Pragmatism is good for the American diet

So a few days ago, I read this post, "Localvores at Walmart?" on WMT's in-house blog, Check Out. The gist of the post is this:

[O]ver the past two years, Walmart’s partnerships with local farmers have grown by 50 percent, and fruits and vegetables grown in any given store’s state now make up over a fifth of what’s available during summer months.  Now, statistics like this are nice, but its particularly cool when you see the results…a few examples:

Until recently, all of the fresh cilantro sold in Walmart stores was sourced from California. Then, Ron’s merchants found a grower named Duda Farms, and soon we started sourcing cilantro from Belle Glade, Florida for distribution in the eastern US.  Introducing Florida-grown cilantro resulted in an estimated savings of 250,000 food miles in a single season.

I liked the post because it was a nice look at how businesses can balances practices that boost their bottom line against practices that are good for the planet.

So this morning, I'm listening to my podcast of yesterday's Marketplace, and there's a piece on WMT's move, "Wal-Mart Looks Local to Save on Shipping." And this is what got me thinking:

[Iowa State agricultural economist Bruce] Babcock says Wal-Mart's definition of local produce isn't the same as that of the local food movement, which promotes small-scale farming and environmental values.

Babcock: Local to Wal-Mart means it's produced in a state and it could be produced on a mega-farm.

In other words, he says, in the eyes of Wal-Mart, that factory farm down the road is just as local as the family-owned vegetable patch.

It would be nice if we all ate in tune with the seasons, and we could invite Michael Pollan, Alice Waters or Barbara Kingsolver over to our places for dinner without fretting about the possibility of a lecture on our menu choices. And maybe in twenty years, that'll be possible. But in the here and now? Let's focus on the baby steps. If Wal-Mart's making it known that it's willing to spend $400 million a year on domestic produce, how much of an incentive do you think that'll be to farmers? (Or to those yuppies who are now farming, per "Local Food Movement Attracts a New Breed of Farmers" in today's NYT.)

It is good to be vigilant against greenwashing. But it is, in my opinion, even better to be vigilant for signs of incremental progress, and to reward that progress so it becomes adopted by more players in a marketplace. I don't think it's a bad thing that WMT calculated the cost savings of going green. I don't think the financial savings offset or diminish the environmental impact, either.

If you want companies to change their behavior, it makes sense to frame that change in terms of how those changes will improve the company's bottom line, and to provide concrete proof that these changes do save a company money. In "Wage Against the Machine" (Slate, June 27, 08), author Liza Featherstone points out a lesson all socially-conscious business advocates could heed:

[U]ntil Costco boosters can make a concrete case that the company's generosity—however welcome—has a duplicable effect on the company's bottom line, it seems unlikely that a crowd of Jim Sinegals is going to emerge in the nation's executive suites.

WMT's just done that in its blog, saying it peeled $1.4 million off its transit costs with one local sourcing decision. That'll get through to other companies, and eventually we'll see fewer emissions and more money being pumped into American agriculture. It may not be the ideologically pure result that slow-food proponents want, but if you ask me, the American palate's always preferred pragmatic progress.

Comments

[Polly]

That particular criticism relies on a certain ignorance as well. I mean, gee, WalMart might need to rely on large farms to supply its large stores??? Whodathunkit?

Hell, I mostly shop at an area grocery chain that tries very hard to source local organic produce, and even they admit that, espeically in the off seasons when there's not a lot a produce to go around, if you really want stuff from small local farms you have to buy directly from the farmers. The logistics of rounding up the necessary quantity of produce from a bazillion different small farms is just too daunting for the grocery stores, be they Whole Foods or WalMart. And small farmers can do fine selling to restaurants and directly to consumers--they usually get a better price that way, anyhow.