Mackey-Pollan Smackdown Turns Love Fest

By Carmel Wroth

AMUSE-BOUCHE: Local, of course

The pre-event reception to the Michael Pollan-John Mackey discussion drew quite a crowd.

Hungry (and penniless) graduate students rubbed shoulders with well-heeled foodies, including superstar chef Alice Waters of Chez Panisse, nutritionist and best-selling author Marion Nestle, and Bill Niman, co-founder of Niman Ranch meats.

Of course you’re wondering what there was to eat.

Guests munched on goat cheese fritata, artisanal salami, and crostini, decked with green olive tapenade, warm hedgehog mushroom spread with fresh grated romano, and duck liver pate.

All locally sourced, naturally!

Conversation buzzed—everyone was excited to see the two food luminaries talk. Or maybe they were just pleased they had scored tickets (people were soliciting them on Craig’s List before the event.)

Whole Foods employees had come from far and wide to see their boss.

“John Mackey is cool,” said Elizabeth Wade, a team leader at the Petaluma, California, store.

David Evans, Marin Sun Farms’ owner, who sells his grass-fed meat locally (and not in Whole Foods), said he hoped the Pollan-Mackey conversation would shed light on how “small farms can access a bigger market without sacrificing integrity.”

Yes, indeed, the question of the night.

FIRST COURSE: History Lesson

To start things off, John Mackey - co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods - gave the crowd of nearly 2000 people a 45-minute food history lesson, complete with colorful Powerpoint slides.

He walked us through the entire history of food procurement and production. Six discreet stages of food history from hunting and gathering to Whole Foods Market!

Okay, that’s not entirely fair. Mackey believes that a new era of food is emerging to replace industrial agriculture--what he calls ecological agriculture--and naturally it’s bigger than Whole Foods.

He seems to think his company is the heart of the movement (it may well be), and he clearly articulated a vision for a sustainable alternative to industrial food.

He also broke some news (as he seems to do every time he appears with Pollan). Whole Foods has established a $30 million venture capital fund to make equity investments in artisanal food companies. This presumably comes on top of a $10 million fund set up for farmers last year.

Secondly, the company is launching a “Whole Trade Guarantee” fo the company’s commitment to source certified ethically traded products.

How can you be cynical about this man?

SECOND COURSE: Smack-down Letdown

As the dialogue got under way, there was a rustling of expectation in the audience. The provocative debate was about to begin, right?

After all, these were the two men who disagreed so strongly about whether the organic food business was lapsing into industrialism that they conducted a heated, months-long online argument. (See our previous post for links on the debate)

In person, though, they were almost painfully gentle with one another. They sparred, a little, I guess, but it was more like couple's counseling than a duel.

For starters, there were admissions of mutual gratitude and admiration. Mackey had learned from Pollan. Pollan appreciated Mackey.

The denouement came when Pollan asked Mackey if he blamed the company’s recent stock devaluation on his less than flattering chapter on the Whole Foods. It went like this:

“Well you probably cost us about $2 billion,” said the natural foods tycoon. “Easy come, easy go.”

(Audience laughs)

“Seriously???” (Culinary poet laureate grimaces painfully).

Mackey described how a flurry of unflattering press followed the book, including frequent comparisons to Wal-Mart.

Pollan looked contrite.

Mackey melted: “Aw, I’m just pulling your chain a little bit, Michael!”

What are righteous eco-consumers to make of this not-so-spirited interchange? If you want to see a debate, as one audience member suggested, invite people who are really on opposing sides of an issue.

Pollan and Mackey originally did have their differences, but when Pollan came up with his eloquent critique, Mackey moved rapidly to turn Whole Foods' sustainable battleship in line with Pollan’s vision—or to emphasize the ways it already was already doing so (sourcing more local foods in stores and moving forward with supporting domestic grass-fed meat, for example).

Pollan, for his part, politely closed ranks with perhaps the most influential man in organic and natural food circles, which is, you'll recall, the alternative to 98 percent of the food supply.

Mackey had his own criticism of Pollan, saying “big organic” is not as big and bad as the author claimed.

“You exaggerated the extent of industrialization of organic,” he said, even adding his most contentious comment, “you’ve done some damage!”

Pollan said he “didn’t intend to demonize” big organic. Organic Coca-Cola would be fine by him. (Say what?)

Which leads us back to a fundamental question raised by the evening's discussion, can organic scale up without selling out? Is there a way to produce and distribute enough organic food to reach the vast majority of the population, or will organic food remain in its gilded 2 percent niche?

DESSERT: A challenge

With all these weighty issues on our minds, Mackey asked one last question.

“What is your contribution going to be? What are you going to do to support ecological agriculture?”

Other than shopping at Whole Foods and the farmers' market? We're still pondering that one.

(The Webcast of the event is archived here)

Tailgate Party: Mackey Comments Pre-Debate

John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, made a guest appearance in Michael Pollan’s graduate level journalism class on food issues, hours before their much-anticipated discussion.

We got an inside-the-classroom look at Mackey from a new contributor, Carmel Wroth.

Pollan had cautioned the class against being too aggressive, but maybe it wasn't needed.

There was something about Mackey that makes you want to be on his side. He's so optimistic you get swept up in his good vibes and forward-looking energy. He even challenged the students to take on the mission of expanding the organic food movement beyond the 2 percent of food sales that his generation has managed to carve out.

Through a winding conversation, Mackey never let go of his theme: that natural and organic foods are in the early stages of evolution, but with imagination, faith and the entrepreneurial spirit, it can and will grow.

