Michael Pollen Eats Local Strawberries by YourEnchantedGardener Blog entry

Blog: Plant Your Dream!
by YourEnchantedGardener

Michael Pollen Eats Local Strawberries

Michael Pollen critized
Whole Foods Market in his book
"Omnivore's Dilemma" Last night
he tasted some locally grown
berries...from Joe the Farmer
that have been sold at WFM.

Date: 5/15/2007 3:02:55 PM ( 17 y ) ... viewed 2205 times

Michael Pollan, Best Selling author of "Omnivore's Dilemma"
a must read book, with Your Enchanted Gardener, May 16, 07
at the Public Forum of the Nutrition and Health Conference.

The Public Forum featured Andrew Weil, M.D., Michael Pollan,
David Wallinga, M.D., Daniel Imhoff, and M. Scott Johnson.

Dr. Wallinga has a powerful new project to get healthy food in hospitals.

Imhoff, a writer and researcher, on issues related to food, the environment,
and design, has a landmark new book called "Foodfight," The Citizen's Guide
to a Food and Farm Bill.

Johnson has extensive experience with food policy and the upcoming
Farm Bill and has lead a national investigation into the American
Farm Bureau Federation that resulted in a CBS 60 Minute expose on farming.
His farm related publications include co-authoring "Amber Wwaves of Gain:
How the Farm Bureau is Reaping Profits at the Expense of America's Family
Farmers, Taxpayers and the Environment."

The Powerful Public Forum was a Call to Action for a campaign
to influence the upcoming Farm Bill that needs to be renamed in our minds
as the Food and Farm Bill. The Bill comes up before congress this year
and influences Farm Subsidies. This year, the Organic Industry with
your support, aims to designate portions of that money to support
local agriculture and organic farmers.

Some on the panel called for "post Industrial Decentralized
Agriculture."

The Session was recorded by Richard Page and staff
of Conference Recording
and may be ordered here.

http://curezone.com/blogs/m.asp?f=92&i=2311

I will be reviewing the CD soon and is a must
have item for all concerned about healthy food and the policies that
determine the state of nutrition in our lives.

Dr. Weil, gave a powerful introduction pointing out that most doctors
received little over 30 minutes of nutrition education. He has set out to
remedy this condition with his Nutrition and Health Conferences.

This 4th Annual event was sponsored by The University of Arizona program in Integrative Medicine, The University of Arizona Health Sciences Center, and the
Rosenthal Center of the Columbina University College of Physicians and
Surgeons

____

1:00 PM
May 15, 07

Michael Pollen, author of "Omnivore's Dilemma" criticizes
Whole Foods Market in his book.

John Mackey of Whole Foods Market wrote an open letter on his Blog
to Michael Pollen on the Whole Foods Market Website.

Part of the letter is excepted below.
For the full letter go here:

http://www.wholefoods.com/blogs/jm/archives/2006/05/an_open_letter_1.html

This is a photo of the Demo I did in Whole Foods Market Hillcrest
April 29. 11 baskets of locally grown fresh picked that morning strawberries
were sold. Many samples were given as well. My sucesses in the 06 season
were greater, and I am committed that our local Whole Foods Market Hillcrest
will not only be part of the largest natural food chain in America,
but offer its customers the freshest berries sold in America.

I put in five Sundays doing this in '06, and the move lead
to Joe Rodriguez Jr foods being carried in our local store.

It takes a great effort
for all aspects of Whole Foods Market working together to make the sale
of locally grown fresh picked that day berries possible. Management
and marketing have given me excellent support. More coordination is needed with
Receiving. The Rodrigues Berries have a shelf life of less than 24 hours.
This asks great cooperation, extra work, and consumer education,
so the customers know the berries are in the store.

I promise to continue working on this Ripe Berry Project through the support
of my Enchanted Garden Sponsors and Well Wishes from Whole Foods Market.
They want their support for Local Foods to expand and succeed.

I have been invited by Whole Foods Market Hillcrest's Dave Sanders, the store
team leader, to create a mini Farmers' Market.

Success has been possible with many local grown products at Whole Foods Market
Hillcrest, especially with foods that
have a longer shelf life. Some of these include produce from Joe Rodriguez,
Jr of JR Organics. one of the primary local growers whose produce I
want to see succeed in Whole Foods Market Hillcrest.

With Whole Foods Market support, Joe and I are launching a campaign
for the Rodriguez Ranch Buy Back. More than 100 acres, that Joe once owned
and now leases, are at the center of the campaign.

Local grown avocados and grapefruit from Noel Stehly were also featured
at my demo April 29. Whole Food Market Hillcrest
features these on a regular basis
in their local foods produce section.

A very successful Bus tour of Stehly organic farm, Bella Vado's premium avocado oil plant, and Tierra Miguel CSA's farm was organized by Whole Foods Market Hillcrest
May 5. More than 30 attended including Your Enchanted Gardener. (Photos will be
forthcoming this week.)

Whole Foods Market is to be commended for their
extraordinary effort to support locally grown foods.

