With this decade`s consuming concerns about health, fitness and the environment, one might expect to find vast displays of irregularly shaped tomatoes and unwaxed cucumbers on supermarket shelves to satisfy a voracious consumer appetite for organically raised produce.
But because of the sluggish economy, the entrenchment of agribusiness, a lack of sophisticated marketing and other reasons, no organic food boom has occurred. Organically grown foods-raised without the use of chemical pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers and stabilizers-constitute less than 2 percent of total agricultural sales.
A telephone survey of health-conscious consumers by HealthFocus Inc., a marketing consulting firm, showed 51 percent never use any organic products, including produce, grains or processed foods.
Such figures are not necessarily disturbing to those in the industry who believe in a controlled, progressive growth. Over the past five years, interest has grown steadily on several levels, from the farmer and gardener, to the retailer and wholesaler, to the consumer.
The 1991 sales figures for organic foods were about $1.25 billion, a 25-percent increase over 1990, says Ken Mergentime, associate editor of Organic Times magazine, a trade publication that recently compiled the figures. In California, where the organic movement has one of its strongest footholds, the number of farmers engaged totally or partially in organic methods has grown from 400 to 1,200 over the past six years, says Bob Scowcroft, executive director of California Certified Organic Farmers.
The organic movement had a taste of oat bran-style mania in February 1989 when the National Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, literally scared the supermarket apples off the shelves with allegations that a growth regulator for apples called alar could cause cancer in children.
Spending on alternatives
The alar allegations, broadcast on CBS` ”60-Minutes,” caused an apple panic and focused public attention on organic foods as alternatives to conventionally cultivated items. It proved consumers would spend more for foods grown without artificial additives, organic experts say.
Supermarkets that previously had shunned organic produce as too expensive or not ”pretty” enough to interest shoppers pestered the few organic food brokers while produce department managers cleared space for organic sections among the lettuce, melons and peppers.
But the publicity fallout from the alar controversy wasn`t the boon to the fledgling organics movement that many anticipated. Small-time growers could not meet the sudden demand, and the few ill-prepared distributors could not provide a steady supply of organic produce to the mushrooming list of stores, even on a very small scale.
”The organic thing in large supermarkets never really happened,” says Albert Lusk, president of Albert`s Organics, a California- and Pennsylvania-based national distributor of organic foods. ”After alar everybody said the industry would explode, but it didn`t. There was way too much demand, prices were much too high. Supermarkets and consumers, to some degree, got fed up with it. It drove (organic) apple prices from 99 cents a pound to $2.99. We had our shot, but the demand was just too strong for the industry.”
But for a small but widespread portion of Americans, the movement remains alive and healthy.
”We started with an 8-foot fresh fruit and vegetable rack in 1986,”
says Kyra Walsh, co-owner with Karin Dittmar of the Green Earth, a natural foods store in Evanston that went 100 percent organic six years ago.
Educated consumers
”At first we didn`t need all the space, but by 1988 we were busting out of our seams. Now we`ve got a 28-foot cooler, and that`s bursting.
”We went out on a limb, but customers have been buying consistently,”
despite the fact that organically raised produce runs about twice as much as what you`d pick up in the Jewel or Dominick`s, she says. ”Of course we are small and we have limitations, but it seems the more we buy, the more customers will buy. People are more educated than they were six years ago.”
Similar sentiments are echoed by Lusk:
”When we got into organics in 1980, we didn`t anticipate we would grow beyond me driving the truck,” says Lusk. ”Now I have warehouses in Pennsylvania and California. There were a few 5,000-square-foot (natural foods) stores back then. Now there are 40,000-square-foot stores (such as the three Fresh Fields stores in the Washington, D.C., area. There also are the eight-store Mrs. Gooch`s natural foods chain in Southern California, Whole Foods markets in Houston and Austin, Tex., and Bread & Circus stores in the Boston area). I`m not tremendously surprised at what has happened,” he says. One proponent of the trend to organics is Michael McGrath, editor of Rodale Press` Organic Gardening magazine.
”When (Ralston) Purina started marketing dog food proclaiming that it`s ingredients are grown without pesticides, I knew our day had arrived,”
McGrath says. ”It strikes at the heart of the issue.
”Americans really care about their pets. We are their caretakers and we have to protect them. So when the world`s largest maker of animal foods is proud about the product being organic, it strikes home. It is a very emotional thing,” he says.
”It has been stated time and again that it is not the odds that mean anything when it comes to risk, it`s whether people have any control over that risk. Pesticides on foods are very high on the list-people do not feel they have control over them.”
Restaurant menus go organic
Another good market for organic produce, especially in large communities, is in restaurants, especially those restaurants that pride themselves on the quality and freshness of their products. In Chicago, Charlie Trotter`s, Gordon restaurant, Frontera Grill and others use organically grown products and often specify them on the menu, a trend that many believe eventually will make its way into America`s kitchens.
