Amazon just bid nearly 14 billion to buy Wholefoods…
There is something about the organic & health food narrative that is increasingly starting to worry me. A couple of years ago you had to go to small often obscure shops for organic food, natural products and local produce, but recently we’ve started to see a lot of mainstream supermarkets jumping onto the bandwagon, introducing a dedicated spot in their shop to organic vegetables and fruit. A great evolution I thought at first. In Belgium a supermarket chain even decided to launch an organic version of their store. They now have 25 large stores and 80 pick-up points, in a country with about 11 million inhabitants this is huge. It sends out the right signal that more people want to make a more conscious choice when it comes to food. In the UK and US we’ve known Wholefoods for some time now but todays news that Wholefoods has been bought up by the big giant Amazon got me feeling more puzzled than excited…
I started to dawn on me that in one of those big superstores organic isle I spotted potatoes from Egypt and pears from Mexico…
I want everyone to eat organic so that more farmers can survive growing organic or biodynamic fruit and veg in a way the land is nourished instead of raped. I want people to eat far less meat but buy more ethically reared meat. Meat from animals reared in good conditions, outdoors on grass instead of concrete, it doesn’t even have to be organic (getting certified organic is very troublesome for animal farms in many countries), kindness in this case is good enough for me. We can no longer tolerate factory meat farms and need to go back to the ancient method of crop rotation.
Farms have to get a fair price for their product. The whole idea of buying organic is to support small scale businesses and also to cut out the big capitalist corporations with it. All those who make money from the little man without giving much back to society because big holdings like that often do not pay taxes, or little taxes in the countries where they sell their product. (See this New York Times article for more info) Buying organic is a direct protest against that big corporate giant that sells crop seeds that can not be – or are forbidden to be saved for the next planting season, a practice which has been the natural way of growing crops since the beginning of time. Don’t even get me started about the amount of bees that are dying because the chemical shit that is sprayed onto crops (see this Greenpeace article for more info)
Buying organic also means buying local because the organic philosophy and that of the environmental brigade is largely the same. I buy my meat either at Northfield Farm at Borough Market when I’m in London or my local meat farm where just like at Northfield Farm but in much smaller scale, animals are treated with respect. Potatoes, often these days of inferior quality, are best from another local farm in my area, they still come with an few millimeters of earth on them, which helps them to keep for longer. If I can’t make it to the farm, I buy organic spuds but recently I started to dawn on me that in one of those big superstores organic isle I spotted potatoes from Egypt and pears from Mexico… Why do we need organic potatoes from Egypt while we are surrounded by potato fields in this spud loving country?
Are the super stores looking for the cheapest option instead of the local again, even for their organic isle? Bypassing the small independent farmers who work the land we see around us?
There is a sign on the wall that organic means big business for the capitalist giants. Amazon buying up Wholefoods is just a confirmation of that fear I have. Again those organic, small scale and local businesses are basically owned by a big corporation that wants nothing more than to make a profit.
Now more than ever it is important to find local farms, to join a CSA (Community-supported agriculture), buy online straight from those small scale or organic brands that you love, or go to your small local organic shop or market, they could do with your support.
If you see organic potatoes from Egypt in your store, it is still better to buy non-organic potatoes which were grown in your country, or a neighbouring country.
And that brings me to my final point. Just before the announcement came that Amazon was to buy Wholefoods, that same company introduced a tool for your fridge with their Alexa technology. Read this article on “What Amazon’s Purchase of Whole Foods Really Means” in the New Yorker. Here in short it explains the technology
Last week, two days before announcing that it would be acquiring Whole Foods, Amazon released a short promotional video for a new product called the Dash Wand. The Wand is a candy-bar-size gizmo that costs twenty dollars. It sticks to your refrigerator with magnets and lets you order products by talking—it features Amazon’s voice assistant, Alexa—or by scanning barcodes. In the video, an affluent, middle-aged couple drift through their spotless kitchen, preparing for a dinner party. The woman peers into the fridge, where she discovers a bag of pre-peeled shrimp. She asks the Wand for a simple shrimp-pasta recipe, then orders ingredients for it, scanning the barcode of an empty jar of pasta sauce and proclaiming, “Mushrooms!” The next day, these items are delivered in a cooler bag.
Some might say handy, others might say the death of your small local shop or farm scheme. I for one enjoy going to my local organic shop and having a quick chat with the lovely lady who owns it. I love asking for advise on meat at the butchers, fish at the fishmongers, and on many occasions people in the shop have asked me about food when they saw me packing something they did not know but always wondered about. Just last week I explained to the lady at the till what she could do with pappadums. It’s brilliant. Human contact is essential to our society, a tool like that when fully incorporated into our lives will make us even more out of touch with the outside world. We can all stay inside, tell a computer to turn on the dishwasher, and to order all you need for a pasta carbonara… heaven forbid we might take the bicycle and drive to the shop for bacon, pasta and eggs… we might run into human being and actually have a conversation.
