As a free-thinker, I'm always open to evidence that "evil corporations" can evolve to positive policies and practices. My bourbon buddy (and author extraordinaire), Matt Dellinger, sent over a piece recently from the March issue of the Atlantic Magazine that, once again, helps me see some hope for the future of Walmart. (I highly encourage you to check out the full article here, as it includes a fantastic, gourmet face-off between the wares of Whole Foods [Paycheck] and those of Walmart. The term "smackdown" is also in the title, which is obviously fabulous.) If you hadn't already heard, Walmart has been in the organic food game for a while. Now, they've thrown their hat into the "sourcing local" ring in a pretty serious way. Walmart has a new program called "Heritage Agriculture" and it works like this:
Heritage Agriculture will encourage farms within a day's drive of one of its warehouses to grow crops that now take days to arrive in trucks from states like Florida and California. In many cases the crops once flourished in the places where Walmart is encouraging their revival, but vanished because of Big Agriculture competition.
So yeah, I like the sound of that. As the article rightfully highlights, Walmart is driven to do this to maximize profit. Whatever their motives, Walmart has some serious obstacles to sort out in their drive to source local.
The obstacles for both small farm and big store are many: how much a relatively small farmer can grow and how reliably, given short growing seasons; how to charge a competitive price when the farmer's expenses are so much higher than those of industrial farms; and how to get produce from farm to warehouse.
It seems Walmart is consulting with quite an impressive posse to figure out solutions to these challenges, including the Environmental Defense Fund and the Applied Sustainability Center at the University of Arkansas. Some of the solutions are clear, in that
Even if the price Walmart pays for local produce is slightly higher than what it would pay large growers, savings in transport and the ability to order smaller quantities at a time can make up the difference. Contracting directly with farmers...can help eliminate middlemen, who sometimes misrepresent prices.
In the coming months, I'll be watching this program develop with a critical eye, while simultaneously cheering them on. I can't say I'll be heading over to my nearest Walmart to fetch my local, organic wares, but mainly because I have other choices. I probably won't, however, be faulting my family in rural Missouri for doing so. You know what I say, Folks Gotta Eat.
