With the news that Wal-Mart will begin providing organic food for prices only 10% higher than the conventional food they already offer, environmentalists and organic advocates have begun to worry. Wal-Mart's ruthless business practices, and their desire to suppress prices by any means necessary, will likely mean that organic produce will be gown overseas using cheap labor and non-sustainable, monocultural farming techniques. This is an entirely legitimate concern, and along with a host of other, well-document reasons, means I won't be purchasing my organic produce from Wal-Mart any time soon.
Nevertheless, these concerns should not obscure an important component of the story: namely, that the dilution of "organic" is a mark of its success, not a sign of its immanent failure. As with any brand, its ability to spread is predicated not upon the rigidity of its symbolization but rather the desirability of its identity. As a supplemental brand identity, "organic" works because people who care about the health value of their food or the environmental consequences of its production choose to pay extra or to shop elsewhere in order to support it. Once this support pushes the organic market beyond a certain level of success, companies who normally wouldn't give one organic fig about the agricultural proccesses that produce their food suddenly hope to jump on the bandwagon and garner themselves a bit of the market share. Certainly there are reasons to be worried about Wal-Mart's particular bandwagon jump; as provider of 27% of America's food, their market share will have a considerable impact, and with that the ability to possibly reshape the meaning of organic.
Whereas organic once entailed a range of farming practices, including sustainability, local distribution, as well as the absence of pesticides and artificial chemical fertilizers, Wal-Mart will glom onto that last practice by sacrificing the first two. This is unfortunate. But there are some benefits. Some where in the world, less pesticides will be dumped on the land, seeping into the groundwater and poisoning the local population, which, if Wal-Mart stays true to form, will be a poor population with less access to health care. And given that the environment is a complex interdependent system, and that what happens anywhere affects in some small way what happens everywhere else (think of it as eco-nonduality), less pesticides is a net good. And Wal-Mart's organic push means that more shoppers will be able to make the choice (now that the choice is financially viable) to be a better informed, healthier consumer, to make the choice to identify with and desire the organic brand identity. More consumers will, in other words, further refine the cognitive process of consumption.
This is why supplemental brand identities are good, and this is why Wal-Mart's decision shows us that these brand identities work. But what of the loss of sustainable, local farming practices? The problem is that organic is a necessary but insufficient brand identity if these are the practices one wishes to emphasize. Following the logic and success of the organic brand identity, the time has come to introduce a USDA sustainable or permaculture brand identity, one that would give consumers information regarding the nature of those farming practices by which their produce is grown. This new brand identity, along with a defended and standardized organic label, would allow consumers to continue the path of informed consumption.
In addition, a way of determining and highlighting locally grown produce is needed. Produce is often labeled with its point of origin, and this should be standardized. Local farmers should begin to coordinate with grocery stores to offer a section or label that would be reserved for food produced within a certain distance from the store. This would give consumers the ability to choose produce that is fresher and that, thanks to its local origins, doesn't contribute to environmental problems simply because of its lengthy, carbon-intensive transportation.
The point is that these brand identities - organic, sustainable, local - offer a way for individuals to consume ethically, and as such indicate a way for capitalism to provide the means necessary to better incorporate the growing environmental awareness to be factored into purchasing decisions. The dilution of the organic label, and the subsequent need to produce new labels for new brand identities, is the sign that these branding strategies work, not that they are being coopted.