I wanted to share a recent article by a long time partner at Farmers To You, Otto Scharmer. Otto and his wife Katrin have been partners since the very beginnings of Farmers To You and I have always had deep respect for his perspective and work on matters of economics, organizations and community. The recent buy out of Whole Foods by Amazon is the latest step in the further consolidation and scaling of our industrial food system, and while many food industry experts are hailing it as a very positive move – I cannot agree. Otto does an amazing job articulating how this will most likely lead to a further degrading of our food system and even of the laudable if under-realized mission that Whole Foods has worked to fulfill over the years. In short most small to medium scale Organic farmers (the scale at which the best food for the planet and us is produced) cannot maintain a sustainable relationship with Whole Foods due to the mismatch in scale. Amazon will make this even worse than it already is.
4.0 Lab: Inventing the Future of Food, Finance, Health, Ed, & Management
The path to a functional and sustainable food system is through collaboration – and this last spring the collaboration we experienced with all of you – our farmers, our families and our staff and investors was such a perfect affirmation of this call to action that it bolstered my belief that we can build this new model and share it with the country.
Please comment and share this around. Your activism and collaboration are creating a radical and beautiful regional food system that is an example of what is possible when we create it with the health of all the stakeholders as the goal – families, farmers, the Earth and our communities.
With Gratitude,
Greg
