Organic foods get a boost as Wal-Mart pushes them

Organic foods get a boost as Wal-Mart pushes them

 
Robert Kirkham/Buffalo News
Kristen Yager, left, of Yager Farms in Eden knows there's growing interest in organic foods, but she and her father think it's too risky to convert to natural farming methods. Here, she shows flowers and produce to Christine Cotton of South Buffalo at downtown's farmers market.
 
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Associated Press
A display of organic lemons is featured at a Wal-Mart store. The chain plans to carry 400 organic items.
 
Since the spring, when Wal-Mart started adding more costly organic products to the shelves of its grocery "super stores," Veronica Moore has noticed. The mother of five now splurges when she can. It's easier when her husband - more reluctant about the expense - isn't with her.
"Why not spend a little more on food?" she said one morning last week as she loaded groceries into her car from the parking lot of the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Clarence.

Still, prices are high enough to make her cautious about the food she thinks is healthier. Her grocery bags had non-organic food along with 94-cent jars of organic baby food she has decided to buy routinely, instead of the regular 64-cent kind, because she thinks it will help her 11-month-old get a good start.

Wal-Mart plans to carry more than 400 organic items, and is kicking off an advertising campaign this month to promote them. A 30-second television spot features a baby upending a bowl of food on its head as a voiceover intones: "Introducing organics at the Wal-Mart price. What will you bring to the table?"

Wal-Mart's organic expansion has some saying it is a sign of an increasing interest in food grown and raised according to special organic standards, such as environmentally friendly pesticides, crop rotation and grazing pastures for livestock. Demand is rising, and as one government farm service reports, more farmers in the state are trying to convert to win the higher prices organic food can fetch.

The most recent state farm census counted 428 organic farms, or 1.1 percent, of the 37,255 New York farms in 2002 - the first year the U.S. Department of Agriculture released national organic standards.

While the next census isn't until 2007, the USDA's Farm Service Agency that helps small farmers with loans reports more and more business plans coming in with the transition to organic as a reason for a loan. Before certification that allows for the "USDA organic" mark, growers must follow organic standards for three years. For dairy farmers, it takes one year to transition a herd.

"Organics is a premium market and has potential for more profit. Most of the farmers go into it because of that," said Brymer Humphreys, executive director of the agency's state office in Syracuse. "The demand is greater than the supply. Customers are asking for it."

A spokeswoman said Wal-Mart's decision to double the offerings in some stores is a response to customer demand and an effort to lure new shoppers. "We would love to have customers who have not been in our stores for a while," said Karen Burk, from the company's Arkansas headquarters.

People who have been selling organic produce locally say they know demand is up. Wal-Mart's interest could spark even more.

"Maybe there will be a greater awareness of organics with our customers as well," said Tracy Pawelski, the Pennsylvania-based spokeswoman of Top's Markets, where tomatoes, carrots and potatoes are top organic sellers.

Sales jumping at Wegmans

At Wegmans, perishable-products manager Mark Frain said the category has accounted for the sharpest produce revenue increase each year for the last four to five years. Of the 600 items in the produce section, 50 to 100 are organic.

"Our customers are looking for it," he said.

For the last two decades that he has worked in produce, rising demand for organic has led to a rise in the quality and lower prices. It used to be that organic produce had many more nicks and brown spots than regular.

To show the change, he pointed to the 69-cent organic bunches of bananas. They were a little greener, but the fruit was just as smooth and unmarred as the 49-cent conventional bunches.

"Organics used to be a lot more expensive," said Frain, who now features good-looking, well-priced organic produce on separate display tables. On a morning last week at the Amherst Street store, it was organic oranges, arrayed in four pound bags for $2.99. In another display, a pint of organic grape tomatoes, $2.50, were next to a pint of Wegmans' brand, $2.

"In the past, the price used to be so dramatically higher, that would have turned a lot of customers away," he said before walking over to the meat department.

There even the pricey chicken and steaks that aren't considered organic, but are from animals raised without hormones or antibiotics, have been selling well. (The rib eye was $18.91 a pound.)

"I think it's really a trend that may become bigger," said Frain, who buys organic carrots because he prefers the sweeter taste. "I think it's just starting."

For shoppers Joanne Walter and Mike Ehman, chips were the only organic item making it into their grocery cart. "The price is a drawback," said Ehman. The bag they chose had less fat than the regular kind, a feature he liked. "I think we'll do more organic shopping."

To Kate Mendenhall, a coordinator for the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York, the increasing interest is fueled by general interest in a series of things the word "organic" has come to embody.

"I think consumers feel confident that when they purchase something organic, they're doing something good," she said.

Some shoppers accept the higher organic prices because they think they're contributing to a higher living wage for farmers. Some think that by eating food grown with fewer chemicals helps reduce pollution. "I think all those considerations are part of why consumers are buying," Mendenhall said.

Wal-Mart's interest was a good sign to Mike Porter, owner of Porter Farms in Elba. "It's going to expose more people to organics," he said.

"Are we going to sell to them?" he said of Wal-Mart. "Probably not. They're price shoppers."

In the last 16 years since he started growing organic and expanding the crops on his 600 acres, more and more farmers have been getting into the business. While local growers haven't changed much, he said there is an organic farm "explosion" that means he has more national and regional competition than he used to.

As the business keeps shifting, Porter tries to make his work by being selective and working with buyers who offer to buy through the season and not just what's cheapest.

Now his Elba farm, with 500 acres of animal feed grain and 100 acres of produce, sells its vegetable yield to grocers with an organic bent - the East Coast stores in Whole Foods Market grocery chain, Feel-Rite's local stores and the Lexington Co-op in Buffalo.

He has also expanded his own retail operation, selling a season's worth of produce by the weekly bagful, as a few other local farms do.

In 1995 he had 100 clients paying the fee to pick up a week's share of the organic harvest at a time when regular groceries didn't have much of an organic selection.

Now even though people have more places to buy, he has more veggie subscribers - 294 have paid $290 this year for 22 weeks worth of bagged assortments of whatever is ripe.

Porter's "community supported agriculture" system, known as a CSA, averages out to $13 a week for a varying assortment: Peas, lettuce and Swiss chard some weeks and watermelon, tomatoes and leeks in others.

"Our focus has shifted away from wholesale," he said. "There's more money in the CSA."

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