Organic, Inc.
Natural Foods and How They
Grew
Samuel Fromartz; Harcourt:
294 pp., $25
By
Brett Levy
Times
Staff Writer
IN
the structured world of chemistry, "organic" simply means a compound
containing a carbon atom. In the messy world of food, the organic industry
regularly struggles with what the movement should mean.
Samuel
Fromartz captures this colorful food fight in "Organic, Inc." by
taking the reader through the now multibillion-dollar industry's history.
Rather than focus on hippies and food co-ops, Fromartz begins by following the
forgotten progenitors of this movement: the growers.
Gaining
steam as early as the 1930s, a few farmers shunned chemical pesticides in an
effort to return to basics and harvest only what the land could naturally
sustain. Later, other growers joined in the practice out of a disgust with the
heavy use of pesticides and concern that these chemicals could be unhealthy for
people and animals alike.
Additional
small farmers joined the movement when they realized that organic food could be
sold at a premium. Some of them even became true believers.
But
for the most part, agriculture in America, especially on the mega farms of
California, means bigger is better. This forced many organic farmers to expand
rapidly and behave more like large, conventional food companies.
Nothing
illustrates this better than organic bagged salad, which was introduced by
California farmers and Berkeley-area chefs trying to provide a tastier
alternative to ubiquitous iceberg lettuce. But as demand for bagged salad grew
nationally, smaller farmers were swallowed up or forced out of business by the
big players, both organic and non-organic.
Fromartz,
a freelance business journalist, provides equally interesting stories about the
origins of modern organic strawberries and breakfast cereals. Whereas the
bagged salad scenario has a kind of accidental quality in which the little guy
is run over, there is no happenstance in Fromartz's telling of conventional-food
behemoth Dean Foods taking over the nation's largest organic soy- and cow-milk
companies.
As
bigger and bigger companies jumped into the movement, spurred on by federal
organic criteria that standardized patchwork rules passed by states, other
growers have had to fight to keep the industry true to its original goals. The
purists won some major battles -- such as limiting the use of certain chemicals
in processing organic food -- but it is unclear whether they will be able to
hold out against industry players.
The
history of organic food is colorful, but these policy debates make this book
important. Fromartz makes it clear just how precarious this movement has been,
as regulators and advocates for the mainstream agricultural industry fight for
exceptions in organic rules and small farmers are endangered by shrinking
profit margins.
Fromartz
avoids descending into the bleak tones often found in recent books on the food
industry, such as "Diet for a Dead Planet," in which Christopher D.
Cook describes in gory detail how mad cow disease made its way to the U.S. and
how millions of gallons of animal waste is dumped into this nation's rivers and
lakes.
Despite
the perils facing the industry, the tone of "Organic, Inc." is much
more upbeat and optimistic. After all, organic has infiltrated the nation's
largest grocery chains, and farmers' markets continue to thrive. Organic, for
better and worse, has gone mainstream.
Brett Levy, a systems analyst at The Times, regularly writes about
health and nutrition at www.dadtalk.net.