Take a seat Whole Foods and “organic” superstores of your ilk. You are NOT the silver bullet to our 21st century food complex. As Michael Pollan warned in his June 2006 letter to John Mackey, the C.E.O. of Whole Foods Market, local production is a vital component to the food consciousness movement.

Yes, Whole Foods claims that 45 percent of its suppliers are local (i.e. located within 200 miles of the store), but as Pollan incisively spells out, this statistic fundamentally misses the point. 

“As a percentage of sales (rather than of vendors), how much of the produce sold at Whole Foods is produced locally?” 

In a 2007 speech, Mackey pegged this number to be around 16.8%! How can this be? Its simple, the VAST majority of certified organic produce from within the United States is grown by a half-dozen mega-farms located in California. So, lets be honest with ourselves, “organic” does not mean “small family farm.” The fairy tale coupling of these two categories is little more than the result of savvy Whole Foods marketing. Don’t be fooled, organic tomatoes from Chile are killing our planet.

(Title courtesy of NYTimes article “England’s Culinary Wild West“)

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