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The Provender Journal July-August 2008 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. And everybody loses when this happens— the store, the individual, and even the natural foods community. That is one reason why we created Rising Stars. Allen, Carolee, and I wanted to stop this cycle by giving people the tools they need to grow as an effective and happy manager. After several years we are presenting the acclaimed Rising Stars seminar again at this year’s Provender Conference. We only allow 40 people per session to provide the best environment for learning, interaction, and networking. This way we can truly gear each seminar toward the attendees who have signed up. So, if you want to keep your current leaders around and prepare your up-and-coming ones, then consider sending them to this exciting educational opportunity that is designed with the Natural Foods industry in mind. During the seminar attendees will learn these skills:
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. Workshop scheduling for the conference is complete and we have a really stimulating lineup. Confirmed workshop presenters include Tim Blakely from Frontier Natural Products Co-op, Jane Drinkwalter of Vitamer Labs, Phil Howard from Michigan State University and Dr. Tori Hudson, of Vitanica. Here are the sessions we will be offering this year:
We are confident there will something here for eveyone. We will again have a block of rooms reserved at the Hood River Inn. Watch for the Conference Announcement to become available in early August. It will also be available on-line at our web site, www.provender.org. Please contact the office if you have any questions. You can reach us by phone at 888.352.7431 or 503.859.3600 or by e-mail at info@provender.org. —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:
As you read in the March/April issue of the Provender Journal, our election process has moved to an open election format with individual candidates vying for a position on the Board. The five candidates listed above will be campaigning to fill the three Board position vacancies this October. The September/October issue of the Provender Journal will include a photo and brief statement from each of our prospective candidates. Provender will also present a Candidate Forum at the conference in October. At this forum, Provender members will have an opportunity to hear from each of the candidates. The Provender Nominating Committee takes great pride in recruiting the best possible candidates for our organization. Over the next few months, please remember to read about your candidates in the Journal and, if you attend this year’s conference, please join us for the Candidate Forum. We hope to provide you with the information you need to make an informed decision about the folks who will lead Provender into the future! Finally, many thanks to this year’s Nominating Committee: Laurie Bock, Kenna Eaton, Janey Gaventa and Bruce Peterson. Their efforts have insured that our ballot is filled with skilled and insightful candidates – Thank you! 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.” Hensey is Program Director of OEC’s “Healthy Food and Farms” program. She builds bridges among farmers, environmentalists, businesses and consumers to work toward healthier food production and food consumption habits. OEC is a member organization of Earth Share of Oregon (ESOR). “Last year, Earth Share asked me to give a presentation to a Portland architectural firm,” she recalls. “I put together a PowerPoint that I called ‘Voting with your Food Dollars’ which made the case for buying local, organic products. It was so much fun and inspired so much interest, that we decided to create a whole new program called ‘Farm Fresh’ to help businesses support their employees in buying local fresh food.” ESOR promotes presentations like “Voting with your Food Dollars” through their Lunch and Learn program, which invites businesses to offer free workshops to their employees on a wide range of topics. Earth Share partners with a hundred Oregon businesses to educate their employees on environmental topics and give them the option to donate to 70 non-profit groups through payroll contribution. Even in organizations where employees already have a strong environmental ethic, the opportunity to learn more or give in new ways deepens and strengthens individual philanthropy. At First Alternative Co-op in Corvallis, staff are offered the option of supporting work like OEC’s by donating to Earth Share through the monthly Benefits Program. “It’s a wonderful thing to offer as a choice,” explains Sarah Taylor, the co-op’s Human Resources Manager. “If it’s truly your passion to support the environment, you’re guaranteed that your money is going to good causes. It doesn’t cost anything for the Co-op to participate and it’s easy to maintain. I don’t know why a company or coop wouldn’t elect to offer Earth Share.” —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. Dr. Bronner’s has determined, based on extensive surveys, that organic consumers expect that cleansing ingredients in branded and labeled soaps, shampoos and body washes that are labeled Organic”, “Organics” or “Made with Organic” will be from organic as distinct from conventional agricultural material, produced without synthetic fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides, and free of petrochemical compounds. Organic consumers have a right to expect that the personal care products they purchase with organic branding or label claims, contain cleansing ingredients made from organic agricultural material, not conventional or petrochemical material, and