Local Food: How Wal-Mart Falls Short
Decatur Metro | October 15, 2010Ah, there’s nothing quite as invigorating as a real-world story that results in an ultimate clash of ideals.
If you’ve yet to hear, the world’s largest food retailer is now openly promising to put a good deal more “local food” on its store shelves in the coming years, reopening the debate about the role or place of large corporations in the “local food” movement.
If you’ve seen Food, Inc. or found yourself on the receiving end of a “what’s evil about Whole Foods” rant , you are probably already pretty well-versed in this dilemma, which pits the money that large businesses can inject into local and/or organic farms against the often foggy larger purpose of the local food movement.
In the New York Times article, Linda Berlin at UVT sums up the major issue thusly…
“The local-food movement has been, certainly, about taste and quality of food, about providing good incomes for farmers, and also about other things that have to do with building smaller economies so we as a society aren’t dominated by the more industrial complexes,” she said. “This initiative doesn’t necessarily address that.”
If you listen to environmentalist Bill McKibben in his “Deep Economy“, the local food movement originally grew out of a deflated organic movement that felt a loss of purpose when larger corporations jumped onto and exploited that successful bandwagon. Upon reflection by its 1970s founders, “organic” was too narrow – and reactionary honestly – a vision for what they were hoping to achieve.
“Local food” was seen as a way to tighten the qualities and mission of the movement, which, inadvertently or not, would make it less easily adaptable by larger corporations, who’s primary interest wasn’t in the local communities and relationships that were built around this most basic of human necessities, but the bottom-line.
However, like organic before it, local food’s current image in America has become vulnerable to being co-opted by major corporations, thanks to the natural fragmentation of the movement as it has gained in popularity across the continent.
Different contingents have all claimed local food as their own: health experts, urban planners, farmers, environmentalists, foodies. The widespread interest in “local food” certainly speaks to the movement’s power to reach into so many aspects of American life. However, that very same breadth is perhaps also local food’s Achilles Heel. Whenever someone focuses too closely on any one of these beneficial by-products of local food, they always seem to paint themselves into a corner, unable to justify why they believe it’s “better” or more specifically in this instance, why a local food effort by Wal-Mart is not such a great thing.
Of the interest groups mentioned in the first sentence of the previous paragraph, only the urban planners have a ready argument against Wal-Mart becoming the nation’s source for local food. (Car-dependent! Destroys small businesses! Etc!) Health experts and foodies especially might applaud the effort, since theoretically tastier and healthier food would soon be available to a larger segment of the general population. Farmer advocates and environmentalists would argue among themselves regarding on Wal-Mart’s impact, depending on how badly they believed today’s farmers needed greater financial support or how beneficial local food’s impact would be on the planet.
Hardly a position as solid and passionately protected as “revenue growth”.
However in my humble estimation, there is a way to avoid ALL of these contradictions and solidify the argument for local food. It involves elevating one of these much-discussed benefits of local food above all the others: community.
While community-building is often listed alongside health, environmental impact, taste, etc as an important benefit of local food – be it with result of a 36-hour Dinner Party with Michael Pollan or creating a local community garden – it often takes a backseat to the flashier, more tangible elements.
In our hyperactive, modern world of “the next big thing”, local community-building can appear a bit tired and stogy. There’s no big money to be made in connecting neighbors and servicing a town of a few thousand. And defining yourself as a community-builder (or lord help you “community organizer”) is confusing at best and often times people take you for some sort of political activist looking to brainwash your neighbors into a lovely version of group-think.
In spite of – or perhaps BECAUSE of – its non-flashy, basic principles, community is actually what the local food movement has always really been about at its core. It’s about taking food back to a time when it was harder to produce and more pleasurable to eat, and finding great value and reward in the communities that develop to support such an effort. Health and planetary benefits, along with supporting struggling local farmers, are all excellent BY-PRODUCTS of the movement that should be touted and reinforced. But that’s all they are. They cannot stand on their own.
Therefore, the only way to guarantee that the local food movement won’t ever lose its way in our big corporation world is to remember that community must come first.
Through these refocused glasses, another look at the aforementioned Wal-Mart announcement shows a promise that rings quite hollow in terms of advancing the core mission of local food and quickly reveals what it truly is: a large corporation looking for a new way to produce growth for shareholders. And little else.
There’s certainly nothing wrong with this in theory. I wouldn’t argue that Wal-Mart’s initiative is inherently “evil” or even “a wolf in sheep’s clothing”. It’s simply an alternative way of looking at and living in the world.
But woe is us, if we ever truly confuse the two.
Is this guys ‘sour grapes’ certified organic?
