Michelle Obama & Walmart - faking "organic"

In the Spring of 2009, Michelle Obama worked on creating an organic garden with students from Bancroft Elementary school from Washington, DC.  Shortly after, Croplife, the pesticide arm of Monsanto, sent Michelle Obama a letter encouraging her to consider using crop protection for the Whitehouse garden, and that she may be sending out the wrong message to the public about conventional farming by growing an organic garden at the Whitehouse.  Michelle Obama, like in Oprah’s “stand” against the meat industry, marched forward.  Michelle’s “Let’s Move” campaign includes in it promoting more diversity in consumer eating choices by endorsing companies like Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest grocery retailer.

In a most minimal sense, cheaper organic food provided by a company like Wal-Mart does create access to healthier food for people who otherwise may not be able to access it (i.e. food desert) and cannot afford it.  The organic food industry has not been blessed by state and federal subsidies to drive prices down on organic food, as conventional farming has enjoyed.  What the organic industry has been blessed by is the co-optation of organic food into the mainstream by big Ag and big industry processed food companies.  So when you ponder over whether to buy a totally processed and synthetic product such as margarine, or the organic butter, it could be from the same company.

Sadly, several people of color support Michelle Obama’s position.  Juell Stewart, whose article “Is Michelle Obama’s Wal-Mart Endorsement a Healthy Idea?” at colorlines.com, which his article also supports the First Lady’s position, highlights how much social support the program receives from public and private leadership.  One such leader is Shiriki Kumanyika, founder of the African American Collaborative Obesity Network.  Ms. Kumanyika stated in the Colorlines article, “Hating the food industry is not an option… The question is, how do you work with the food industry so that they can make a profit, but still sell us food that is more likely to promote health and less likely to promote obesity?”  Ms. Kumanyika’s “health at any cost” comment neglects a myriad of problems associated with her blind support for big business.  Most notably in the myriad of controversy in this statement, is that Ms. Kuminyika’s comment about not demonizing super wealthy profit driven companies like Wal-Mart blindly overlooks how the company institutionalizes poverty by exploiting its labor force across the world, including in this country.  Supporting Wal-Mart for the sake of health does not dismiss the fact that every time you go to the store you are supporting its exploitative domestic and international labor practices.  What all of these proponents of Michelle’s endorsement have in common is that they all feel that companies like Wal-Mart should be pressured into putting more healthy affordable options on the shelf for the sake of nutrition.  Though, longitudinal research published in the Archives of Internal Medicine concluded that “There is no evidence that building supermarkets will change people’s diets”.

Wal-Mart does not mind signing onto this campaign because its image is cleaned up.  Michelle walks away feeling like she has done us a great service because she has forced the giant to feed us healthier food, when in reality she may have expanded their profits and consumer base.  This sends a message to poor people, especially people of color, who suffer the most from the effects of cheap calories and processed foods (it is projected that 1 in 2 minority children will contract early onset diabetes compared to 1 in 3 white children), that they should flock to Wal-Mart and other big box stores to take advantage of the organic options on their shelf.  So is Wal-Mart and other big box stores the only option for poor people, as well as for all others, to get organic food?  I could have said fresh, local, and organic food but the majority of organic food in a Wal-Mart will not be as fresh as at a farmers market, and still may be from the other side of the country or world.

Throughout the country at farmers markets, recipients of the USDAs Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, a.k.a. food stamps) can use their EBT cards to buy fresh, local, and even organic food.  This is called the Scrip Project, a program that allows farmers markets to apply to have an EBT machine placed in their market so that low income folks can buy fresh food.  There are still very few farmers markets with the EBT machines in place, but as people organize and demand the EBT machines at their farmers market and the public becomes more educated on healthy food, they are starting to show up.  Many people have the opportunity of joining a local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program.  In a CSA, a customer pays upfront for a share, and for a certain amount of time the shareholder receives food from the CSA.  Potential shareholders have the opportunity of working out with the farmer (because you actually get to know the person that grows your food!) a full, half, or working share, greatly reducing to totally eliminating the upfront price you pay to be a shareholder in a CSA.  Food Co-Ops have also more than doubled in existence over the past few years.

