Everybody wants it. Certified Organic. As if they were going out of style, organic products are being piled into the carts and shopping bags of Americans in record numbers, and with good reason. Granted the resources, it is wonderful to be able to eat chemical —free food...for the health of the environment as well as our own.

The question is, now that organic agriculture has become a corporate interest, are organic foods necessarily more responsible choices?

The term “organic” has quickly become a term that the general public associates with positive farming behavior. As we should, we associate organic agriculture with an interest in health and sustainability that involves small-scale operations, well-treated workers, and environmental stewardship. When many of us picture an organic farm, we see a small family-run utopia with wildflowers dotting the landscape. Unfortunately, this image exemplifies a common misconception. The not-so-romantic reality is that farms of all sizes and value systems decide to become certified organic. Although the Southern Appalachians are fortunate to have many small, socially- and environmentally-responsible farms that go way above and beyond the certification standards for organic labeling, a lot of the organic products on grocery store shelves come from farms that do not exhibit the responsibility of the small farms in our area. Organic certification does not include worker treatment standards. Among organic growers and manufacturers, there is much diversity in social practice, however organic certification in no way indicates that workers (whether in field or factory) are treated appropriately with adequate wage, healthcare, time off, or living space.

Farming is the second most dangerous job in the U.S. after mining, yet farm workers in North Carolina are paid on average $6.14 per hour, a lower rate than thirty years ago. This statistic is low, but even lower in reality. Farm workers often work twelve to fourteen hours each day, but the wage of $6.14 per hour is calculated based on an eight-hour workday. Therefore, the many farm workers in North Carolina who work overtime are actually making $3.51 to $4.09 per hour.

The concerns go beyond low wages. According to a University of North Carolina study, of growers who provide housing to immigrant farm workers and agreed to water testing, 44 percent supplied houses that had contaminated water. North Carolina, along with seventeen other U.S. states, has no minimum age requirement for children who work in agriculture. These conditions are frequently present on large-scale organic farms.

According to a University of California study, thirty percent of organic producers in California disagree or strongly disagree that they should be required to pay their workers a living wage. Fifty-nine percent do not think they should not be required to provide health insurance. Sixty-seven percent of the respondents said that the proposed criteria would be an expense that would not be affordable for them.

The sad truth is that now that organic food has become a corporate interest, it takes little digging to find the dirt on the social irresponsibility behind the products that we love.

Imagine Foods, Rice Dream, Health Valley, Arrowhead Mills, Spectrum Naturals, and Celestial Seasonings, among other companies, are all owned by the Hain Celestial Group. The Hain Celestial Group prides itself on its mission to be “the leading manufacturer, marketer and seller of natural and organic food and personal care products.” Do you trust a company with annual net sales of $620 million to preserve the responsible values and practices of the small producers it buys up?

The organic juice company Odwalla Juice who says “Body by body, we’ve set out to nourish the world” is owned by the multi-billion dollar international corporation Coca-Cola. Is this company’s behavior (much less their soft-drink products) really nourishing the world?

One way that we can voice our standards for workers’ conditions is by buying locally-grown food. When our food travels through fewer hands, more of our food dollar goes to farmers and farm workers. When fewer distributors, packers, and shippers that are involved more money is invested in the well-being of workers, the viability of farms, and responsible business practices. Buying local food also allows us to ask the people who grew our food about their production practices. Being part of this direct interaction is a powerful way of supporting the practices that we value.

And when socially responsible products are more expensive, we must be willing, if able, to pay more for them. The average household in the US spends fourteen percent of their money on food. In Spain, the average family spends nineteen of their income on food. In Israel, the average household spends 22 percent of their money on food. In third world countries, the schism is even larger, with the average Tanzanian family spending 65 percent of their income on food. This puts the extra expense in perspective.

If we take a more holistic approach, we realize that industrially grown food costs us a lot more than the price tag on the grocery store shelf. In industrial production of all kinds, most prices do not reflect the true cost of production: the environmental cost and the social cost of the process. These externalities that harm communities, culture, and ecosystems may not be reflected in our grocery bill, but they negatively impact our societies nonetheless. As consumers, our buying power speaks loudly, so it is important that we start putting our money where our mouth is.

Sources:
- www.sarep.ucdavis.edu/newsltr/v17n1/sa-1.html
- www.corporganics.org/
- http://population.wri.org/pubs_photos.cfm?PubID=4073
- www.ncccusa.org/publicwitness/mtolive/conditions.html
- www.odwalla.com
- http://library.corporate-ir.net/library/87/870/87078/items/174257/
hain04.pdf (The Hain Celestial Group, Inc. 2005 Annual Report)

Ellie Thomas is an intern at the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project. She is currently in school for Environmental Studies and Sustainable Agriculture and can be reached at
vueltacatorce@yahoo.com.

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