Organics and the big stores

A while back, I was wondering whether Wal-Mart's announcement that it was going to start selling more organic products was a good thing or a bad thing for organic farming. A story from an early June Isthmus now has me thinking it will end up being a bad thing.

On the plus side, big stores selling more organic products could help increase sales and demand, which will help attract more farmers into organic farming and drive down the price of organic products. On the minus side, Wal-Mart and others could use its muscle to change the definition of organic by weakening the standards in place in order for products to be considered organic.

Of they could pull what Roundy's did recently to a Wisconsin farmer and try to push the very same family farmers that helped build the organic movement into what it is today right out business.

The Isthmus article tells the story of Dean Dickel, owner of New Century Farm in Shullsburg. He supplies some of Roundy's Copps stores in Madison with organic eggs. One day Roundy's up and decided that they were going to standardize all of their products with two brands and Dickel's New Century products was not on the list. Then without telling him, they raised the price of his eggs a dollar. No doubt this was so they could tell him his products were not selling and they could justify getting rid of them.

Eventually Copps put the eggs back on the shelf at a more reasonable price after the Isthmus started asking around about what happened to Dickel. However, Dickel's experience highlights just how vulnerable small farms will be to the big stores now that they are getting into the organic business. Small farms can't absorb having a large store like Copps just up and decide not to sell its products with little or no notice and many farmers could get crushed in the path of the big stores.

Roundy's behavior in this is yet another reason why I no longer shop at Copps. I still buy New Century's great organic eggs, but I buy them at Pierce's and the Willy Street Co-Op.