The regional office--Michael Besancon, President,
Marci Frumkin, Regional Marketing director,
supported and paid for a full page ad in the San Diego Earth Times for the project I did to alert the public that local organic foods were available at Whole Foods
Market Hillcrest.

These are my Seed Dreams for Today:

Photo with Michael Pollen who will be given
Eating Local Strawberries
as were sold a few times this season at
Whole Foods Market Hillcrest....

I would like more support from Whole Foods Market
Hillcrest for our berries--

From the story by John Mackey of Whole Foods Market
on their website:

Local Procurement

In other parts of the country, we sell a tremendous amount of locally-grown food, working with thousands of local producers. For example, in 2005 in the produce category alone, 45% of our suppliers were considered to be local (within 200 miles) and 34% were regional (within 400 miles) —only 21% would fall into your category of "Big Organic" national producers. Of our top 150 suppliers/brokers in the produce category, 22% of our purchases are from large corporate farms and 78% are from independent and family farms (some of these smaller farms pool together under one brand name to help improve marketing and distribution). 60% of these 150 suppliers grow organically, and/or represent growers who do so. Economies of scale are important at all levels of the organic food chain in order to lower costs and improve distribution.

As a decentralized company with 11 operational regions and 8 distribution centers, Whole Foods Market is highly unusual when compared to the average "industrial" operation. Regional distribution helps suppliers gain access to all stores within the region, a benefit to their bottom line that otherwise would not occur in a conventional grocery operation. Whole Foods Market continues to build distribution centers, which increases our ability to support regional and local production. Our individual stores are not prohibited from purchasing from local farmers, and, in fact, all of our 184 stores purchase regularly from local growers. Many growers, likely the ones you profiled as "missing in action" at the Berkeley store, are probably using our distribution center on their own volition to take advantage of distribution economies of scale. As a result, the growers spend less time on the road, and place their product in front of a much larger customer base.

Continuing on the theme of seasonality and distribution, the local grass-fed beef sold in the Union Square Farmers Market that you have publicly championed is fresh for a very limited time during the year and would need to be sold frozen for the majority of the year, if sufficient supplies were actually available to meet demand. Whole Foods Market does sell locally-raised meat whenever possible, however most of our customers want their grass-fed meat fresh, rather than frozen, and they want it year round. We can source an abundance of fresh meat from New Zealand, which, with its moderate climate, has an abundance of good pasture throughout the year. Although Whole Foods Market would like to sell local grass-fed beef regularly, another challenge is that a small producer typically needs to sell the whole animal, which leaves Whole Foods Market with the cuts our customers will not buy. Our farmers in New Zealand have different markets around the world that absorb the cuts our customers will not purchase. The farmers in New Zealand can move the beef more quickly, selling Whole Foods Market the cuts that our customers prefer and selling the other cuts to customers elsewhere. We do try to make it work whenever we can, such as with a local organic beef farmer from Southern Vermont who sells to our three stores in New York City. With a great deal of effort, Whole Foods has figured out how to market this producer's entire animal. The popular cuts like rib eyes and strip loins get sold as premium product, while the end cuts get made into hamburger and stew meat for our prepared foods section.

Whether local, national, or global, any meat producer we buy from must adhere to our strict vendor standards and criteria. Whole Foods Market has the highest natural meat standards in the industry, and we are spearheading the development of national Animal Compassionate Standards (which several European countries have in place, but which are lacking in the U.S.). In addition, Whole Foods Market provides educational support for producers through our non-profit Animal Compassion Foundation. As a side note, you may be interested to know that many of our meat producers do not finish off their animals with corn. They are grass-fed until the end.

Here are additional examples of how Whole Foods Market supports local growers and producers:

* In our South Region, consisting of Georgia and the Carolinas, we set up a mini co-op to consolidate product from local vendors. Whole Foods Market also provided a market for the row crops produced by former tobacco growers (who were part of a government project to grow alternative crops instead of tobacco).

* In the still-recovering New Orleans market, local shrimpers rely heavily on the two Whole Foods Markets to buy their catch.

* In New England, Whole Foods Market works with many small farms that supply a single store, several stores, or many stores through our distribution center. Some specific examples are:

o Our Hadley store in western Massachusetts sits in the Connecticut River Valley amid many small farms, and has authority to buy from local producers. During the season, Hadley buys local produce from over 25 small local farms.

o Whole Foods Market stores in eastern Massachusetts are encouraged to source from local growers; this results in many stores having their own individual growers from the local community.

o In the Tri-State area of New York, customers define "local" in a very narrow geographical area. Customers in northern New Jersey do not consider product from Connecticut or Long Island "local," even though the farms might be geographically closer to them than farms in southern New Jersey. Our customers in Jersey want Jersey produce in season. Whole Foods Market developed a complicated system that distributes Jersey produce to the Jersey stores, Long Island produce to our two Long Island stores, upstate New York produce to our NYC stores and Connecticut produce to our Connecticut stores.