thus have absolutely no petrochemical contaminants that could pose any concern. Dr. Bronner’s products contain cleansing and moisturizing ingredients made only from certified organic oils, made without any use of petrochemicals, and contain no petrochemical preservatives. The misleading organic noise created by culprit companies’ branding and labeling practices, interferes with organic consumers ability to distinguish personal care whose main ingredients are in fact made with certified organic, not conventional or petrochemical, material, free of synthetic preservatives. Ecocert is a French-based certifier with a standard that allows not only cleansing ingredients made from conventional versus organic agriculture, but also allows inclusion, in the cleansing ingredients contained in products labeled as “:Made with Organic” ingredients, of certain petrochemicals. Even worse, despite Ecocert’s own regulations prohibiting the labeling as “Organic” of a product containing less than 100% organic content, Ecocert in practice engages in “creative misinterpretation” of its own rules in order to accommodate clients engaging in organic mislabeling. Explicitly relying on the weak Ecocert standard as precedent, the new Organic and Sustainable Industry Standard (“OASIS”) will permit certification of products outright as “Organic” (rather than as “Made with Organic” ingredients) even if such products contain hydrogenated and sulfated cleansing ingredients made from conventional agricultural material grown with synthetic fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, and preserved with synthetic petrochemical preservatives. The organic content is required to only be 85%, which in water and detergent-based personal care products, means organic water extracts and aloe vera will greenwash conventional synthetic cleansing ingredients and preservatives. For more information about the case, visit www.drbronner.com. —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. The report, ‘Out of the Laboratory and onto Our Plates: Nanotechnology in Food and Agriculture’, found nanomaterials in popular products and packaging including Miller Light beer, Cadbury Chocolate packaging and ToddlerHealth, a nutritional drink powder for infants sold extensively at health food stores including Whole Foods. Nanotechnology, the manipulation of matter at the scale of atoms and molecules, is now used to manufacture nutritional supplements, flavor and colors additives, food packaging, cling wrap and containers, and chemicals used in agriculture. Existing regulations require no new testing or labeling for nanomaterials when they are created from existing approved chemicals, despite major differences in potential toxicity. The report reveals toxicity risks of nanomaterials such as organ damage and decreased immune system response. For more information, visit www.foe.org. —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. OFRF administers a competitive grants program as part of its mission to foster the improvement and widespread adoption of organic farming systems. Growers and researchers are encouraged to submit proposals by July 15, 2008, to be considered for a grant this fall. Proposals on topics pertinent to organic farming are welcome as well as proposals to conduct organic fruit research or education. Since 1990, OFRF has awarded 268 grants totaling more than $2,000,000. Over 120 reports from funded projects covering an array of organic agriculture topics are available on the OFRF web site, www.ofrf.org. A complete list of OFRF’s grants since 1990 is also available on the site. The Foundation’s requests for proposals for research and education/ outreach project funding are available at www.ofrf.org/grants/ apply.html. The annual winter application deadline is November 15, one month earlier than in previous years. Anyone interested in learning more about OFRF’s grants program is invited to contact Jane Sooby at 831.426.6606, x107 or e-mail jane@ofrf.org. —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. Huber grows organic food year-round on over 350 acres in the Dungeness River Valley on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula using environmentally sustainable farming practices. His farm is certified “salmon safe,” sells directly to the public at Nash’s Farm Store, local restaurants, farmers’ markets and manages a CSA. Nash’s Organic Produce is known throughout the Northwest for its quality organic food. He is the first farmer in Washington state and the first organic vegetable farmer to receive the prestigious $10,000 award, which recognizes leadership in protecting agricultural land, local food and the environment. Nash has worked with conservation organizations in his community to save hundreds of acres of local farmland and leases much of his acreage from neighbors who have conservation easements on their land to guarantee that food will always grow there. A reception was held in Seattle in early June to honor and celebrate Nash’s award and Washington State’s farming community. For more information about nominating someone for future awards or to see past awardees, visit American Farmland Trust at www.farmland,org. 