Who Owns Organic?

At long last--thanks to the struggles of independent farmers who risked everything to make earth-friendly, sustainable agriculture economically feasible--organic agriculture has come of age. The organic food market is growing by up to 24% per year and, by 2005, it's expected to be worth $20 billion in sales. Organic means big business.

And Big Business is just who's clamoring to cash in. Consider who owns your favorite co-op brands:
- Unilever (maker of SlimFast and I Can't Believe It's Not Butter; worth $52 billion) owns Ben & Jerry's.
- Kraft/Philip Morris own Boca Burgers and Balance Bars.
- General Mills owns Cascadian Farms, Muir Glen, and Small Planet Foods.
- Coca-Cola owns organic juice maker Odwalla.
- Dannon just bought Stonyfield Farm.
- Heinz has just introduced an organic ketchup line.
- Nestle owns PowerBar, Kellogg's owns Kashi, Smucker's owns After the Fall.

It stinks. Because as the bottom line ascends as the core value in organizations previously guided by concern for the environment, workers, and the communities that support them, companies change. According to an article in the recent issue of Mother Jones, Unilever halted the practice of donating 7.5% of profits to charity after they bought Ben & Jerry's.

So, what to do? Shop locally. Go to a co-op, where you can speak to the actual human being who ordered the latest shipment of produce and where transparency--knowing who grew the food and under what conditions--is a primary concern, and ensuring big dividends to stockholders isn't.

Or support a CSA. Community Supported Agriculture means buying a share in a local organic farm and getting a season's worth of macriobiotic veggies grown by people you actually know. (The CSA I'm part of, Elsie's Farm, offers approximately 18 weeks of sustainably grown vegetables, herbs and flowers for $400. Sign up now for the coming season.) In a consumer market increasingly dictated by a profit-at-any-cost mentality, here's a way to cast your dollar-vote for something better. As David Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World, organic agriculture has to be "human-scale." Because that's who'll be eating it.