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07.15.2009

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Heart-to-Hart

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This week's Heart-to-Hart:

One reader shared their suspicion of the Twitter trend in response to our HartBeat "Kids Don't Follow, Kids Don't Twitter""

“Is using Twitter just a short blast trend? I think it is...As a marketing person I'm not convinced it converts into a useful format for delivery of information of any kind - it's short, it's instant, it can carry only face value info - and how do you know your audience is interested? I'll wait for the next new trend before I get excited!”

In our own research, we have noted that once they finally start to figure out how twitter works, most users experience a period of “twittermania” during which they find themselves twittering well nigh any thought, emotion or idea that enters their head. Then, at some latter point, they begin to question the relevance of this information to their intended audience. Does anyone really need to know—yet alone even care—that I am watching fireworks at the park with my son? And rather quickly that realization turns into a dormant twitter account.

The important caveat here is that there will remain a core set of dedicated twitter enthusiasts—many of whom are themselves serious internet enthsuiasts—who have managed to harness the power of twitter to achieve a variety of goals which extend well beyond twitter’s typical usage. In this, we believe there will always be a marketplace for twitter, though that marketplace will likely be much smaller than many would lead you to believe.

In the meantime we leave you with the following tweet from Sarah Palin -AKGovSarahPalin (submitted without comment): “To see full text of the letter from my attorney on baseless allegations of past 24hrs check http://tinyurl.com/mmhv4u”

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Marin Organic: Stories from the Earth

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Marin Organic isn’t your average nonprofit. Citing a mission “that acknowledges the interrelationship between food production, environmental health and human health, social justice and the economic viability of small farms and ranches,” the organization’s hands-on work in sculpting a local, organic infrastructure based within the Marin community is as real and authentic a story as it gets.

At the Helm of Marin Organic, is Executive Director Helge Hellberg. Marin Organic's mission is also Helge's. It's his life, his belief system, his food, his community and his world. He believes we are all part of the mosaic and organic food is an integral part of our communities. He’s passionate and tireless about the mission and he recently told us why.

Looking at Marin Organic, we saw a great deal having to do with community, kids, schools, and other organizations. Maybe you could talk about some of these initiatives and which of them are resonating with consumers right now?

Yes, Marin Organic is an association of organic producers working solely within Marin County with this arbitrary county line because we found that from school policy to community relationships to legislative issues, it's all defined by the county we're working in. So, we have a very focused scope and, yet, our work is nationally and internationally relevant. We're focused on the economic viability of small-scale agriculture. But it's much more than that: It's relationship building, not just between each other, but between all environmental resources—the land, the story of the soil, and every other aspect that healthy community is based on.

One of our initiatives, which has become a landmark initiative nationally, is our School Lunch and Gleaning Program that takes advantage of produce gleaned from local farms. Of all foods grown, 20% don't meet strict market requirements because they are crooked or grown too large or are discolored, so they can't be brought to market. They are usually left in the field and plowed under. At retail or in restaurants, another 20% of food is discarded in the processing. In the home it's 10 to 20%. Of all the things we grow, only about half or less, ends up in our stomachs. That's a lot of waste.

Marin Organic started three years ago to collect the 20% that is left in the field. We call it “gleaning,” and this practice goes back thousands of years—even in the Bible it says “They shall glean the corners of thy field.” That food was always designated for the needy.

In this case, this is perfectly fine organic food, and typically you can't tell the difference between regular produce and this produce. We pick this food up and add it to the mix of weekly school orders, which allows the schools to stay within the budget, allows farmers to sell organic food to schools at a regular price, and we subsidize the quantity of food that is ordered, which otherwise wouldn't be enough. Then it all gets combined and processed. We see this as a win-win-win for the schools, the farmers and kids.

How does Marin Organic work with local schools and kids?

We give about 12,000 kids a week access to organic food. We have a truck that delivers it twice a week, and we have farm study days where kids come out into the fields and glean. This is great, because we might have 40 kids harvesting potatoes, and they have a wonderful time, typically looking like little earthworms when they're done. They get dirty, have the time of their lives, and the farmer doesn't have to hire labor to harvest something like a thousand pounds of potatoes, which is what 40 kids can do in a few hours.

