Slashdot Mirror

Not many CEO's behaving that way these days.

Disclaimer:
I work at WFM in the IT group, so now I make more than the CEO does. :-)

Some businesses and people do but most don't.

Though, if supply and demand are the only factors, then the small percentage of americans now farming may very well be priced out of the farming market and may enter other fields.

How so? If, as it has been opined by many replying to this article say, there's competition between crops for food or fuel prices will go up. This means more people will want to take advantage of the increase in price by becoming farmers. As it is now, people are being drivien off farms in the US, especially smaller farmers and their children, because they can make more money elsewhere. But if prices go up they will have a reason to stay on the farms. If the price of farm produce goes up so does the income farms generate.

As long as all other countries in the world can meet our food and energy needs, that's not a problem.. we get cheaper food/energy, our farmers presumably go into other fields (um, no pun intended) and make more money than farmers do.

But what happens if someone decides to cut us off? If we don't have active farms, that could be quite some time before we have our own agriculture ramped back up to feed ourselves.

I seriously doubt this will ever happen unless climate change deprives farms of water. As it is the US exports a lot of food. And agribusinesses get government subsidies doing it. If crops were suddenly grown for fuel then those exports will be cut so the US will still be able to produce enough food. However because of cuts in exports third world farmers will be able to stay on farms and earn a living.

So some of the regulations may be there simply to make sure we STILL HAVE FARMERS.

Why would the US not have farmers unless they aren't being paid enough the stay and work on farms? Growing crops for fuel will mean food crops will raise in price thus increasing the pay on farms.

Where in a free market, we very well might not have farmers, if our people decide not to work for the wages that other people in other countries are willing to work for.

Either farms can pay what the going rate is or they can try to pay less. If they pay less than people are willing to work for the farms will not have workers and without them the farms have nothing to sale. However some yuppies are giving up city life to start organic farms now. One of the fastest grocery store chains is Whole Foods Market, which sales organic food.

But FOOD and ENERGY are pretty important things.. maybe, just maybe, we want to make sure that the market doesn't leave us exposed to that kind of a risk!

If crops are grown for fuel, the price of food will rise, and thus it will become economically feasible to farm. I therefore see no problem of a conflict between food and fuel.

Even.. shudder.. some subsidies. Maybe not as many as we have now... but some? Maybe?

Maybe, if they were applied to sustainably farming I might agree with subsidizing them. However I ask why subsidize them at all. Where does the money come from? Taxpayers, that's where. Subsidies steal from some to give to others. I have no problem buying from and paying a local farmer, I am a member of two coops that support local farmers, thus helping him or her earn a living but I don't support government giving Archer Daniels Midland or Cargill billions. As the CATO Institute said, "'ADM has cost the American economy billions of dollars since 1980 and has indirectly cost Americans tens of billions of dollars in higher prices and higher taxes over that same period.'" This from one of those Libertarian, freemmarket, groups it seems you don't like.

I am saying that we should be thinking more about how to create fair

Portland is home to New Seasons (8 locations) a natural/organic store similar to Whole Foods. There are two Whole Foods stores in the Portland area as well as several Wild Oats Marketplaces.

That makes three large natural/organic grocery chains in the area!

And if you don't want to have to leave home to get your natural foods there are at least two competing home delivery companies, Organics to You and Pioneer Organics!

There's also several natural food Co-Ops such as the People's Food Co-op and Food Front cooperative grocery. Last year the People's Co-op successfully tested an opensource POS system.

Portland also is home to OHSU (Oregon Health and Science University) home to several major research departments.

Portland's Indymedia site (Independant Media Center; IMC) is a large independant media outlet and one of the oldest and largest in the indymedia network.

Mises is down? Working well from here, although I'm seeing other wholes in the net today.

I also found this, but don't have time to read more than the intro.

I can tell from your other responses that you're expecting to see charity but you're just subscribing to another false dichotomy: unless a corporation is giving to charity they're not being ethically responsible.

