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The Provender Journal July-August 2008 Read the first paragraph or two of the current Provender Journal. Rising Stars: The Right Tool for the Job Rising Stars: The Right Tool for the Job —by Mark Mulcahy, Rising Stars trainer We issue produce workers a knife and show them how to stock the stand. We teach our cashiers how to use the cash registers. We give our HR managers access to the personnel files. We wouldn’t think about having the deli make the Szechwan noodle salad without a recipe. And yet, even with all of our success we often neglect to give the new and old members of our management teams the tools they need to be effective leaders. Another common occurrence in stores is if someone shows up on time, has a good work ethic, shows that they are accountable, and, of course, sticks around long enough—they eventually become managers. But once again they are not necessarily given the proper training to be the best manager they could be. Because of this it’s not uncommon to have these dedicated managers burn out or leave because they don’t have the right tools for the job. 2008 Conference Just Around the Corner We hope you have been making plans to attend the annual conference in October. We return to Hood River in the heart of the beautiful Columbia Gorge. The conference will be held Thursday and Friday, October 2 and 3. This year we will present the 32nd Annual Provender Alliance Educational Conference and we promise to make it another interesting, stimulating and fun event. Frances Moore Lappé is one of our confirmed keynote speakers and she is not to be missed. Our conference theme is Sharing Our Values, Achieving Our Vision. We are very pleased to be sponsoring a Rising Stars Leadership Training to run concurrently with the regular conference. The Rising Stars training will begin on Wednesday and run through Friday. Consultants Carolee Colter, Mark Mulcahy and Allen Seidner are all excellent trainers and are looking forward to partnering with Provender again. Attendance will be limited so plan accordingly. —from Pesticide Action Network Updates, May 8, 2008, www.panna.org Three Christmas tree farms in Oregon’s Willamette Valley — all members of Coalition of Environmentally Conscious Growers — have replaced chemical sprays with ecological pest management. With the help of eager elementary school kids, Holiday Tree Farms, Silver Mountain, and Yule Tree Farms released 72,000 lady beetles to gobble any aphids and mites that might threaten their groves of firs. The aphid-eating insects were provided by Brad Ross of March Botanical who told the Capital Press that his ladybugs, green lacewings, and white fly parasites “flat-out work better than pesticides” while his flyfighting parasitic wasps “do a better job than chemicals.” —from Food Alliance News & Announcements, May 13, 2008, www.foodalliance.org Greenwashing Index is the world’s first online interactive forum that allows consumers to evaluate real advertisements making environmental claims. “Going green” has become mainstream for businesses large and small — and that’s a good thing. What’s not so great is when businesses make environmental marketing claims that can be misleading. The intent of this web site is to: • Help consumers become more savvy about evaluating environmental marketing claims of advertisers; • Hold businesses accountable to their environmental marketing claims; and • Stimulate the market and demand for sustainable business practices that truly reduce the impact on the environment. Visit www.greenwashingindex.com. —from Northwest Cooperative Development Center, www.nwcdc.coop The Northwest Cooperative Development Center is organizing a series of workshops called “Grow Your Own Food Co-op.” The Boise Co-op will host this event on August 15-17. Participants in this weekend-long gathering will have a chance to learn best practices from Cooperative Development Specialist Andrew McLeod, from the host cooperative, and from each other. This program is envisioned as a way to help build co-op density east of the Cascades. The event will start with a dinner on Friday evening, and will include workshops on planning, financial matters, and decisionmaking. It will conclude on Sunday afternoon. Registration is only $50, which includes materials and several meals. For more information, please contact Andrew McLeod at 360.943.4241 or andrew@nwcdc.coop. 2008 Provender Board Candidates —by Kelly Miles, 2008 Provender Alliance Nominating Committee Chair The Provender Nominating Committee has completed the nomination process for 2008. It is our great pleasure to announce the nomination of the following candidates to the 2008 Board of Directors ballot. Seattle Food Action Initiative —from ATTRA–National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service, Weekly Harvest Newsletter, April 23, 2008, http:// ncat.attra.org Seattle City Council President Richard Conlin has introduced a resolution for a Local Food Action Initiative. Resolution #31019 will establish goals, create a policy framework, and identify specific actions to strengthen Seattle’s food system sustainability and security. The Seattle City Council Environment, Emergency Management and Utilities Committee held an informational meeting on local food policy April 11, and a meeting to accept public comment on the initiative on April 16. The resolution was to be voted on by the Seattle City Council in April or May. Focusing on Healthy Food and Philanthropy —by Lucy Vinis, Earth Share of Oregon, www.earth-share-oregon.org Good food and conservation go together— that’s the message from Earth Share member group, Oregon Environmental Council, and Provender Alliance member, First Alternative Co-op. “The obstacles to eating healthy are information and access, says Allison Hensey of the Oregon Environmental Council (OEC). “Not everyone is presented with good