Travel the organic food circuit and through its history in Samuel Fromartz's book, Organic, INC. Natural Foods and How They Grew. It's a smooth, easy-reading narrative peppered with the key events, science and politics that define the organic food "industry" or as some would prefer "movement".
Fromartz chronicles his experiences with a few of the pioneers of the organic food market. Meet the central figure in the creation of California's organic strawberry industry. Then, travel to Pennsylvania and Washington D.C. to encounter a couple who have become the largest organic produce sellers in the nation and are propelling the nation's regionally produced organic food movement. Learn about the soy milk guru who created the largest packaged organic food brand.
Along these journeys, we learn some amazing and some more horrifying facts about the food we eat. For example, "Strawberries rank second after apples in fresh fruit sales to Americans". Or "the one child out of the hundreds studied who didn't have pesticide residue in his body was from a family that ate organic food almost exclusively." Brace yourself, "Sixty percent of municipal sewage sludge is spread on conventional farm fields". And "Chemicals are up to ten times more toxic in the developing bodies of infants and children than adults." Fromartz stitches it all together so well that it is as enjoyable as it is informative. And if you're the type who has to know more, see the "notes" section at the end of the book where Fromartz clearly cites his sources. Watch your "Books To Read" list triple overnight.
As unifying as this may sound, this book illuminates the conflict within the organic food industry; stay small and adhere to the ideals of organic growing or go commercial but make organic natural foods a more powerful competitor in the world food market. No matter which side of the fence you end up on, you'll certainly think carefully about your food choices after reading Organic, INC: Natural Foods and How They Grew.
Who would have thought that a natural food supermarket could have been a financial refuge from the dot-com bust? But it had. Sales of organic food had shot up about 20 percent per year since 1990, reaching $11 billion by 2003 . . . Whole Foods managed to sidestep that fray by focusing on, well, people like me.
Organic food has become a juggernaut in an otherwise sluggish food industry, growing at 20 percent a year as products like organic ketchup and corn chips vie for shelf space with conventional comestibles. But what is organic food? Is it really better for you? Where did it come from, and why are so many of us buying it?
Business writer Samuel Fromartz set out to get the story behind this surprising success after he noticed that his own food choices were changing with the times. In Organic, Inc., Fromartz traces organic food back to its anti-industrial origins more than a century ago. Then he follows it forward again, casting a spotlight on the innovators who created an alternative way of producing food that took root and grew beyond their wildest expectations. In the process he captures how the industry came to risk betraying the very ideals that drove its success in a classically complex case of free-market triumph.