There are lots of companies who make moral and ethical decisions. Often it is part of their business strategy. In otherwords, this are companies that attract ethical inventors (and consumers). The easiest example is whole foods. They promote organic produce and natural (not heavily processed) foods.

Another example is Interface, a huge manufacturer of carpets. This company has invested billions of dollars into recycling programs. Partly because they think this will make their business more sustainable in the long term (which is the basis for most environmental issues).

There are lots of others too. These corporations have aligned moral and ethical choices with their business model. We can expect the same of lots of corporations. Expect more from Google. Stop pandering to money by shrugging off unethical corporate behavior as the inevitable consequence of capitalism or economics.

These types of goods are commoditized to the point that no one -- not even Amazon -- will be able to gain significantly better economies of scale than are already present. The margins are just too thin. As others have mentioned, Amazon is already at a disadvantage because of the shipping.

Most of the traditional grocers gave up on trying to compete with Wal-Mart on price long ago and are looking for new ways to differentiate the customer's shopping experience instead. Been in a Wegmans, Whole Foods, or one of the new A & P "Fresh" format stores (A & P Fresh, Waldbaums Fresh etc.)? It's all about ultra-impressive super-clean 100K+ sq. ft. stores, organic foods, in-store cafes, etc. coupled with a progressive (for retailers anyway) use of technology. With many traditional low-end grocers going under, selling off large numbers of stores or re-orging (Winn-Dixie, Food Lion, etc.), the rest are content to let Wal-Mart have the low-income demographic and aim squarely at capturing upper-middle class and above shoppers' dollars. These shoppers have proven that they're willing to pay a bit more for a high-quality shopping experience. Amazon's approach will add some more content to their own store (the ultra-important "long tail") but will have little effect on the grocery biz.

Disclaimer: I work for a retail software vendor.

Yeah, they probably don't actually use MSG in all the restaurants over there.

Of course, you do know that Doritios has more glutamate than you'll find in any Chinese restaurant? Lipton soups, progresso soups, McD's chicken sandwiches, KFC, all of these have enough glutamate to trigger reactions for those sensitive to MSG. But of course, none of these products say they contain MSG. More info here.

Of course, MSG is used pretty freely in China and Japan; if you want something without MSG, you'd better ask, since it's pretty much in everything.

What's more amazing is that in such a complex world, you can have such a simplistic view of things, like you're the president of the USofA of something. Believe it or not, there are persons in this world who embrace ideas from both the right AND left. There are liberal Christians, conservative athiests, tree-hugging vegan capitalists (ever shopped at Whole Foods?), etc. You should probably turn off Rush for a bit, step outside and get some fresh air. All that propaganda clouds your vision and makes you say stupid things in public.

By the way, I lost the link - can you tell me where I can download a copy of the "liberal doctrine"? Oh wait, I remember, it's right here and here.

In many areas of the US, we're seeing a rise in the demand for organic, non-trans-fatty, less-processed foods (e.g., Whole Foods). Actually, it's more acurate to say we're seeing a rise in the supply. The rise in demand necessarily preceded this rise in supply.

Similarly, if too many musicians over-process their music, we will see an increased demand for more "organic" music that will evenutally lead to an increased supply. The end result might even be better music.

Greens have moved beyond a lesser-evil approach to politics...

... I cannot under any circumstances accept nuclear power

...I cannot under any circumstances accept... genetically modified foods as a healthy alternative.

There are such simpler and more sensible ways to approach these issues. We could easily eliminate the need for nuclear power by conserving more energy.

We could replace nuclear power-and coal and other dirty forms of producing power-with the abundance of solar energy which shines on our country.

There is a water based product called Microbe-Clean made by Georgetown Environmental Group that contains nonpathogenic microbes that break down animal waste and odors. I know that it works great with dog piss and cat puke, it may work with pig smells. It is water based so it would have to be used with care on computers. I get it at Whole Foods Market http://www.wholefoods.com/

That's what I'm screaming. I mean, I can't even find a cart that doesn't shake or veer off to one side or the other. And they're going to spend money for this solution in search of a problem?

