Whole Food Case Study

1. “grocery lit” is a term coined by Michael Pollan and is a reference to the literature presented in grocery stores. He argues that supermarkets have developed a new form of literature that aims towards getting the consumer to buy a certain product. By using this form of persuasion, grocery stores hope to create a relationship between the consumer, the farmer and the product. This relationship takes the form of a story that has some real basis and some exaggerated facts in order to enhance the possible benefit of a good way of cultivating organically. Pollan argues that Whole foods “offers the most cutting-edge grocery lit” due to the abundance of organic food. This large choice needs to have a catalyst of some sort to sell and in this case …show more content…
Gene Khan is the founder of Cascadian farm. Most Earth fares of Whole foods stores have TVs that display commercials and “stories” and he is the at the head of the company responsible for that. He took part in the hippie movement in the 1960 which is in part a result of the Vietnam war and he had no experience in agriculture. His inexperience was noticed in the first years when he had failed crops, but his aim was to produce and have an organic way of farming. The hippie movement wanted to get back to the simple things in life and a closer aspect to nature. By retransmitting that in his farming techniques, he created a huge company that enabled the development of organic food on a large scale. By being now part of General Mills, he doesn’t have as much authority anymore over his crops and the process of producing what they called organic food has been altered since his debuts. Now these companies produce such on a large scale that there is a contradiction between the values of organic food and the process it takes to feed a large amount of people. Joel Salatin criticizes this process due to this contradiction and what he calls the organic empire. Of course, Khan has done an amazing job of promoting and moving organic food in supermarkets by using industrial food advertisement techniques, but the end result is not considered organic anymore by certain …show more content…
Pollan says that industrial organic food production is even more precarious because he believes that this system is even more based on lies than the usual industrial system. There are meanings and things that farmers still don’t want us to see like for example proclaiming that chickens have more space to live than non-organic chicken. It might be true in the absolute, but in general, chickens are too scare to get out due to the horrible treatment they get from farmers. The system is precarious due to the heavy use of lies and twist in the stories companies tell us. By using grocery lit or the supermarket pastoral, they tell us this beautiful story of a free-range chicken that runs in the prairie and is happy while in reality it still is in the same space with a small door in the back of the complex to get out, but most of them don’t because of fear. They are still slaughtered in seven weeks which shows the industrial aspect of the business. Yes, industrial organic has inherently become a business due to the high demand. This phenomenon is directly in contradiction with its originals values, but it doesn’t seem to bother a lot of people. Petaluma farms are a perfect example of industrial organic food production due to the possible better treatment of them, but at the end it is all about the story presented and not the overall ethos of producing organic food in a sustainable way as it was supposed to