Whole Foods listens

Great article in the SF Chronicle today on how Whole Foods is responding to criticisms raised in the Omnivore's Dilemma and the correspondence between the book's author, Michael Pollan, and Whole Foods' CEO, John Mackey. In addition to buying more from local farmers, the article cites several other initiatives underway at Whole Foods:

--  Give $10 million a year in low-interest loans to help small, local farmers and producers of grass-fed and humanely raised meat, poultry and dairy animals.

--  Raise its standards of humane care for the animals who supply meat, eggs and dairy to the stores. Whole Foods has hired an "animal compassionate field buyer" to work with producers to ensure that they meet the standards.

--  Set up Sunday farmers' markets in the parking lots of some Whole Foods stores, including about 10 in Northern California.

I have a lot of respect for John Mackey and I'm glad to see these changes coming about as Whole Foods is uniquely positioned to positively influence the growing market and demand for organic, locally-grown, and humane food. This is definitely a good thing.

Comments

[Rory]

I also agree that this is a great step, however, I couldn't help but laugh out loud when I read the following sentence:

"Mackey defended Whole Foods policies of buying globally, saying it was important to support farmers around the world and also that he didn't want to dictate values -- such as buying locally -- to customers."

They don't seem to have a problem dictating values about foie gras and lobsters, but apparently they don't want to offend the many customers who "value" inferior produce that has a greater environmental impact.

[Alaina]

Good point. In one of his letters to Pollan, Mackey writes:

"Whole Foods Market intends to continue to buy quality natural and organic foods from around the world, because our customers want us to and because doing so helps support some of the poorest economies in the world. You may not have liked those organic asparagus from Argentina very much, but Argentina is not a wealthy country (ranking only #65 in GNI per capita at $3,720 versus $41,400 in the USA-source: The World Bank, 2004) and helping their farmers to sell organic foods is very beneficial to them. Do you not feel any ethical obligation to help poor people around the world? What better way to help them, than to be willing to buy their agricultural products? Argentina isn't able to sell us automobiles or jet planes or computers, but one thing they can sell us is organic asparagus. If we don't buy their organic asparagus then how are they going to be able to afford to buy iPods from Apple, computers from Dell, or books from Michael Pollan? (You aren't just restricting your books for sale only locally in Berkeley are you? Why not? After all, lot's of fossil fuel gets used distributing books across the U.S. and the world.)"

I think it's an interesting dilemma (dilemmas everywhere!) -- Whole Foods can impact food production and economies globally, but at an environmental expense. Is it an ethical wash? What makes more sense in the long term?

[Rory]

Yes, there certainly are dillemmas everywhere around these issues, I just thought it fascinating that suddenly Whole Foods is afraid to dictate values to people. I sort of thought that was their entire business model.

As for the "support poor economies" argument, should we let Nike use that argument when they want to use sweatshops in Malaysia? Somehow I don't think the real reason Whole Foods buys asparagus from Argentina is because it's a charitable way to support a burgeoning economy. Much more likely is that Argentinian asparagus costs 10% of what American asparagus costs.

All of this is part of the problem of taking a moral high-ground: you can't be ethical in every way all at once. It's simply impossible. You have to draw lines somewhere, but I think it's reasonable to expect Whole Foods to be upfront about where they are drawing the lines. If Whole Foods decides that local is important, then they should focus on truly being local (possibly at the expense of being organic, breadth of products, etc.) If they decide that humane is important (e.g. Foie Gras and Lobsters) then why do they still sell Horizon milk? They can't take on every issue in the food industry at once, but once they pick an issue to take a stance on, then they should commit to that stance across the board.

[Aaron Foster]

A few years before this book was released, I was interviewed as part of a profile by Fast Company Magazine of Whole Foods Market and John Mackey.

>

WFM's core values have been at odds with their tremendous growth for some time.

[Dibital]

The single easiest thing that Whole Foods could do to be friendler to the earth is reduce their packaging. They've carved out a huge niche with their prepared offerings, but all of them come with tons of plastic and cardboard.

As for the locally vs support the world discussion, it seems a bit ridiculous to me to ship bottled water and lettuce across oceans. I'm with Pollan on this one. There are other ways we can support global prosperity.