This week's dose of organic headlines, updates, resources, goodies, and recipes courtesy of Doug Snodgrass...
Did you ever get the feeling that if Fox News had never given Glenn Beck a television show, he would be spending his time conjuring up balloon boy hoaxes? Fortunately, the gods of comedy have smiled upon us so we've got him on a daily basis. For your entertainment, here's the Mayor of Simpleton's recent rant against Meatless Mondays.
This article in Gourmet Retailer illustrates (I presume unintentionally) one of the entrenched problems surrounding the organic food culture, particularly in the United States. Good food, free of environmental toxins, is an issue of health. In the United States, the conventional wisdom accepts that incredibly bass-ackwards notion that access to health is nearly exclusive to the privileged class.
A new national survey of more affluent consumers from strategic marketing communications firm Context Marketing, "Beyond Organic -- How Evolving Consumer Concerns Influence Food Purchases," has found that most respondents are highly concerned about the safety of the food they buy and would pay more for food they believe to be safer or healthier. The research also found that assurances about what a food doesn't contain, such as pesticides or antibiotics, matter a great deal to these consumers, along with ethical claims that reinforce quality and safety perceptions.
Containing research recently conducted by Context Marketing and Doylestown, Pa.-based MRops, Inc. among consumers who fit the demographics for specialty grocery shoppers, "Beyond Organic" spotlights which food quality claims are most important to these shoppers.
According to the report, 57 percent of respondents said they were "definitely" or "very concerned" about the safety of the U.S. food supply, with another 39 percent "slightly" or "somewhat" concerned. Only 4 percent said they had no concerns about food safety.
When asked to evaluate a range of food quality claims often found on food packages or at point of sale, respondents said that the claims they found most meaningful had to do with items not found in the foods, including pesticides, antibiotics, mercury and artificial hormones. Consumers rated claims such as "organic," "free-range" and "grass-fed" as less important. The survey didn't ask about nutritional claims.
While respondents confirmed that low price is a major influence on most food purchases, 60 percent said they would pay up to 10 percent more for food they think is healthier, safer or produced according to higher ethical standards; and 14 percent said they would pay a premium greater than 10 percent.
Organic Valley tends to be proactive in their marketing, atypically so in an industry whose "name" brands remain low profile. While this promotion is local to the San Francisco area, it's an example of Organic Valley's knack for finding a good balance between business and planet.
C&K Market’s Ray’s Food Place Stores and organic foods supplier Organic Valley have teamed up to create a new shopper rewards program that gives customers EcoUnit credits that can be redeemed to support local stewardship projects like tree planting, river restoration, removal of invasive species and watershed cleanup.
The two companies worked with San Francisco-based sustainability rewards solutions provider EcoUnit on the program. EcoUnit develops programs are designed to motivate consumers to make eco-smart choices at the grocery store. Participating consumers earn EcoUnit credits, which can be redeemed for support of local environmental projects.
[...]
Through the end of this year, a purchase of any Organic Valley product from Ray’s will earn shoppers EcoUnit credits that they can redeem to support the local projects of their choice, such as willow tree planting along Hay Creek, a lower tributary of Oregon’s John Day River; restoring the Deschutes River basin habitat; reviving and protecting the salmon runs of California’s Blue Creek and Klamath River; or cedar-tree planting efforts along Oregon’s Elk River.
Biologist Switches Careers: From Ocean Science to Organic Farming
On a grassy hill in Chestertown, Maryland near the Chesapeake Bay, Dolly Baker slowly pulls ripened figs off a tree. She was a marine biologist and botanical illustrator before she switched careers in 2000. "The millennium was a year to change and I chucked it and 'bought the farm,' as they say," she says with a laugh.
A link to agriculture and the land
Baker's farm is an historic white brick house surrounded by 3.5 hectares of fertile land. White House Farm was once in her family; it was built by her ancestors in 1721. Originally a dairy and grain farm, it reportedly played a role in the Revolutionary War, supplying General George Washington with grain from its three mills, while the colonial army waited out a bitter cold winter in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, some 160 kilometers north.
White House Farm is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and Baker runs it as an organic farm. It's been hard work, she says, especially abiding by the strict rules for government certification as organic.
USDA organic certification is a stringent process
It takes three years for a farm to be certified. During that transition, Baker explains, farmers may not apply chemicals of any kind to the soil. "You have to use natural fertilizers. And there's a fee every year which goes towards the [government] inspections. We have to save receipts, we have to have logs of what we do [even] compost. Anything we do to keep ourselves organic, we have to document. And once a year, you're inspected, and hopefully, you pass," she says.
Baker's hard work earned White House Farm organic certification, a distinction shared with about 10,000 other U.S. farms. It's a responsibility organic farmers take seriously, Baker says. "A lot of people can grow their own organic version of produce, but it's not inspected, so people can say 'We grow all natural - this and that and the other.' They can say pretty much anything they want because nobody's checking on them," she says.
Related Reading:
Smart and Sexy Secrets to Sustainable Style
Jasmine Rice in the Weeping Plain: Successful Adaptation to Climate Change
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