an open cupboard

Thanks to the DairyQueen, I scored a ticket to the Michael Pollan/John Mackey smackdown in Berkeley the other night. I admit, I hadn’t really followed the controversial Pollan/Mackey dialogue on the web. Nor have I yet read the Omnivore’s Dilemma, although to my credit, I have purchased the book. Nonetheless, here’s a quick recap:

• Michael Pollan writes a book called the Ominvore’s Dilemma in which he discusses four meals, one of them prepared from ingredients obtained from Whole Foods. Among these ingredients are non-locally produced asparagus from Argentina, with which Pollan is not entirely pleased.
• John Mackey—founder and CEO of Whole Foods—reads the book and invites Pollan to his office in Austin, Texas. Mackey presents Pollan with an eleven page single-spaced letter in response to the Whole Foods chapter in Pollan’s book, as well as a $25 Whole Foods gift certificate to cover the asparagus.
• Over the course of months, Mackey and Pollan responsa are published on Mackey’s blog.

The beef:

• Pollan—Whole Foods supports “Big Organic”, huge factory farms that that adhere to loose organic standards and aren’t much better than non-organic factory farms in terms of humane, sustainable, biodiverse farming. By not buying enough from local farmers, Whole Foods is supporting the large producers rather than small local producers. Some products marketed with illustrious background stories at Whole Foods stores are not what they appear. “Free-range” eggs are packaged with illustrations of an old bucolic farmstead and a touching story about hens who are free to wander and peck outdoors. Some investigative journalism confirmed that these hens are indeed free to roam around the hen house, but have probably not set foot outdoors.
• Mackey—Au contraire. Whole Foods buys most of its produce from private local farms. The company has been instrumental in helping to set and improve USDA organic standards, and is launching a number of programs to improve the quality of organic farms and food. Mackey admits that Whole Foods mistakenly promoted and sold products from farms they thought were small, private farms based on the accompanying marketing material, which turned out to be products produced by large companies with imaginative marketing departments.

Some salient points from Mackey’s presentation:

• 78% of produce sold at Whole Foods comes from private family farms, while 22% comes from corporate organic farms.
• 100% of Whole Foods’ private label milk comes from private family farms.
• Whole Foods is establishing a 30 million dollar venture capital fund to promote local, artisanal products around the world.
• Whole Foods has started a program for loaning money to small, local producers.
• Along with Fair Trade and the Rainforest Alliance, Whole Food will launch the Whole Trade Guarantee—a program guaranteeing quality, price, fair labor, while reducing poverty and enhancing environmental sustainability.

Mackey skirted some issues I felt he should have delved into more openly, such as the high cost of healthy, organic food as a barrier to people who can’t afford it. His argument that Americans are getting richer is really beside the point. Perhaps the US GDP is growing, but I am loath to believe that this wealth is evenly distributed among US citizens. I’m no economist, but I’d bet that those who have money now have even more, while those who don’t still don’t. Mackey argued that Whole Foods can be affordable to those who shop intelligently. Maybe. How about a Whole Foods campaign to prove it? I’d like to see Whole Foods brochures explaining to low-income shoppers how to buy their groceries on a variety of budgets.

Mackey is a man of ideas. He talked at length about his vision for what he calls the ecological era. He noted the negativity of the current organic label—no GMOs, no pesticides, no chemicals, etc.—and called for a more positive organic vision promoting soil health, biodiversity, worker welfare, animal welfare. To achieve this vision, he proposes creating a new farm rating system. A nice idea, but one that will falter without sufficient attention to detail. Much like the idea of promoting small, local producers backfired when Whole Foods mistakenly promoted corporate products with misleading small farm packaging.

On the whole, however, I was impressed by Mackey’s intelligence and passion for ecologically grown food, as well as his openness to receiving and responding to criticism. It was refreshing hearing a CEO who seems to care about something greater than the bottom line. And what a joy to hear an intelligent dialog between people with differing views, instead of the pompous grandstanding that currently passes for debate in this country.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 1st, 2007 at 9:08 pm and is filed under seen&heard, thoughts.