Here we're combining economics with educational opportunity—and in this case, there is something magical that happens with these kids once they've been exposed to pulling up carrots or potatoes. It's their experience of the terroir, of the soil, they begin to see where their food comes from and ultimately where our life comes from—the soil.

Is it Marin County itself that drives what you’re doing, or do you think what you’re doing is transferable elsewhere?

Well, while Marin Organic is a special organization, we do this in the context of the state, the nation and even the world. We had the Prince of Wales come here to Marin Organic in 2005 and that changed the awareness of local foods around the world. We got emails from farmers in Norway and Africa congratulating us; they felt like they were seen.

You know, we lose about 400 family farms every week, or one every 25 minutes in the US due to economic pressure. We need to stop that. Farming, in the perception of the public, is the lowest occupation you can get into, and actually it's the most sacred occupation you can be in. Think about our health: We eat multiple times a day, and food doesn't come from your local supermarket; we are completely dependent on these farmers. We seem to forget this all too often. Because of this, we have no relationship with the soil left and, ultimately, we have a distorted relationship with ourselves. You can't have a healthy society without a healthy relationship with the soil.

Do you find that you're creating a generation of kids that are highly involved with where food comes from? Do you go into the schools? Not all school systems would make this easy to do with rules about where children can go...

We have programs where we go into the school and help teachers bring organic agriculture and its philosophy into the curriculum. The framework in schools doesn't make it easy to do this work, however, most of the environmental, social and economic challenges in society are manmade so we can change them.

As far as how Marin County itself feels about farmers, we've done polls and find that our local farmers have the same status in the public eye as doctors. So, our farmers are heroes. They are acknowledged and well-regarded for the important role they play here. Of course there are many changes taking place now: You have Michelle Obama planting a garden on the White House lawn, and the Secretary of Agriculture breaking up concrete in front of his office and planting an organic garden. There are changes coming upon us so quickly that I'm a little bit cautious about this rapid focus on organic, because we have been the antidote for almost 30 years to industrial agriculture. And now, overnight, we are in a kind of leadership role.

Do we have the skills to sit with large chemical and biotechnology companies at the table, and make it a win-win? I don't know. It's not Us or Them any longer, this is a time for collaborations and partnerships, and making sure everyone is heard and listened to.

We see that you are hoping to create Marin County as an organic county?

Well, yes, we've created an invitation and an infrastructure based on “love attraction.” We make sure that if you grow it organic you can sell it. For example, we helped an organic lamb producer sell out all of his lambs prior to their birth by promoting the lamb to area restaurants by focusing on his particular story.

It seems that people are seeking products that are more “real.”

Yes, the food movement tells the story of the land through the farmer. A farmers’ market is a storytelling place. Yet, how local is a farmers’ market? Some 400 farmers driving 100 miles each trip to get back-and-forth is 80,000 miles. So we need to ask ourselves “What is that impact of that?”

We see consumers talking about local, fresh and organic. How do you differentiate organic from these other terms?

It's a funny question you hear a lot in the marketplace, “Is it organic or local?” If it's organic and not local, it can mean it's shipped from 10,000 miles away, and if it's local and not organic, it could be treated with pesticides, pesticides that would be used close to your home. So, the answer is organic, grown as close to you as possible works best.

However, we need to also verify not just that it was local or organic but that it was shipped in a manner that was economically sound. We need to follow a path of truth that says, “What is the best we can do as humans?” How can we use our creativity to build a ship based on solar power or fly with the least CO2 emissions? How can we ship in products from other places so that it becomes a cultural exchange, where we actually learn how it is grown and what these cultures are doing and what they need the most and how they perceive the U.S.? There is so much opportunity for people to dig deeper, to make it right, to learn, to make it better and to be enriched with life. We aren't using that.So, we need to go way beyond the marketplace conversation: “Is it local or organic?”

Eighty percent of the calcium in the spine of a grizzly bear is of oceanic origin—the salmon has become the bear. So does the food we eat become us in moments.

Life is a story. At the end of life you want to tell stories. I believe the food movement is healthy now because we are starving for stories. Farmers tell beautiful stories because they work with the soil everyday.

Helge Hellberg is Executive Director of Marin Organic as well as host of An Organic Conversation, a weekly radio program. For more on Helge Hellberg, Marin Organic and An Organic Conversation:
http://www.marinorganic.org
http://www.helgehellberg.com/
http://www.anorganicconversation.com

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