The author of the highly readable Organic, Inc. --- Natural Foods and How They Grew ( Harcourt, Inc., $25, ) begins his book as a customer, wowed by the seductive offerings of Whole Foods, and drawn to the fresh locally-grown produce of farmers' markets. Samuel Fromartz, a business writer, sets out to discover why he and other consumers buy organic foods. In the course of his odyssey he meets most of the big players in this complex business, as well as several small growers and many others involved in organic food.
His first chapter, Humus Worshippers, reveals a 1998 study done by the University of Washington's Chensheng Lu of children in the Seattle area , testing their urine for levels of pesticide residue. He found them in hundreds of 2-5 year-olds. But one child of the study had none. He lived in a family that exclusively ate organically grown food.
Many people have chosen to go with organic for that reason alone--but consumers have other reasons---better support for the environment and sustainability, positive health benefits, economic support of local growers and so on.
Astonishingly, we live in an era in America when only 1% of the population farms, down from 25% in 1940. Fromartz profiles the 30 year efforts of the Crawford family's New Morning Farm in central Pennsylvania. New Morning exemplifies the successful small farm protoype--it is organic, independent, and "local," and also very clever in the way it markets its fares outside traditional outlets.
Fromartz also looks deeply into the doings of giant organic firms like California's Earthbound Farms, and Colorado's Horizon Organic and tofu-based White Wave, both now owned by Dean Foods.
While organic farmers and the US government have reached an agreement as to what constitutes "organic growing," they have wrestled long, hard, and not terribly successfully with what makes a finished product "organic." Fromartz moves through this complex, would be-acronym-littered--NODPA, NOFA, NOSB--field as well as anyone could.
In the end, the author decides that consumers of organic foods and products are in a way conflicted, spending top dollar for items an individual thinks matters lost, such as organic milk for children, and staying mainstream with say, canned baked beans. And dabbling in gardening.
Read this book.
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