I’ve long had my suspicions about how the organic ideal has become little more than a marketing slogan for big business, and I’m not the only one.
In the United States, Business Week has just published an article, The Organic Myth, on how “pastoral ideals are getting trampled as organic food goes mass market“.
The article examines the difference between the perception that consumers have of organic food - of small, family farms growing chemical-free produce and extensively rearing livestock for local markets - with the reality of global, industrial farming by multi-national corporations seeking to corner a niche market with fat margins.
The story may be US-centric, but Business Week’s analysis applies equally to the UK where people like us increasingly find ourselves competing with the supermarkets as they roll out “cheap” locally sourced produce, vegetable box schemes, meat box schemes, and all the other things that have made a big difference to the small-scale producers.
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