I remember a while back some of the grocery stores started putting calculators in the handles of the carts. Even these were constantly broken. And that's about as simple as an electronic device can get.

I would imagine that just the power needed to charge these stupid carts would be enough to make them prohibitive. The only places I can imagine using these as a gimick are the snobby high end joints like Whole Foods, Draeger's, or Andronico's.

It's interesting that you tie the DMCA to this "argument" abour RFID tags. (I put the word argument in quotes, because it's really an argument between consumers, and big business, as I think most all of us on slashdot would agree RFID tags are a "bad idea")

I was recently visiting Colorado and found a store, Whole Foods Market, that tries to concentrate on fresh, organic, healthy, tasty foods and very clearly marks nearly all the items in their store as either guaranteed organically grown, or potentially GM-processed foods. Not only did this store have a TON of delicious stuff, it was packed with people from the moment it opened at 8AM on a weekday. Now many of you have probably heard of this store, as it's all across the west, southwest, and southeast, but up here in Ohio, they're just now working on putting in a store in Cleveland, so I had never heard of it.

What is interesting to me is that a store like this is apparently doing outstanding business. (read their website, they've captured a spot in the "Fortune 100 Best Companies to work for" category 6 years in a row, plus they're growing like crazy) Indie artists are doing outstanding business. Yet, the major grocery stores are trying desperately to understand their customers better through using those damn swipe cards (which offer little to no savings over supermarkets without "the card"). The RIAA and MPAA are mortally afraid of P2P and customer "file-sharing" of music, and blame us for their drop in sales.

All of this is so funny, because ultimately, we're seeing a recurrence of what has happened time and time again in this world: change. Technology is changing the way we keep ourselves entertained, how we feed ourselves, how we communicate, etc. Apparently some get it and are profitting from it (Whole Foods Market, a few Internet companies, Kazaa, etc.) and some do not (Kroger, Giant Eagle, RIAA, RFID companies).

Truly, the only thing we should be worrying about, is which side we want to associate ourselves with. The losing side or the winning side.

I see lots of uneducated guesses going around about organics, some even replying to you. I'm not exactly an expert, but I'd like to offer my observations.

I've been shopping at Whole Foods for about 6 months now. I buy organic when possible, and conventional when not. I pay 69 cents per pound for organic bananas (compared with 50 cents for conventional). In a normal grocery store, like Texas based H.E.B., organic is available, but costs 99 cents per pound compared to 33 cents per pound. In the banana case, I'm paying roughly double for organic at Whold Foods vs. H.E.B. Why? The bananas taste better, and are picked closer to ripeness. I'd guess my bananas are coming from California, and not Brazil, and have much lower transit time. I don't know much about pesticides, but for an extra 36 cents per pound, I'll try it out. I don't know if I feel healthier, or if I just think I should. Organic milk... Yummy. And don't get me started on the organic apples. I pay a tad more for them, but they're leaps and bounds better than the difference in the bananas.

There are a lot of people who think people who buy organics are stupid and throwing their money away. What did my brother in law's girlfriend tell me last Christmas? Nitrates are nitrates, ammonia is ammonia, doesn't matter where it comes from. Personally, I think that origin doesn't matter, but if a style of farming requires no pesticides, it can't hurt me any. May even do me some good!

NPR had a story about pig farms that stopped using antibiotics and moved to much cleaner environments. In the end, the cost of cleaning up the pig sties and sterilizing the environment was lower than the cost of antibiotics! Talk about more efficient for the environment! Similar with rice farms in the Far East. Farmers who can't afford the pesticides and high tech fertilizers are moving organic -- and getting paid double for 30% lower yields.

Organics aren't just for kooks, and if you go to a standard grocery store, you won't learn anything. Organics are BLOODY expensive at Safeway / Fry's / Albertsons / HEB / Price Chopper / Hannaford. Maybe there's a farmer's market or a Whole Foods near you.

Stay tuned, next I'll rant about how much Quorn tastes and feels like real chicken breast but is made out of mushrooms.