Mother Jones (magazine) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)by Tom Philpott, Mother Jones: http://motherjones.comI live on an organic farm in North Carolina, so I don't spend much time roaming my local Walmart looking for produce. But on a recent trip to Austin, Texas, I decided to stop by a busy supercenter to see how the company was going about its well-publicized push to sell more local and organic food.
The produce section sat between the in-store McDonald's and some giant coolers packed with Hormel bologna. There were crates piled high with perfect orbs of cabbage and tomatoes, onions and melons. Elephant-ear-size collard greens sat in tight bunches; stacks of fist-size lemons beamed yellow.
Plenty of fresh food, to be sure, though a few "Grown in USA" signs were the nearest thing I could find to an indication of local. Organic? A few bags of house-brand lettuce claimed that standard.
But you can't judge Walmart on a single store. The company sells 18 percent of all the groceries bought in the United States - more than anyone else by a wide margin. And it's not just Froot Loops and rock-hard tomatoes.
Over the last decade, Walmart has emerged as a massive player in the organic-food market. By 2006, the year it made a splashy announcement about doubling its sales of organic food, it was already the nation's No. 1 seller of organic milk. By 2007, according to the market data firm Scarborough Research, shoppers in search of organic food chose Walmart more often than any other grocery store.
To read further, go to: http://motherjones.com/environment/2012/03/walmart-groceries-organic-local-food-deserts
No comments:
Post a Comment