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by Derek Reiber
PORTLAND -- For Brian Rohter, president of New Seasons Markets, which will have four stores operating in the Portland area by year's end, he's banking that as customers learn more, they will only become more aware and thoughtful about their purchases, at least when it comes to food.
"We've been successful because people have a thirst for locally grown, organic produce," he said. "But you have to make an effort to reach out to the 'potential' customers, beyond the 'true believers.' And marketing is key to that outreach. We're in effect creating demand for locally grown foods by educating our customers about the advantages of choosing local."
Rohter's stores regularly run full-page newspaper ads touting the environmental advantages to buying locally grown foods, but also carry products found in mainstream grocery stores, with comparative pricing, to encourage consumers to make the transition toward local and more healthy foods.
But New Seasons faces an increasingly competitive market, and one that is consolidating at an unprecedented rate. Rohter noted that supermarket ownership is falling into the hands of fewer companies nationwide, and that ten cents out of each dollar spent on food in the US goes to one company -- cigarette-maker Phillip Morris, which also owns a host of food companies.
Greg Higgins, a Portland restaurateur and member of Chef's Collaborative, a nationwide network of chefs and restaurateurs who promote sustainable cuisine, points out that the marketing forces marshaled by such powerful companies has made Americans believe they should be able to have any type of food they want at any time during the season.
"We really need to come to grips with the over-marketing that's out there," he said. "We should celebrate the foods that are there during the seasons, instead of what isn't there. If it's out of season, the demand shouldn't be there."
Both Rohter and Higgins contend that the real victims of this unprecedented consolidation in food production and distribution are small farmers, whose share of the food retail dollar ends up below their costs of production. These farmers -- forced to opt for going out of business -- has larger effects -- the fabric of small, rural farming communities is negatively impacted.
From the farmer's perspective, Bob Gregson, a longtime farmer and member of the King County Agriculture Commission, said a staggeringly large opportunity is being lost, and the culprit is the export-centric nature of food production in the Northwest region. The 'opportunity' is food consumption in the region, tallied at $12 billion for Washington alone, and based on US Department of Agriculture figures that the average person spends $2,700 per year on food.
"We have a monster market sitting all around us, and no one is addressing it," he said. "Why fight the international market and export our foods? We need to bring local agriculture into the economic development outlook."
According to Scott Exo of the Portland-based Food Alliance, community-based food systems work on exactly that, a community level. However, the reality of the food industry and its distribution makes expanding to a broader regional approach difficult.
"We're trying to deal with the agriculture industry as it presently exists. And in that context, we can't emphasize a local or regional food system," Exo said. "The industry just isn't set up that way and it won't work that way. For example, one grower in Hood Country can grow enough pears for the whole state of Oregon, and that's just one grower."
Exo and the Food Alliance concentrate on growers showing continual improvement in meeting specific environmental standards, as well as social and labor standards. Such a broad view also means that only about one-quarter of the nearly 50 farms approved by the organization are organic, which raises the concerns of some in the organic grower community.
"Organic is acknowledged as a good system for pesticide control," he said. "But we endorse a broader view than just organic. Improvement in the environment is our final goal."
The Food Alliance focuses on the marketing side, with a collection of 35 stores signed on to carry produce with the organization's label. But the confusion that may arise in consumers who see the Food Alliance label -- as well as the myriad of other food labels, including organic -- may be confused about what substance is behind the label. And that's where Exo believes the eco-labeling movement has failed.
"Getting consumers the message clearly and easily has broken down in many respects," he said.
And when it gets down to it, that's the conundrum facing eco-certification labels. With a growing demand among consumers for 'environmentally friendly' goods and an increasingly desire by business to appear 'green,' it's going to be up to the customer to sort through the maze of eco-labels, do the research, and make the informed choice.
"The evolution of fraud in eco-labeling, which can in turn spawn more government involvement, can raise the cost of the end product because of increased levels of bureaucracy," said Mark Ritchie, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. "The only mechanism that we have is social response. It's going to take everyone listening and trying to figure out solutions that will work for everyone. It's not going to be easy -- after all, we're all still infants in the process, and we've got a ways to go."
http://www.tidepool.org/features/osf.cfm
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