”Some (gardeners) have gone to restaurants,” says McGrath, ”then health food and gourmet stores, and then they started to grow. These growers are a success. The best chefs are thrilled to death. They`ll even pay to have their own people go out and harvest it.”
But for farmers such as Tom Ulick, who has been raising hundreds of kinds of organic produce near Barrington for almost 20 years, it has been a long struggle and one that is not ending.
”I don`t know if there`s any more consumer interest now than a few years ago. Go into the Jewel or Dominick`s and you`ll see that the organic section is still very small. Some health-food stores are good; some have substandard produce. If there were all this demand it would be bursting off the shelves.
”It`s funny that people are willing to pay thousands of dollars for medical care but not a few dollars for prevention.”
Meanwhile federal and state involvement has been sporadic and, some say, not supportive of organic farmers.
A hodgepodge of legislation over what is required for farms to be certified as organic operations varies widely from state to state. Under Illinois and federal regulations, to be certified organic a farmer has to be using soil that has been chemically free for at least three years and he has to adhere to a number of other standards.
”You have to keep a lot of records,” says Ulick, ”enough to make the IRS (requirements) look like child`s play. You have to keep track of input and outgo, every box. Each time somebody brings in a load of manure, it has to be recorded-from whom and where. I`m lucky if I have time to keep the weeds down. All that has no benefit to the consumer. … Of course, that record-keeping does not extend to brokers and storers.”
Becoming certified also costs money, about $1,000 for a farmer, Ulick explains.
”Why should an organic farmer have to pay? He should get a tax break.
”I`m fortunate. I don`t need certification. People buy from me because they know what I raise, and they know how I do it and they don`t care if I`m certified or not.
”Some organic farmers have gone out of business, some have come in, but there has not been a great increase in numbers (in Illinois). But if I work hard enough at it, I can make a business out of it.”
Connection to the earth
What about those other farmers, the majority, the ones who have not committed to organics?
”In general you have two classes of farmers,” Ulick explains. ”You have the farmers who are rural businessmen and look at everything in dollars and cents. Then there are others who still have a sense of connection to the earth. And even though they may be using chemicals, they are not comfortable with it. But they can`t afford to take risks. They would get off chemicals if they could.
”Realize that most of the (government) incentives don`t go to small farmers. But big farms don`t provide any better quality products or better prices.”
McGrath says that any pest problem can be solved by organic means. And he says the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences analyzed all available literature in 1990 and concluded that organic farming can grow almost the same amount of food for about the same ultimate cost. With one, the cost of chemicals is high, with the other, it is labor that is expensive.
”The big problem is a $25 billion to $35 billion (chemical manufacturing) industry that has its feet dug in the sand,” he says. ”To go organic, a farmer has to learn to be a farmer. When you just soak the ground with chemicals you`re not the world`s greatest horticulturist. . . . You have to learn how to avoid getting problems in the beginning.”
As tough as it is for the organic farmer, there is an equally great challenge for the movement in general: getting consumers to buy. Specialty stores like the Green Earth have a steady clientele to keep them going, but the cost is high.
Lusk says that ”if Dominick`s and Jewel wanted organic carrots, broccoli and lettuce and they committed to it, they probably could cut a deal that would be about 10 or 15 percent above the wholesale of non-organic items, which would make it 20 percent at retail.
”But consumers are not willing to go for that. Of the people who shop now at Dominick`s and Jewel, probably only 10 percent would even pay 10 or 15 percent more for organics when it actually came to buying. The others wouldn`t be convinced,” Lusk says.
Marketing style
Walsh and Dittmar say their business depends on service and trust.
”Our customers know our level of commitment,” says Walsh. ”In the long run education is the key. I can`t emphasize that enough. For larger stores, that`s going to be the critical line.”
But McGrath, ever the optimist, says, ”The only problem of selling organic produce is getting organic produce to consumers. Distribution.
”Part of it is our problem: When we first announced it several years ago we promised a field of dreams where the produce just marched off the farms and into the store. That`s sure not reality.
”Organic produce should be marketed just like other non-organic fruits and vegetables. Growers who find what their customer`s needs are don`t end up with a ton of rutabagas nobody wants.”
But for Ulick, the solution lies first with consumers. ”People have to be educated and know what they`re buying. Every time they buy they are voting, saying `It`s okay with me. Every time they buy some produce in the Jewel they are saying it`s okay to move our farming down to Mexico and exploit the third world, to make pesticides here and sell them there to be used on food that`s sent back here to eat.
”Consumers need to look at their lives and see what their children will inherit. Save a dime now and your children will have to pay back $10.”
