[Sosfbay-discuss] whole foods boycott side effects

[Tian Harter]

A small operation that only has a few farmworkers that stay with the 
family for years and years can be MUCH better then the kind of growers
that are totally industrial about it. Being a farmer is tough, and 
unless you have a lucrative crop like marijuana to bring up the $/acre
average it's really very hard to get any money at all out of it. That's
the same problem that drove the small farmers in the south to tobacco.

I wish you had been there when this woman explained to me about the
organic "wink wink" farmers of California's north coast. She always
had plenty of weed to spread around at statewide Green Party meetings.
I miss her...

There are some farmers at the farmers market that do everything 
themselves. Literally, it's a family operation in those cases.

It the Milk Pail progressive? Well, Judy that worked there for a very 
long time and might still do so was part of my Grandmother's church,
and in '91 she was one of my biggest customers for MEND YOUR FUELISH 
WAYS stickers. I know that since then the original owner sold out to
some Russians, and since then they have vastly expanded their direct
from the wholesaler that gets stuff from who knows where vegetables.
I know nothing about the politics of the new owners. They keep selling
food for a living in what has to be an EXTREMELY competitive market, so
they've got something going for their politics, pragmatically speaking.

eden wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 21:39, Tian Harter <tnharter at aceweb.com> wrote:
>> For me boycotting whole paycheck is business as usual. They charge
>> too much in my opinion. That's why I go to the farmers market for just
>> about everything I can. Do the vendors provide health care? Probably
>> not for many of them, but they work for themselves, which is good enough
>> for me.
> 
>    I agree that going to Farmer's Markets and using CSAs are the
> "correct" solution. But "... they work for themselves"? I don't think
> that the farmworkers are usually considered as part of the "family".
> 
>> Mountain View's Milk Pail Dairy has a good bulk food section.
> 
>    Are they "progressive"?
> 
>> So does Molly Stones.
> 
>    I have boycotted Mollie Stone's ever since they stole the
> California Avenue store from the Palo Alto CoOp, essentially nailing
> the coffin on Coops for the last decade or two on the Peninsula.
> 
>    I agree with the NADER statement that boycotts should be very well
> targeted or you'd have to become self-sufficient.
> 
There are lots of places where you can get food. Mi Pueblo probably
needs more of my food dollars. They are much closer than Whole Paycheck.
Maybe I should go there more often. Yeah, I'm not boycotting anybody.
I'm doing affirmative action on the Latino food stores. That's it!
-- 
Tian
http://tian.greens.org
On a window sill of Mountain View's city hall sits a yellow rubber duck.
On the breast of the duck is this black text: "City of Mountain View".