Ah yes, non-specific criticism couched in a clever statement. My favorite.
I don’t get your point. Why does selling the food at WMT have anything to do with how hard it is to produce or how pleasurable it is to eat? If I bought one Springer Mtn chicken from WMT and one from a farmers’ market, could anyone tell the difference when eating them?
Let’s also pause here to focus on what I think is a remarkable thing: the yearning for the days of yore when butter wasn;t churned by machines, but by hand, and fields were tilled by ox-drawn plows, etc. Seriously — this is a movement that seeks to make food harder to produce? Who really wants that?
As to whether WMT builds a “community” of the kind I think you are describing, I don’t see why not. It certainly supports the local organic farmer by giving him a ready, willing, able, and reliable customer. The farmer might prefer to have WMT come in and write a check for his whole crop onthe spot, as opposed to trying to sell it piecemeal to a scattered network of buyers.
Sure, WMT is going to bargain for low prices, but that’s what consumers would want any retailer to do, and it is not a bad thing. That is, unless by “community” you mean paying very high prices for produce. That would be a strange definition, I think, and one sure to erode the local food movement. Or, if not erode, at least to isolate it as a movement built upon the tastes of upper-income folks who can afford a $5 head of lettuce.
My argument is that WMT’s effort to take on local food may provide more people with local produce options, but it doesn’t do anything to create strong local communities, which I’m arguing is the true “core” of the movement. The “community” you described certainly isn’t local and doesn’t reward people with the friends and relationships you would find resulting from say a community garden.
Who really wants that? Most people probably don’t want your extreme example of a Sturbridge Village type existence, but putting a little more effort into our daily meals and spending a little less time on the couch (or in the office) is something more than a couple people desire.
The pressure of lower prices is a separate, but equally important issue. Living wages for farmers is an important juxtaposition to large-scale capitalism’s general treatment of farmers (get bigger or get out), and based on Wal-Mart’s past, I doubt they’ll be doing much to advance the “local” mantra that they have no problem touting in their stores. Because as we know, small profit margins can only be off-set by greater yields and we all know how that story ends once it gets rolling.
Local food can be cheap, especially if you’re willing to put in a little sweat of your own. You can volunteer at a community garden a few hours a week or grow lettuce in your backyard. No one drawn to it will be without options, as you seem to assert with your “isolate” comment.
I still don’t see why WMT disrupts this community vibe. Yes, it is a middle man between local farmer and local consumer. But so is Whole Foods. Does local food mean a neighbor has to make the food, distibute it and sell it?
And local food is cheap if you grow it yourself, sure, so long as you have a bunch of extra time to grow it. Even then, the time one spends in the garden is in no sense free. It has opportunity costs. Clothes are cheap if you make them yourself too, do you suggest that nitting our own sweaters is superior to buying them?
If the local food movement was just about gettng people off the couch, it would not be a food movement, would it? And of course, why does anyone need a movement designed to tell people how to use their time? If more than a few people want to grow their own food, no one is stopping them. The rest of us want to buy our food and spend more time doing things we like, as opposed to things we consider unnecessary chores. Telling folks to put more time into their meals is a bit high-handed, don; you think? Or is top-down management of people’s food choices where this is really heading, because it seems to me that’s exactly what th ultimate aim will be.
Ah, well I’m not actually arguing that Wal-Mart would disrupt the community vibe. I’m just attempting to decipher this particular criticism, which comes up every time the big retailers jump on an organic/local bandwagon.
And I don’t understand where you’re reading that I’m telling people what they should do. I’m just arguing a viable alternative. I’m just attempting to clarify the other options. Let the market or natural forces or whatever sort it out.
Every day we make the choice to either eat for less money and effort or whether to go talk to a farmer at a market, spend an hour prepping and then having a meal around the dinner table. Most of us don’t do either exclusively. It’s a choice, influenced by many factors both seen and unseen.
BTW… the reason you see local food rearing its composty head in Decatur, is because there’s a certain kind of person that doesn’t mind giving up some of the luxury of the modern world (three car garages, massive homes, etc) in exchange for a greater sense of community and all the benefits that come with it. (the neighborhood pub, sidewalk conversations, shorter commutes, etc) My argument is that at its core, that’s what local food is about. That’s where it all started. That was what got people excited.
And that’s why some people get all antsy whenever big business puts its fingers in this type of movement. It doesn’t WORK for them because there’s nothing in the WMT model which promotes local communities. In fact, the WMT model really has no choice but to destroy the local community model of valuing local relationships to actually work.