options when they shop. The food system is so complex, so anonymous, and there’s so much processed food, you have to be a savvy shopper.” —from Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, www.drbronner.com Family owned Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps filed a lawsuit in California Superior Court today against numerous personal care brands to force them to stop making misleading organic labeling claims. Dr. Bronner’s and Organic Consumers Association (OCA) had warned offending brands that they faced litigation unless they committed to either drop their organic claims or reformulate away from main ingredients made from conventional agricultural and/or petrochemical material without any certified organic material. OCA has played the leading role in exposing and educating consumers about deceptive organic branding. —from Food & Environment Electronic Digest, June 2008, www.ucsusa.org A web site from the Small Planet Institute helps spread the word about the consequences of our food choices for the climate. Visit Take a Bite out of Climate Change, www.takeabite.cc, to find 10 things you can do to reduce the impact of your meals on the planet. Also, visit Bon Appetit’s web site, www.eatlowcarbon.org, to calculate the carbon footprint of your meals. The company’s new Low Carbon diet is a commitment to reduce the carbon footprint of the food it serves by 25 percent by serving smaller amounts of beef and cheese and sourcing more foods from North America rather than from overseas. —from GM Weekly Watch, Number 251, www.gmwatch.org Untested nanotechnology is being used in more than 100 food products, food packaging and contact materials currently on the shelf, without warning or new FDA testing, according to a report by Friends of the Earth. —from Organic Farming Research Foundation, www.ofrf.org OFRF passed the $2 million milestone this spring when its board of directors awarded a record $211,800 in the first of its two annual grant cycles. Included in the total were two multi-year fruit research projects supported through a partnership with Stretch Island Fruit Company. Stretch Island, makers of FruitaBü organic fruit snacks, pledged $450,000 over three years to fund organic fruit research and education projects. —from American Farmland Trust, www.farmland.org Nash Huber has been named American Farmland Trust’s 2008 Steward of the Land. The award honors the memory of Peggy McGrath Rockefeller, an avid farmer and conservationist who helped found American Farmland Trust. Fight Against "Organic" Seafood Mislabeling Continues —from Center for Food Safety, www.centerforfoodsafety.org In early May the Center for Food Safety (CFS) sent letters to the Attorneys General of 49 states urging the top state law enforcement officials to take action against the misleading practice of labeling seafood imports as “organic.” The state-based effort to protect the integrity of organic food labels is a follow-up to the complaints filed by the Center last year with the USDA and Federal Trade Commission. To date, these federal agencies have left the complaints unanswered, while U.S. consumers are increasingly confronted with imported seafood misleadingly labeled as “organic,” despite the fact that there are no U.S. organic seafood standards in place. —from Pesticide Action Network Updates, May 29, 2008, www.panna.org Organic wines have earned a niche in the kitchen cabinets of the “ecoscenti” but now it’s time to make room for the first generation of “green” spirits — Rain Organic Vodka (from the Buffalo Trace distillery in Kentucky), Square One Organic (from Novato, California), 4 Copas tequila (in Nova Scotia) and Juniper Green Organic London Dry Gin (from England). “While organic wines have been available for decades, distillers have been slow to jump on the pesticide- and fungicide-free bandwagon,” explains Beppi Crosariol of Canada’s Globe and Mail. “A big reason is that the wine industry is still dominated by small producers, many of whom have made personal choices not to work with chemicals. In contrast, the spirits world is dominated by multinationals, which tend to rely on vast swaths of factory-farmed grains such as wheat, corn and rye.” Square One makes its elixir at a certifiedorganic facility in Idaho using organic rye from North Dakota and natural fermentation (instead of faster-acting non-organic enzymes) to break down proteins and fibers in the rye. The bad news? Crosariol checked with the Toronto Headache and Pain Clinic and was told: “Don’t expect pesticide-free vodka to cure booze-related headaches.” It won’t. —by Allen Seidner, Rising Stars trainer A lot has changed since Carolee Colter, Mark Mulcahy and I started presenting Rising Stars, a leadership development seminar designed specifically for natural foods retail managers. We’ve learned a lot from having shared our presentation with more than 600 natural foods managers who’ve attended our seminars over the past decade. And between- seminar coarse-ground revisions of our content have matured into an ever-finer polishing of our presentation. USDA Pesticide Reporting Program —from Center for Food Safety, www.centerforfoodsafety.org The Center for Food Safety, Natural Resources Defense Council, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and The Organic Center are leading a coalition of 44 environmental, sustainable farming, and health advocacy organizations calling on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to reverse its plan to eliminate its pesticide reporting program in 2008. This was a day before the USDA released its scaled-back annual report on 2007 pesticide use in American agriculture. Elimination of USDA’s objective data will open the door wide to serious misinformation on pesticide use, charge the groups. USDA claims it lacks funding to continue the program.
Provender Alliance
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