will never know about the environmental or social footprints they leave.

   "All the food mileage and mass production, the organic certification doesn't talk about that. You can have certified organic coming from China and people being exploited there and nobody's talking about that," said Mr. Mohssen-Beyk, who is also a regional spokesman for the Canadian Organic Growers. He said small, local farmers can't compete with the price-point advantages of big companies, even though they maintain the highest of standards.

   "We are losing farms, we are losing farmland, we are losing rural economies because everything is being imported."

   Ms. Knezevic quotes a National Farmers Union study that says small-farm income in Canada is now at the lowest point since the Depression.

   Ms. Knezevic is a doctoral candidate in the joint York-Ryerson Universities communication and culture program. Earlier this year, she was given a major teaching award by York and cited for her research skills and commitment to the mentoring and academic success of her students.

   She will present her research to the annual Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences being held this week at the University of Saskatchewan. There are 5,500 scholars attending.

   She writes in her paper: "Organic foods have less and less to do with the ethics of environmentalism, anti-globalization and social justice, indeed less to do with organic agriculture as a concept, but more and more with hip consumerism, cultural and economic capital and the moral pedestals of those who have the luxury to make such purchasing choices."

   What is being created, she says, is "a system in which organic products are more and more removed from the actual problems with food production and incorporated into the dominant agricultural model. The core problems of the global food system, mainly distancing, remain unaddressed."

http://www.certifiedorganic.bc.ca/rcbtoa/services/corporate-ownership.html