To perhaps put it a bit more simply, this is a conversation about large and small economies. I’m generally pegged as a pretty “liberal” fella on this site, but really what sits at the foundation of my thinking is that I believe the scales have been tilted too much in the favor of the multi-national corporations and federal government for far too long and that perhaps we need to start giving a bit more control back to our local communities (gov’t and business).
And a NATIONAL political party isn’t going to ever fit that bill. So I must turn to the locavores and New Urbanists.
Well, I will confess that I see in the local food movement the seeds of coercion. You haven’t said anything like that, so if I a have transposed that idea onto you, I’m in the wrong.
Personally, I love locally grown and aritsanal food. Any movement designed to persuade people that such food is tasty and healthy, and much corporate food is garbage, is a good one. So long as it remains a movement to convince and opposed to coerce. Although I don’t doubt there are many local foodies who won’t go that far, I think there are many who are quite willing to do so. I agree with Anthony Bourdain who said there is a whiff of the jackboot in the various local/slow food movements (or something to that effect).
I do disagree that anything’s been tilted in WMT’s favor here. They’re out competing for customers, just like Target, Whole Foods, the Dekalb Farmers Market, etc. It’s just that WMT has been remarkably successful. But note that even now, they can’t ignore consumer demands. WMT’s growth has slowed tremendously in the last 3 years (which, as a shareholder, I am pained to admit). Thus, they are seeking to open far smaller stores in urban areas, and to sell local food to people who want it and can afford it. Whatever people want to buy, WMT is going to sell. You and I will agree to disagree about whether that destroys communities.
Well, I would argue that the way a local food movement devolves into coercion is when we focus too much on the big picture and not enough time working on it in the aspects of our own communities. For example, few people in Decatur, regardless of how health-driven they were, would notice some Tyson chicken wrappers in someone’s trash, walk up to their door and start preaching the gospel of local food. That seems an insane idea. But in a national conversation, it’s pretty easy to get preachy. So, I guess what I’m saying is, the more these conversations are had on the local level the less coercion and preachiness you might hear. Dunno, just a thought.
I agree that Wal-Mart is good at what they do. My angst with Wal-Mart actually derives mainly with the Fed and not necessarily Wal-Mart. They’re just playing the game with the rules given to them – though at this point they’re probably MAKING a lot of rules as well – utilizing cheap energy, cheap overseas labor, etc. I do not expect them to be a beacon of hope in the world.
As for whether they destroy communities…yeah, I guess we’ll just have to disagree on that one.
DM, with all due respect, I think you’re working awfully hard to avoid giving WalMart any credit. Of course they’re primarily motivated by shareholder value, but if they do good along the way–finally–then that’s a good thing!
I disagree with two premises: that the local food movement is all about community (I think it’s about different things to different people), and that WMT promoting local food and supporting small and medium farms doesn’t contribute to community. Personally, I want to buy fresh food at affordable prices–I’m not interested in a relationship with whoever grows it and sells it to me. I do want that person to make a decent living at it. Having WMT become a dependable buyer of that produce, even if the margins are very narrow, is more likely to help small and medium growers thrive, than selling it in relatively tiny quantities to consumers at small outdoor markets. And if those growers thrive, then it’s good for the local economy and that’s good for the community. In any case, an increasing proportion of consumers are forced to spend as little as possible on food in order to keep utility bills paid and make the rent or mortgage payment. Buying food at nifty but expensive markets is a luxury for most people (as is boycotting WalMart and other large discounters). Getting more local products into WalMart not only improves the quality of choices for more people, but it will also help raise awareness about why such choices are important. Furthermore, the sustainability index that WMT is starting will almost certainly influence the market as a whole.
WMT is a very large gorilla that has wreaked several kinds of social havoc as it’s grown, but it’s not going away. IMO every time it heads in a direction that we can be glad about, then we should go ahead and be glad, and not agonize about the reasons.
As for the first premise you disagree with, I wasn’t trying to argue that everyone today who participates in the modern local food movement cares about the community aspects of it.
I was just stating that community is a key component of the original movement. And that if you think about the community aspects of the food movement first and all the other elements (health, livable wages, etc) as by-products of that, you get a sense why some folks get snippy when Wal-Mart or Whole Foods picks up the flag and markets themselves to appear as if they are operating as local communities without any of the negative side-effects (such as limited profits).
As for the assumption that Wal-Mart will somehow pay local farmers a livable wage without driving their profit margin through the floor, we’ll just have to wait and see. But I’m very skeptical. There’s no free lunch out there, and the way that Wal-Mart is able to offer their “Everyday Low Prices” is to pressure suppliers to reduce their prices.
