Small Farmers. Big Change.

The picture gets even clearer now as we dig a little deeper behind those grocery items…Many thanks to Madre Naturaleza for her informative – and gripping – storry that’s keeping us on the edge of our seats.

To start the story from the beginning, click here.

December 5, 2008 by Madre Naturaleza and first printed on the Fair Food Fight website.

Recapping the article “What Lurks Behind the Label, Part I”, Food Goliaths Hain Celestial Group and Small Planet Foods have gained a tight grip on the natural foods industry. They are like chameleons, blending into their surroundings with a clever disguise, thinking we won’t notice them. The center isles of the food co-op are crammed with shelves of processed foods all labeled beautifully with farm names and photos. We soon learned that the majority of these products, almost every item on my grocery list, in fact, came from the hands of only a select few decisions makers. Big Organic. What happened to our choices, farmer interactions, community, and transparency? My next job is to learn more about these Goliaths and how they have grown to be so dominant in the Organic and Natural Foods Industry.

Hain Celestial Group Inc, now owning brands such as Westbrae Natural Pasta, Bearitos Tortilla Chips, Casbah Rice Pilaf, Health Valley Cookies, Hain Pure Foods Sugar, Mountain Sun Juice, Spectrum Organics Oil, and Earth’s Best Baby Food, to name a few, has not always been so large. In fact, the Hain Celestial group began when a man named Irwin Simon founded Kineret Foods, a kosher frozen-foods company, in 1993. His claim to fame was ‘better for you’ foods and he began a number of acquisitions, starting with Hain Pure Foods in 1994. Since then he has continued with purchases of Estee, Alba, Westbrae, Shansby Group (Arrowhead Mills, Terra Chips, Garden of Eatin’), Natural Nutrition Group (Health Valley, Casbah), Earth’s Best, and many more that are all so familiar sounding. In 2002, it purchased Imagine Foods, which has a strong presence in the North American and European markets for non-dairy beverages. In 2003, it purchased Acirca and also the Walnut Acres brand. All of this acquisitioning has led Hain Celestial to reach annual revenues of well over $400 million and is the largest natural and organics food processor in the WORLD. Hain’s partnership with Heinz, which owns approximately 19% of the company, has given the company even more global reach for some of its products, such as Earth’s Best, which has a huge presence in organic baby food brands, as seen in many natural foods stores.

Small Planet Foods, Inc, although not quite as large as Hain Celestial, also has a very interesting history of development and Michael Pollan has done some good investigating with the man who made started it alI. Beginning WAY back in 1971(I bet that makes you feel your age), when Gene Kahn was 24 years old and decided he wanted to start a farm in Rockport, WA, with the idea of growing food for the collective of environmental minded hippies he had connected with in nearby Bellingham. After reading “Silent Spring” and “Diet for a Small Planet”, Kahn decided to move back to the land and was determined to change the food system with the creation of Cascadian Farm. Kahn became one of the pioneers of the organic food movement and developed a more efficient way of selling his produce. He would distribute the produce grown at his farm through something called a Cooperating Community, a network of Seattle businesses committed to ecological principles and worker self-management, which later changed to the name Community Produce. Kahn also discovered the benefits of adding value to his produce by processing it (freezing, drying, canning), and after some time realized he could make more money buying his produce from other farmers rather than growing it himself. Cascadian Farm then began processing and marketing a range of packaged foods well beyond the Seattle area. In the 1990’s, the organic industry began to boom, with mainstream companies beginning to create or acquire organic brands. At this time, Cascadian Farm itself became a mini-conglomerate, acquiring Muir Glen, the California organic tomato processors, and the combined company changed its name to Small Planet Foods. Also, in 1990, Congress passed the Organic Food Production Act. This legislation instructed the Department of Agriculture to establish uniform national standards for organic food and farming. Yet while the struggle with agribusiness over the meaning of the word “organic” was making headlines, another, equally important struggle was under way at the U.S.D.A. between Big and Little Organic, outlining many of the questions I asked after my discovery of these Big Organic Giants.