You might also like:
A short and eye-opening video by Riverford Farm: Pesticide-free farming is possible
On my own website:
I totally agree with you. Those big companies are only interested in profit and they aim is to destroy any concurrence and dictate what we buy (not leaving us the freedom of choosing where we buy the stuff and what we buy). This is why I boycott those big capitalist supermarkets…
Cheers,
Rosa
Exactly! At first I thought good that organic is going mainstream, but without rules in place for a fair price for farmers, this could lead to another strangling situation for producers.
Exactly! Most people think it’s a good thing that organic is going mainstream, but sadly it isn’t… All the contrary!
And having compared supermarket products with the “real” deal (bought from local producers or from my favorite organic food store), there is absolutely no comparison possible quality and taste-wise.
Free range eggs? Just because the label on your supermarket box says so, doesn’t mean it is what you might expect.
We keep around 60 free range hens. They all go out every day, even if it is only to cross to their covered area when it snows. They range over 5 acres and ‘retire’ when they no longer lay, tottering around for a month or two until they decide life is over. Most live about 5 to 6 years. We sell direct to customers, delivering to their doors.
On the next farm they have supermarket free range hens. 18,000 beards in a huge shed with openings along the side. They have 2 acres between them all to roam in …..if they are the lucky ones who have a space to stand in that is close enough to the opening to realise it is there. We have never seen more than 20 outside at one time. They come in to the unit in late summer and go off to become cheap chicken pies 50 weeks later. Factory farmed eggs and hens. Nothing free range about it. It is the price paid by livestock for human greed and wastefulness. All supermarket free range eggs are produced this way. It is sickening to see.
Exactly so! It’s the same in the meat industry. Outdoor bred and Outdoor reared do not both mean free-range but most shoppers think it does. I only buy organic eggs from the shop but do wonder very much about how these chickens live. I want everything to be closer to home, so you know where the eggs come from, so you can see the living conditions. I was a vegetarian most of my life until I moved out of the city and found a local family farm with pigs and cows.I see how they live. I can not order 2 kg of oxtail because that means having to slaughter an extra animal just for the tail, I have no problem having to wait a few months until I have saved up enough oxtail to cook for my family. It’s the natural way of things.
I could not agree more Regula. I always look at the organic produce in the supermarket with some suspicion. For some reason it just never feels really organic. I try and buy my meat (I tried being vegetarian but that didn’t work too well for me) from trusted local sources. It’s been a challenge finding it in my area but I usually buy chicken at koopeenkip.nl and know that it is sourced close to my home from a small organic farm.
Vegetables I also have to order online but I do that through a company that gets the produce from small farmers in the neighbourhood as well. They collect the goods and ship them directly to me.
I just do everything I can to avoid factory farmed meat as I just cannot live with the idea that I am eating an animal that was raised in that way.
But yes I also wonder what happens if the giants starts meddling in organic as well… I can’t be much good!
Totally with you on this. Nothing wrong with ordering food online if that gets you better food and a better price for the farmers. Glad I’m not the only one being suspicious when it comes to big corporations getting involved!
Yes, yes, yes. They move to organic to get more market shares! Those big comapnies are not interested in local communities or local farmers, what metter to them is profit… You can have organic eggs from caged hens! Are there no values contradictions here?
Inrecently wrote to Eco…er as they have launched a nee bottle made from 10% of recycled plastic coming from the oceans. They launched exclusively at Tes…o… Where does this supermarket chain promote local communities and care about the environment when all they do is killing small local shops everywhere the go???
Organic eggs from cages hens… I wonder what the coding system is on those. In Belgium it is 0 for organic, which also means there can be a max of 6 chicks per sq meter (which is not a lot of space!!), they have to have a rest and have to have access to outside grassy space where they have 4 sq meter a chicken of space.
So so true. My local greengrocer which sold so much local produce from nearby allotments just closed. How could it compete with 3 budget supermarkets within a 500m radius. And organic farm shops only have to have 60% (I think, don’t quote me!!) organic. Although non organic has to be labelled, forgetting to mention it’s non organic is also the norm. A great post xxx
More people have to want change. That is the reason those wonderful small local shops close down. People like the convenience of going to Tesco’s where they can get everything even after normal shop hours. I’ve often thought about my local farmshop if only they were open late one evening a week, it would bring so much more custom in. Not everyone can shop during the day. They have to want to make changes too and often they don’t want to and then they close down. It’s kinda the local shop has to compromise a little, and the people need to change how they look at their food shopping. Plus, I think it is always a good idea to inform shoppers why the food you sell in your small shop is more expensive, many people do not realise there is a difference in produce.
Also the costs is a big factor in choosing organic. Where I live (in Norway) the food is very expensive to start with, I want to buy organic food, but it’s just not doable when you have to pay almost the double ?