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. In the action, the CFS calls upon USDA to prevent consumer deception by enforcing existing organic labeling laws and regulations until new standards are finalized. CFS, which is joined in this effort by Food & Water Watch, has identified the practice of allowing seafood to be labeled as “organic” in absence of regulations as unfair, deceptive and misleading - a violation of the states’ consumer deception and misrepresentation laws. The USDA is currently in the process of establishing organic regulations for finfish and shellfish, a process that may take up to two years. In the middle of May, the National Organic Standards Board discussed new recommendations addressing the type of feeds that may be used under future organic aquaculture standards. As currently drafted, the regulations would not allow the use of antibiotics or non-organic feed. With U.S. sales of organic food dramatically increasing, a number of foreign seafood imports labeled as “organic” have appeared to take advantage of this emerging market. In 2005, California passed a law (SB 730) preventing the labeling of any seafood as “organic” until federal standards are finalized and in place. With this action, the Center for Food Safety and Food & Water Watch have requested that the nation’s 49 other states use their authority under existing consumer protection laws to quickly curtail the misleading use of the term “organic” by overseas seafood producers so that consumers are not adversely affected. For more information on this and other issues, visit www.centerforfoodsafety.org. —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. Recently, two of us have left the world of full-time consulting to take positions with leading natural food retailers. Mark Mulcahy is the Produce Director for New Leaf Markets, with four stores based in Santa Cruz, California. I have become Prepared Foods Director and a partner with Good Earth Natural Foods in Fairfax, California. Our new responsibilities and recent experiences are creating fresh insights into the challenges and opportunities faced to aspiring leaders. (Carolee remains engaged full-time as a consultant to retailers, and she keeps Mark and me informed as to the deteriorating experience of being a frequent traveler!) These days, we’re not only helping to teach seminar attendees how to work through obstacles, we’re in the midst of working through them in our own stores! Our attendees have changed a bit, too. We’ve noted in recent years that they are, on average, much more committed to their work and arrive more experienced and more prepared to help us create a dynamic seminar. We’ve always attracted lots of department managers, especially from produce, foodservice, human resources, grocery, front end and HBC. In recent years we’ve not only been drawing in lots of their assistant department managers, but we’ve also been attracting upper management folks, such as general managers, store managers and operations managers. But what hasn’t changed at all for retailers since we started doing Rising Stars in 1997 is the critical need to develop and support a confident and successful leadership team. In fact in this more competitive environment, where your natural foods store doesn’t necessarily have an exclusive on selling natural products in your town, developing a highly capable leadership team is probably more important than ever. It’s been a few years since we’ve had the privilege to partner up with Provender Alliance to bring our Rising Stars seminar to the annual conference. We’ve always loved being in your community and we very much look forward to another opportunity to share education and in a mutual passion for our movement-minded businesses. Want to know whether our seminar is right for you or someone in your store? Our web site has a full topic agenda, a list of the skills our content aims to develop, and testimonials from recent attendees from whom we consistently receive near-perfect evaluation scores. Our seminars regularly fill to capacity months beforehand and registration for our upcoming seminar, October 1-3 at the Provender Alliance Annual Educational Conference, is only offered through our web site at www.risingstarsseminar.com. We’ll hope to see you there in October! 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. State pesticide officials and major agribusiness groups have also objected to USDA’s plan to end its pesticide survey and reporting program, say the groups. Some who rely on USDA data include the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), academic scientists, and USDA’s Office of Pest Management Policy. The USDA program, which is run by the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), has already been dramatically scaled back, note the groups. Pesticide use on the most chemical-intensive crops - corn, soybeans and cotton - was surveyed every year in the 1990s, but only every two years through most of this decade. Data for pesticide use on corn has not been reported since 2005. The 2007 report covers chemicals applied to just two crops - cotton and apples (including separate surveys on conventional and organic apples). NASS breaks down chemical use by crop, pesticide and state, and its data are based on rigorous, statistically representative surveys of farmers in the major states where the respective crops are grown. In their letter to Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer, the groups note that alternative sources of pesticide use information are both unaffordable and unreliable. Private firms charge upwards of $500,000 per year for such information, well beyond the resources of civil society groups. In addition, the data are unreliable, as they are often based on unrepresentative sampling methodologies that the firms keep secret as proprietary information. Bill Freese, Science Policy Analyst at the Center for Food Safety, notes that herbicides (i.e. weed killers) comprise nearly two-thirds of pesticides applied in the U.S., and that the use of weed killers has been on the rise - since 2002 on soybeans and cotton, and since 2003 on corn.
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