Could a factory farm be organic? Was an organic cow entitled to dine on pasture? Did food additives and synthetic chemicals have a place in organic processed food?

In the 1990’s, Big Organic won all three of these arguments. So Kahn carried on, setting the standards straight for organic TV dinners, arguing that you couldn’t have organic processed foods without synthetics. It came down to an argument between the old movement and the new industry, and the new industry won: drawing up a “national list” of permissible additives and synthetics, from ascorbic acid to xanthan gum. Yum, Yum! This opened the door for a new niche of organic products: organic Heinz ketchup, organic Hamburger Helper, organic Miracle Whip and yes, it has been done, the organic Twinkie! After this roller-coaster ride organic has been on over the last few decades, Cascadian Farm has recently become a subsidiary of General Mills, the third biggest food conglomerate in North America.

The question remains, why should we be worried about the organic food industry? Well, in the beginning, organic agriculture developed in a small-scale niche market with open structure. The markets were local & regional and farmers had access to wholesale & retail buyers that paid a fair price. This traditional approach allowed new and small companies access to the best markets. However, today’s organic marketplace is in a large industry sector. This industrial perspective takes the opportunity for investment in rapidly growing niche markets with little competition, giving their brands dominance. Is concentration a necessary cost of growth for the organic market? Concentration in the traditional food industry created giant corporations with enormous buying power that led to the ability of setting prices, limiting farmers’ return, and control of market access. Already we can see this happening in today’s organic marketplace with Hain Celestial gobbling up smaller companies and decreasing competition so that almost every item on the coop shelves come from a select few corporations and distributers.

 Concentration has many other negative impacts such as reduced innovation, less responsiveness to consumer and social interests, fewer decision makers in the industry, and the loss of genetic diversity. Cascadian Farm’s original farm is now a General Mill’s showcase-a P.R. farm. The real food production takes place elsewhere, at places like Greenways Organic Farm, a successful 2,000-acre organic-produce operation tucked into a 24,000-acre conventional farm outside Fresno, CA. Usually when you think about organic farms, images of small-scale farms, compost piles, pick-up trucks and hedgerows come to mind. However, at Greenways Organic Farm the scene is much different, where migrant laborers, combines, and thousands of acres of broccoli reach clear to the horizon. To the eye, these farms look exactly like any other industrial farm in California, and in fact the biggest organic operations in the state today are owned and operated by conventional mega-farms. The same farmer who is applying toxic fumigants to sterilize the soil in one field is in the next field applying compost to nurture the soil’s natural fertility. Like any other traditional monoculture farm, the endless rows of broccoli leave no room for other diversified plant life.

Do not let Big Organic scare you completely away just because in some cases the organic food that we purchase is grown on 2,000 acre farms next to pesticide-ridden industrial ag. crops, then shipped from California all around the U.S. Just realize that many fruits and vegetables can easily be easily grown ‘organically’, maybe not certified, in our very own state or backyard. Earth’s Best baby food can have squash and water as it’s only two ingredients, so what we need is to develop more local processing for foods that are easily adapted to our micro-climates and networking to connect those farmers, consumers, and retailers who support fair trade practices. Imagine harvesting your own butternut squash, making it into baby food, and canning it to last throughout the whole winter! This is what us concerned shoppers should take into account more, because simply picking up a can of Organic Tomato Soup is not always your cheapest, easiest, or most socially & environmentally conscious option.

Now is the time to reach back into the depths of your brain and remember what your parents and grandparents taught you growing up. They were on to something when they trapped you in the kitchen for days forcing you to help make jams, can applesauce, and pickle green beans.

Maybe what we are seeing is a shift of traditional industrial agriculture becoming all Big Organic, and then smaller sects of local and regional small-scale farms will adopt the intentions that the organic movement held in its beginning.

We cannot escape the fact that many Little Organic companies will meld into the growing Big Organic sector, but not all of them. Cascadian Farm is just one example of Little Organic growing into Big Organic. Clif Bars, on the other hand, have stayed independent and we will take a closer look at them and other independent organic processors next time in “What Lurks Behind the Label, Pt III”.