March 6th, 2009 by Annie
The food was awesome. The speakers were inspiring. And now the hard work begins. Step by step over the next year, farmers, retailers, wholesalers and distributors of organic products will implement some of the visions we developed over the conference last week.
One of the hot issues was the threat GMO sugar beets pose to the organic seed industry and to organic farmers. Right here in Oregon’s Willamette valley, test plots of these beets are being grown or are planned to be grown. And this month, we’ll start to see the first of the resulting GMO sugar hit the food processing industry. Read more about it here.
I’m excited to tell you that our keynote speaker at the Co-op Annual Meeting and Owner Picnic on June 28th will be Frank Morton of Wild Garden Seeds in Philomath, OR. He’s part of a lawsuit to stop the genetically engineered sugar beet.
Tags: Frank Morton, GMO sugar beets, organic
Organicology | No Comments »
February 27th, 2009 by Annie
I know you’re lurking…reading and not commenting. That’s okay. This morning we heard from Paul Roberts, author of The End of Oil and his newest book, The End of Food. Well, neither one of his books is very positive so the room was rather glum hearing about the scale of change that needs to occur in our food system in order to reach sustainability. It’s all about how we frame the discussion about this needed change when we talk to consumers who have not yet made the leap to local, healthy and organic food. That framing is something I’ll put my mind to in order to reach more people, so I don’t really have much to say about that now. I will in the future, though.
Next up for me was a workshop about the contamination of organic seed and food. This should be of great concern to you, our owners, shoppers and colleagues. But there is hope, I assure you. More on this later. My lovely lunch is sitting in front of me and I am hungry!
Tags: genetic engineering, Organicology
GMO Action, Organicology | No Comments »
February 26th, 2009 by Annie
Here I am at the Organicology conference in Portland. Today is a day-long workshop on sustainability for the food trade. This is important to our co-op since we’ve embarked on our mission to become a more sustainable business. This a way more than just trying to “green the Co-op.” We’ve chosen to use The Natural Step as our framework and have trained all of our staff in the theories that support it. I’ll keep you posted on what we’re learning here so check back. There might be some pearls of wisdom to share.
Tags: Organicology, sustainability, The Natural Step
Organicology | No Comments »
The Co-Op Blog
Go Back Home
