Comments
prah-duce.
I’m very curious to see if Walmarts around here have started doing this. I’d still rather a farmer’s market any day of the week, but if sustainable organic farming practices are being made available all over the country by the biggest retailer, that’s incredible.
All I know is that my current company and the company from which my current company was sold both started implementing sustainability initiatives on their packaging solely because Wal Mart was their biggest customer, and Wal Mart pressure dictated that they do so. They were also the driving force behind these same companies producing organic versions of their products, but those failed miserably because people just don’t care about that stuff and definitely aren’t going to pay more because of it. I know I’m being cynical but the absolute failure of most food company organic product lines have failed horribly.
Kevin said:the absolute failure of most food company organic product lines have failed horribly.
Head-spinning sentence structure aside, how much of this statement are you basing on efforts by your company and other large food conglomerates like them? I ask because I, for one, would raise an eyebrow at so-called “organic” mac and cheese if it still came in a box with an orange cheese packet.
If you factored in smaller organic companies and their relative success and normalized it for volume, how do you think organic food would come out? Still a failure?
Yes, that was horrible sentence structure. I was tired.
Most of the big company organic stuff was definitely marketed as organic, packaging, design, advertising and all that included. There was nothing that was visually or ingredients wise anything that looked differently than what the small companies were offering.
Failure is relative. A small, miniscule start up company doing better than expected is no doubt a success for them. But when a large company sells the same amount of something, it’s not profitable and doesn’t make financial success. So failure is a relative term but the basic numbers still hold and there’s not a very large market out there for this stuff.
It’s like cable news. It’s given this huge cultural weight because it’s talked about and written as though it’s important and impactful. But the fact is that less than 1% of America watches the stuff. Those are small numbers and it’s a basic truth to say “Not a lot of people watch cable news” as it is to say “Not a lot of people care about buying organic food”. However to the people that have found the success to catering to that niche market it’s a success. But the fact is it’s still a niche market that after a fairly long period of time now is not noticeably larger. Doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be, just means……well it basically means that Americans are still fat, unhealthy fucks who want to shove shitty food down their throats.
I just think a big company going organic is far more likely to fail simply because of trust. If Nabisco or someone starts bragging that their food is organic, I know I personally am not going to believe it. I dunno how many people will. But if Nabisco owns some small company that claims to be organic, so long as the label doesn’t say Nabisco, I’m good.
I don’t disagree. But in order for that notion to negate what I’m saying (which is that there isn’t really a big market for Organic products in general), then those small organic companies would need to be taking business away from the big corporations. They’re not. The numbers that the small and big companies are moving on their products are roughly the same. So that’s probably a fair picture of the marketplace for such things. And that number is enough to make it worthwhile for a small company, and not worthwhile for a bigger company. But it doesn’t negate the statement that there just isn’t a particularly large market for organic products.
Again, I’m not saying that’s a good thing at all. If anything it’s just more of a testament to the fact that the corporate media has been pretty successful at running enough pieces on “Is organic really worth the extra money!?!?!?” to cloud the issue and convince people it’s just not worthwhile. Which sucks.