Green Options

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One hurdle that many companies selling green goods face is convincing consumers to pay the difference between conventional and green or organic products. Recent health scares and increased interest in saving the planet aside, a recent article quoting a LOHAS survey states:

…many consumers’ purchasing patterns are affected by the phenomenon of trading up: a willingness to pay more for a product that is emotionally satisfying in terms of the perceived quality, performance, brand image, and the stature it provides.

Things could change.

As prices for a wide variety of commodities hit levels not seen before, the cost of everyday items from food to furniture and gasoline to gadgets is rising also. This is, of course, putting a bit of a strain on consumer’s pocketbooks.

For someone who loves information, the internet can be both a wonderful temptation and and a hopeless disappointment. The good, the bad, the well-researched and the total garbage all sit side-by-side out there in cyberspace. Information on food and farming is plentiful, but not all of it is accurate, informative, or useful. One site that I have found is really worth keeping an eye on is the Organic Consumer’s Association.

If you are interested in things like organic standards, genetically engineered foods, food safety, worker rights, fair trade, hunger, supporting small farms or nearly any other current food/farming issue, take a look at this web site. The Organic Consumer’s Association was started in 1998

My dear blog buddy, Yarny Old Kim, happens to live near my current hood, but is relatively new to the area, so we went on a local food gathering field trip last weekend.

First stop was to our local ‘bee lady’ Landi @ Gooserock Farm for wonderful local honey and bee-related products — some of the most luscious soaps and beeswax-based cosmetic products. Gooserock Farm is in Montville, NJ but if you’re not local, you can buy from their website (see link above).

Second stop was the local egg guy (I really don’t know his name!) to play with the free-roaming chickens and pick up some delicious fresh local organic eggs. Well, we were playing, the Pennsylvania Reds may have been more disturbed than excited to see us. Other than the colorful roosters, all the chickens had these big red butts, which were kind of amusing (see image above).

If you’re like me, you’ve been watching the skyrocketing costs of both fuel and food and wondering where you’ll be cutting back. For many people, it’s food. Sometimes, eating well can mean eating expensively. They don’t call it “Whole Paycheck” for nothing.

I’m here to tell you there are a few tips and tricks to keeping that grocery bill down while still keeping ethics and the environment in mind. It takes a little more planning, some flexibility and creativity, but you can shave big bucks off your bill if you keep them in mind.

At the Investors’ Circle Conference in San Francisco, the Plenary Session of the May 7th Education Day was titled, “Is Organic the Next Clean Tech?” Can organic foods (and other products) can attract major investment capital, in the way clean technology has in the past few years, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.
I am not sure whether the answer is a resounding yes, but panelist Walter Robb, Co-President and COO of Whole Foods Market announced that Whole Foods will be investing in small supplier companies, and all of the panelists were positive about the potential of investing in organics.

Kristen Groos Richmond, Co-founder/CEO of Revolution Foods, who has a wonderful if improbable company, which I wrote about before, can speak first-hand about the ways entrepreneurs can attract professional investors while pursuing goals such as connecting local farmers and consumers.

Okay, I’m on a sweet potato binge these days . . .

This has become a staple of at least one weekend breakfast or brunch meal every week.

Serves 4 (but, I usually double it for our Sunday family crowd)

Ingredients

3 medium sweet potatoes – cubed in ½” pieces
½ medium red onion – cut into smaller pieces
1 red pepper – cut into smaller pieces
3 scallions – chopped
1 clove garlic – mashed
2 – 4 Tbs. Olive oil
1 tsp. Cumin
Crushed red pepper to taste
Salt & Pepper to taste
2 Tbs. Cilantro

8 Eggs – Over easy (2 per serving)

Providence, Rhode Island— The Ocean State might be the size of some counties in other parts of the country, but it’s big on going green. A local food co-op in Providence has been bringing fresh, local produce to its capital city dwellers for nigh on ten years now.

Urban greens is a food cooperative on Providence’s West Side with a mission to provide simple, direct access to affordable, local, natural products and to offer a community-based alternative to corporate supermarkets. The cooperative is guided by its values of equal access, local agriculture, local economy, co-operative principles, community partnerships and social entrepreneurship.

The Natural Marketing Institute just released their latest report on the state of the organic food industry…in other words…who’s going organic. It turns out more than half of us are buying organic foods at least sometimes.

But, how you are seen by companies who market organic foods depends on how much you buy.

Are you a:

1) DEVOTED (16% of shoppers) - the most committed to organic and its ideals … most likely to have changed your lifestyle to integrate organic. The more a category is used, the more it has to be organic.

What do Coca-Cola, Kellogg and Dean Foods have in common, besides being marketers of some of the most popular food items found on grocery shelves? They all own organic brands.

And they are not alone. Most of the top 25 food producers own one or more organic brands and are rapidly developing their own.

Here’s a short list of some of the most popular organic brands and their corporate parents :

Odwalla (Coca Cola)

Morningstar ( Kellogg)

Horizon (Dean Foods)

Boca Foods ( Kraft)

Earth’s Best (Heinz)

Cascadian Farms (General Mills)

Naked Juice (Pepsi)

Stop in at most diners around the country and each breakfast menu reads nearly the same: Two eggs, toast, bacon. Pancakes with sausage. Cereal. Add grits, if you’re in the South. Perhaps a variation on toast in other parts of the country.

Despite the fact that we run Inn Serendipity B&B and “breakfast” is part of our business, we find the average American breakfast is, well, boring. With the same old, same old

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Today let’s talk about the merits of turnips, rutabagas, and kohlrabi. Not to mention bok choy and burdock root. Hello? Anyone out there? Please don’t panic and run away at the mention of vegetables that don’t fall into the standard pre-cut, ready for stir-fry frozen bag you see at the supermarket.

As environmental stewards, we’re used to taking the path less traveled to make a difference: pulling out the

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