The subtext wasn’t hard to discern either—Whole Foods is the leader of that evolution, and deserves admiration, not criticism.

Mackey described his company’s plans to keep pushing natural foods forward, including their embrace the “Fair Trade” and “Rainforest Alliance” labels (both focusing on sustainability in the Third World) and their new “Animal Compassion Standards” which he hopes will eventually be adopted industry-wide.

In his all-embracing stance, he was quick to try to find common ground with local food supporters, like Pollan. He called it a “waste of time to have these arguments between local and organic” when both are such small niches.

He predicted a future when local agriculture would be in such a resurgence that there would be no need to fly in fresh produce from international markets (such as the much-maligned mushy asparagus Pollan described in his book The Omnivore's Dilemma). The only globally sourced goods would be things that can’t be grown locally like coffee and bananas.

Yet, somehow all the think-positive talk seemed to be blowing smoke over the very real challenges of scaling up the organic movement without betraying its ideals, or the small farmers once at its heart. Mackey simply brushed aside concerns that scaled-up large, organic farms are likely to be less in line with organic and ecological principles.

Humm ... We'll see how Mackey's positive mojo plays with the Berkeley crowd later this evening.

- Carmel Wroth

The Whole Dilemma: John Mackey Debates Michael Pollan

Last year, Michael Pollan published a bold critique of Whole Foods in his book The Omnivore's Dilemma, taking the natural foods giant to task for selling what he dubbed industrial organic food.

Exhibit A: a limp bunch of organic asparagus flown in from South America rather than the local foods burgeoning at places like farmers' markets.

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey responded, thoroughly engaging his critic in a spirited debate. (Somewhere in there Mackey also handed Pollan a $25 gift certificate for the asparagus &#8212 not sure if Pollan spent it, but we'll check it out).

This was all followed closely in foodie circles, with the back-and-forth discussion at both Pollan's and Mackey's web sites.

Now, the two are back, meeting Tuesday evening at the University of California Berkeley, where Pollan teaches in the journalism program, for a "discussion" about the past, present and future of food. The event proved so popular it had to be moved to a larger hall to accommodate the audience. Now it's sold out.

It should be entertaining. The inside word is that Mackey will be provocative - but it's unlear what that means.

U.C. Berkeley will be running a live Webcast of the event here.

A new contributor to Chews Wise will also be blogging from Berkeley so stay tuned for our take on it.
- Samuel Fromartz

Organic Sexuality

"PASA includes farmers who see the growing of nutritious food as an end in itself, not just a way to eke a living from a patch of dirt." - Kim Miller, PASA president 2000-2007

This past weekend, I was in State College, Pennsylvania, for the annual Farming for the Future Conference, the largest sustainable agriculture gathering on the East Coast and among the biggest in the country, with about 1,700 attending.

The conference was organized by the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture and drew all sorts of farmers and artisans out of the hills and gulleys: from Amish draft-horsesmen to biodiesel proponents, from grass-fed beef ranchers to organic herb farmers, from bee keepers and mushroom culitvators to back-woods denizens of hand hoes and makers of tomato sauce, organic flour and artisanal cheese.

There wasn't an agribusinesses in sight.

I participated in a couple of panels, on the growth of organics and where this movement is headed. As might be expected, there were misgivings about the onward corporatization of organics and concern that the label would be devalued. At the same time, farmers expressed a strong desire to protect the "meaning" of organic, fight to maintain the integrity of the organic label, and welcome corporate players, if they played by the rules. Well, that last point might be overstating it - there was a clear distrust of the mainstream food companies.

One of the more enlighting talks of the conference came from Michael Ableman,who delivered a keynote on the need to elevate the recognition of farmers and draw new ones into the fold. He also talked about ways to better faciliate the farmer & consumer connection (one thing this blog aims to do as well).

His solution - don't hit people over the head with a sense of all that's gone wrong, rather entice them with what can go right. For consumers, that might come through the food and an understanding of how it was grown and who grew it.

He also talked about the need to attract younger farmers to the land, perhaps with a sexual enticement. Ummm, not actual, but building on the idea - as one bumper sticker from the 60's put it - that "organic farmers are more fertile." Sexuality is humming through the farm, not just among the animals, but among the bugs, the seeds, in the soil itself at a microbrial level. He drew out this metaphore to many laughs, but made the point that there was a richness, even, at the extreme, an eroticism in this relationship with the land. Isn't this what marketers have known all along? Sell the sizzle? Actually, I've met quite a lot of young farm interns who matched up during their apprentice years and went on to start farms of their own.

The other interesting thing - aside from the workshops on how to butcher an animal, make your own sauerkraut, start a farmers' market - was the absolute buzz around biodiesel.

Recall, this meeting is the epitome of the do-it-yourself set and finally, in energy, biodiesel gives these farmers one more opportunity to cut their ties with The Man - Big Oil. Long live the french fry!

One farmer, though, who picks up gallons of the stuff every week, said he's around the fry oil so much, belching out of his tractors and trucks, that he has sworn off fries. "I won't eat 'em," he said. But that's probably not a bad thing.

I suggested, for variety, he try fry oil from a Chinese restaurant.

"That's a good idea, except when you get frying oil from a Chinese restaurant the trucks never seem to get full," he replied.

Ba-Da-Boom.

This kind of summed up the ethos of the conference: a "Buy Fresh, Buy Local" Toyota Prius.-