I’m not sure how any small and medium size “local” farms can sustain themselves if this is how they will be treated. They’ll have to “get big or get out”, as has been the custom. The only way I can see it working is if they treat local food as a “loss leader” to get more people in the store to buy their clothes and other more profitable items. But they already pressure all the “regular” food suppliers now, even though they’re sorta “loss leaders” in their own right, since the profit margins are smaller than other items.
It’s much easier to stretch the meaning of “local”, than it is to figure out an economic model that sells local food at an “everyday low price”.
DM, I must have misunderstood your original assertion: “community is actually what the local food movement has always really been about at its core. It’s about taking food back to a time when it was harder to produce and more pleasurable to eat, and finding great value and reward in the communities that develop to support such an effort.” Otherwise, we must agree to disagree because I think the community-enhancing benefits are a side effect of the other efforts (planetary, nutritional, and economic). I think you’re conflating local food and slow food.
Anyhow, I think we’re starting from different places, when we’re thinking about the viability of the farms. I see the WMT initiative–which, according to the NYT article includes more than just buying the produce at rock-bottom prices, it also includes various measures to support and promote small and medium growers–as offering growers an alternative that is not presently available. And again, sometimes a steady, predictable demand, even at a lower profit margin, can be more sustaining to a small business than unpredictable spikes and dips with a bigger margin. Plus, where WMT goes, others typically follow, and that’s where I see more than a faint ray of hope here. I prefer to buy locally produced food, but I feel irresponsible paying an exorbitant price for it regardless of how nice a chat I can have with the grower at the market stand, when I’m struggling to pull together a mortgage payment and cover utility bills. Anyway, that’s not the model that is going to ultimately bring fresh, local food to the masses. On the other hand, WalMart getting on the bandwagon might help.
I encourage anyone who’s interested to take a look at the article in The Atlantic several months ago for a more detailed account of how WalMart is going about this new initiative (and the entertaining story of some blind taste-testing between WMT and Whole Foods products). http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/03/the-great-grocery-smackdown/7904/
Yeah, I think I went a little strong in that statement.
And if you look at it from a big economy, national perspective, I believe you’re right. Community is a by-product, while planetary, nutritional and economic are the real drivers and paths to peoples motivations and wallets. But if you listen to conversations within the local food/slow food movement, they’re currently struggling with a couple things: first, as exemplified in “The Town that Food Saved” is this small economy/large economy tension within the movement. And then within the large economy, they’re struggling with how local food defines itself when it’s been dissected into all these little interest groups in the marketplace.
All I’ve really been trying to say is that the source of all this tension, both between the large economy/small economy folks (think the Stonyfield example in Food, Inc.) and the lack of a collective voice at the national level is because in many of these examples the community aspects of local food have been abandoned in favor of large economy principles (cost, efficiency, economies of scale, etc). At the local level, all these elements are tied together and kept in balance thanks to community. So we shouldn’t be all that shocked that it’s now hard for a national movement to speak with one voice (i.e. Yay Wal-Mart! Boo Wal-Mart!)
Do you honestly think local growers, most of whom are committed to their farms and lifestyles, are going to sell to WalMart if it means the margins are so low they can’t sustain their businesses? I find that odd.
Farms fail like everything else. Even if a local grower is committed to his farm and lifestyle, he or she still might be having trouble making ends meet. Suddenly the options become, fold the business or start talking to Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart sounds like it will work to streamline delivery, and that’s how they will offer lower prices from local farmers. I can certainly see how this could work, but over the years, Wal-Mart is known for demanding lower and lower prices from suppliers. How a small farm can ever survive this is beyond me at this point.
I was reading what you said a different way- that the price pressure WM would put on the farmer would cause the failure.
“Suddenly the options become, fold the business or start talking to Wal-Mart.”
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I guess in localities where WMT is going in for the first time, they may well displace other buyers the farmers have depended on, and back them into that corner. But where they are simply bringing a commitment to local products into their existing stores, then I see it as adding a channel the growers didn’t have access to before. In the latter scenario, a farm that is surviving without WMT is unlikely to be driven extinct by it, and one that is struggling will have a new option.
Pressuring manufacturers and distributors to surrender their profit margins has indeed been a cornerstone of WMT’s biz model. But applying the same tactic to small farmers would be self-defeating. It’s not like WMT could turn to cheap offshore sources to fill their quota of local products. What I’m reading in these articles is that WMT plans to bring their distribution leverage to bear, to get local products onto shelves at reasonable prices (and, it’s reasonable to hope at this point, reasonable margins for the growers).
Channeling Thumper Rabbit verrry hard now….
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