This is a great op-ed piece about how the organic food industry is being taken over by big business (which actually happened quite sometime ago). Of course, Wal-Mart is at the center of this storm as well, it seems like that company just can’t do anything to please their critics. What I like about this piece is that it articulately differentiates between the culture of the organic food business and the content of organic foods. Personally, I think the best thing to happen to consumers is to have organic foods embraced by Wal-Mart.
When organics hit the big time, a few movement purists realized factory farms weren’t the only enemy. They began to shun industrial organic and its big-store purveyors, instead favoring farmers markets. As a result, these small growers who were initially afraid that Whole Foods would steal their customers are doing a booming business–the number of farmers markets in the U.S. has more than doubled in the last decade.