[lbo-talk] Re: WMT goes orgo

[jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net]

Very little of the demand for organic food comes from hippies or their ilk. Not none of the demand, just very little 
and they are not a major concern to most in the industry.
Hippies, or more importantly denouncing hippies, seems to be of more importance to this list than it is to any of 
the companies in the organic food supply chain.
Organic food is seen as premium food and is for a large percentage of the market a class signifier. It is seen as 
a premium brand as much as anything else.
It is also heavily purchased by individuals who are paranoid about toxins in the food supply. Just as they are 
worried about cancer caused by high voltage power lines. They are more frequently right-wing liberatarians 
than they are hippies.
With few exceptions most purchasers of organic food do not glorify labor and are more than happy to have low 
wage Mexican migrants pick the food so the price isn't any more exorbidant than it already is. They care not if 
the farm is simple and idealic or not.
The people enraged by WM selling organic are far more concerned about eroding the value of the premium 
label than they are worried about any loss of quaintness.
The concerns you write of are extremely marginal.

John Thornton

On 28 Aug 2006 at 10:37, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:


> [WS:] I agree.  I thing much of the demand for the organic food is not
> really about food, but about hippie "back to earth" nostalgia glorifying
> manual labor and simple farm life.  The same nostalgia that brought us the
> Cultural Revolution and the Killing Fields.  Since Wal Mart is the
> anti-thesis of this quaint simplicity, this enrages the hippies. 
> 
> Wojtek