* Our flagship store in Austin supports local growers and encourages in-store product demonstrations and samplings. Our local Texas growers, like the Goodwins from Buda, Carol Ann and Larry from Boggy Creek Farm in Austin, and the folks from Bella Verdi farms in Dripping Springs, are frequent guests at the store. Whole Foods Market and these growers see our businesses as a part of each other's on-going success.

In addition, Whole Foods Market works with local food artisans on a market by market basis. Scratch bakers and dessert makers, tortilla producers and fresh salsa crafters, hummus experts and falafel sandwich purveyors, gourmet dog biscuit peddlers and handmade jewelry artists all have shelf-space. Products offered at Whole Foods Market vary store by store, thus supporting the local producers in each market. We most decidedly do not have a cookie cutter model for our stores, other than our model for celebrating local foods and producers.

On-going Support for Organic Agriculture:

Whole Foods Market was a pioneer in the organic arena, we did not wait to "get on board" with organic until its health and environmental benefits were corroborated by science and economic analysis. Whole Foods Market has supported organic agriculture from our earliest days in Austin, Texas. We actively sought out sources of organic produce and food since 1978 and continued this practice as we grew. Did you realize that Whole Foods Market was the sole retailer representative on the federal National Organic Standards Board for five years? And that we continue attending National Organic Standards Board meetings and maintain a close watch on the issues to ensure the ongoing integrity of organic standards. Whole Foods Market led the consumer response against the USDA's draft National Organic Standards that included provisions for genetically modified food crops, the use of human sludge as fertilizer, and irradiation of food products.

Whole Foods Market chaired the Organic Aquaculture Feasibility Task Force in 2001 to explore whether organic standards could be created for aquaculture while still maintaining organic livestock standards and principles. The task force suggested it was possible but would take a lot of work to achieve. Unlike many other retailers, Whole Foods Market will not allow either wild or farmed fish sold in our stores to be labeled as organic since neither has a national organic standard currently in place.

Whole Foods also led the citizen outcry at the potential diminishment of organic livestock feeding standards. The Congressional newspaper Roll Call noted that Whole Foods Market's efforts alerted legislators and consumers, resulting in an overwhelming amount of direct consumer feedback to individual legislators. Whole Foods Market took the lead on this issue rather than waiting for the organic community to develop an action plan because of an extremely short timeline.

Whole Foods Market was the first national grocery retail chain to be certified as organic. While not required by law, we felt this certification would underscore our commitment to organic and would provide assurance to our customers that even as the company expands, our commitment to organic is as strong as ever.

Helping Convert More Agricultural Land to Organic

The most important story about the rise of organic agriculture is the reduction of the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, many of them petroleum based, and/or produced and distributed with huge energy inputs. Beyond this impressive reduction in the use of pesticides, many of the agricultural practices developed within the organic community have spread out into conventional agriculture with tremendous beneficial impacts. Some of the more significant impacts include:

* The use of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) in the strawberry industry, the use of border plantings and cover crops to protect water ways and improve soil tilth, and the development of insectaries for producing beneficial insects improve the quality of the food we eat while protecting the environment.

* Acres of land in California treated with cancer causing synthetic materials: 1989 = 5.2 million, 2004 = 3.8 million – 28.8% reduction, with similar acres in production

* Pounds of pesticides known to cause cancer applied in California: 1989 = 181 million, 2004 = 175 million - 3.3% reduction (unfortunately the positive story is in specific counties and on specific commodities)

* Acres of land in California treated with reproductive disrupting synthetic materials: 1989 = 4.5 million, 2004 = 2.3 million – 49% reduction

* Pounds of pesticides known to cause reproductive disruption applied in California: 1989 = 36 million, 2004 = 24.12 million – 33% reduction

* Pounds of registered pesticides applied to Strawberries in Monterey County: 1985 = 10.5 million, 2004 = 3 million – 71% reduction

* Pounds of registered pesticides applied to Artichokes in Monterey County: 1985 = 162,908, 2004 = 62,567 – 61.5% reduction

* Pounds of bio-pesticides with little environmental toxicity applied in Monterey County: 1984 = 1,037, 2004 = 7,000 – 575% increase

Your book implies that some large-scale organic farming is harmful to the soil and environment. Your farm visit to Greenways may have misled you into making gross assumptions about other organic operations. The implication that some large-scale organic farming practices release harmful nitrogen into the atmosphere is curious when it is not even clear that Greenway's practices produce harmful nitrogen emissions.

Soil with healthy organic matter converts excess nitrates into dinitron (N2). N2 is an inert nitrogen gas that does not add to the Greenhouse Effect, and generally perpetrates much less environmental harm than nitrates. Stanford University's Department of Biological Sciences released a paper in March of this year entitled "Reduced Nitrate Leaching and Enhanced Denitrifier Activity and Efficiency in Organically Fertilized Soils," that reported organic and integrated fertilization practices support more active and efficient denitrifier microbial communities, which may shift some of the potential nitrate leaching losses in the soil into harmless dinitrogen gas losses in the atmosphere." Granted you did not have access to this information while you were writing, however, similar research findings are available.