Well I might have been a little optimistic about the sizzling summer and barbecues but life goes on and it is still pretty good - unless you work for the Met Office or in the organic food sector. What can only be described as a turbulent twelve months, followed by the Food Standards Agencies report followed by what seems like every journalist in the country having a dig at the organic sector seems a little like kicking a man when he is down.
The mistake the Soil Association has made has been to try to be all things to all men and because it has encompassed so many issues it has punched way above its weight. The ‘organic umbrella’ has covered many things that are, at best, tenuously linked. All it can really do is ensure that, at the end of the chain, the product offered to you is as untainted as possible. It can’t guarantee fair trade, low food miles or an Elixir for life. The Soil Association does have stringent controls on stocking rates (animal not nylon) to insure that ground isn’t over fertilised and to the best of my knowledge, hydroponics are banned but it really can’t stop farmers growing organic vegetables as part of an intensive, monoculture system. So this is what they will do, mimicking wherever possible, conventional methods to produce the uniform, tasteless rubbish the supermarkets tell us customers want.
Organics simply doesn’t work like this as the £36 million loss posted by the UK operation of Wholefood Market shows. I would like to think that Riverford customers, and many others, have always been a little more savvy than to swallow the prima facie organic message hook, line and sinker. They have always been prepared to dig a little deeper to find good food. If this is the case , in a perverse sort of way, it points to the strength of the organic movement rather than the weakness. If we have always taken it with a pinch of salt how the hell has it done so well?