Are these programs abundant enough to fulfill a health foods movement as adequately as Michelle’s big box stores supposedly will?  Unfortunately not.  But these avenues are rarely explored by the public because of their unawareness of such programs.  As SNAP EBT card machines become more prevalent at farmers markets, as CSA programs keep popping up everywhere around the country, as people begin to plant gardens in their communities, as people continue to join co-ops, and people become more educated about the “politics of the plate”, rather than being pointed toward corporate America for its monoculture of food, someday, actually sooner than later, these avenues could largely supplement the option of going to a box store for healthy food.  Another important point, as celebrity farmer Joel Salatin made mention to in a discussion with Michael Pollan in Omnivore’s Dilemma, folks also have a choice of what to spend their money on, pointing out how his customers drive up to his Shenandoah farm driving expensive cars and drinking Coke.  It is up to us as consumers to choose whether our health is more important than the next material object we want, versus something we need like good health.

The government has a choice whether to fund small communal/ regional organic farms vs. the tenets of big Ag.  Funding small organic farms is more beneficial to its community’s health, economics, social life, and environment than are big Ag farms, which have clearly proven to have devastating effects in the same categories.  If the government substantially funded a program for small independent organic farms, many farmers would change their practices and stop heeding to the demands of big Ag.  But we need not wait for the government to get rid of its corporate food industry clad agriculture department, several of which were appointed by President Obama.  We can learn to become farmers and create our own food economic systems that function to empower consumers.  Farming as a career and viable stand against the USs corporate dominated government should be a much more explored option by the left, especially by people of color from the left, who sparsely represent this movement.

On another side of the story, Michelle Obama, the health advocates that support her, Wal-Mart, large chain supermarkets and big box stores, as well as several of the producers of organic food, undermine what organic really is.  Shortly after Michelle’s endorsement of Wal-Mart, Ecologist magazine writer Tom Levitt wrote an article titled “Organic Movement Fights ‘Supermarket Takeover’ of Ideals.”  The article reminded readers that ‘organic’ is not a term that solely implies naturally farmed food.  ‘Organic’ was originally an ideology.  The ideology indeed has always included naturally farmed food, but it was also a movement towards creating and supporting local market economies.  It was/is an attempt to close the loop of resources and money within a region instead of allowing it to leave the community (as what happens with commercial chain stores) and waiting for the money to come back the right wing conservative’s way by “trickling down”.  These are the type of economic ideals that Malcolm, Garvey, and even MLK began to realize toward the forgotten and ignored end of his life, knew were the most beneficial economic systems for poor people and people of color.

Organic is also about connecting to and enriching land.  As consumers, we know nothing about where the food comes from that we eat, and sadly most of us don’t really care.  To me this is strange because I would have thought it would be a part of human nature to want to know where something so important that you put in your body comes from, especially since it is coming from institutions we consider untrustworthy.  The ideology of organic purposely connects people to the land where their food comes from, and to the people that grow their food.  In the case of a CSA, the consumer actually has a share in that farm and therefore has leverage to choose what they would like to see happen at the farm, which is truly democratic and empowering, especially for low income people.

Maybe the food labeled ‘organic’ in Wal-Mart is not organic?  If the term ‘organic’ was originally created to imply regional, economic, and sustainable farming standards for food production, why do we call it organic if that is not what it is by its original definition?  Much like how KRS-ONE distinguishes between rap and hip-hop music, we should adopt calling truly sustainable organic food as “sustainable food” instead of “organic food”, as many farmers have begun to do to distinguish real organic food from co-opted organic food.  Even if calling truly organic food ‘sustainable food’ cannot become the standard, knowing the farming methods of the producer is the key to identifying truly sustainable organic food from co-opted organic food.

Wal-Mart, along with big Ag, has successfully co-opted a genuine movement created by the people, whose true champions now exist in the underground, as what has happened to hip-hop.  Whenever I think of buying anything at Wal-Mart, because it’s so cheap, quick and convenient, I inevitably think about how I am not standing in solidarity with the exploited workers across the world.  Wal-Mart has benefited from 3^rd world exploitation more than any other retail company on the planet.  Even if it is a weak stance because I end up at another store to buy some of the same products, at least I am not supporting the epitome of capitalism and the largest growing gap between wealth and poverty.  And as I become wiser and more educated on the issues, I refrain from buying more than I truly need, and teach myself to reduce, reuse, repurpose, repair and recycle things as much as possible.