When Wal­mart announced in April that it was intro­duc­ing the Wild Oats brand of organ­ic food prod­ucts in 2,000 stores, some food-jus­tice advo­cates grew excit­ed. In U.S. News & World Report, one writer praised Wal­mart for embrac­ing ​“sus­tain­able prod­ucts and sus­tain­able sourc­ing.” The Guardian declared that Wal­mart was pro­vid­ing low-income shop­pers with ​“an organ­ic option they can afford.”

Much of the organic food found in supermarkets is now being grown overseas, and it's largely a mystery as to where or under what conditions.

Oth­ers fear Walmart’s his­to­ry spells trou­ble for organ­ics. Since the 1980s,

Wal­mart has rev­o­lu­tion­ized the U.S. econ­o­my from a ​“push” sys­tem, in which man­u­fac­tur­ers deter­mined what was sold on store shelves, to a ​“pull” sys­tem, in which retail­ers set the terms. Wal­mart has induced its sup­pli­ers, includ­ing icon­ic com­pa­nies such as Huffy Corp (mak­er of Huffy bicy­cles), Levi Strauss & Co. and Mas­ter Lock, to relo­cate fac­to­ries and jobs to impov­er­ished coun­tries while skimp­ing on the qual­i­ty of their goods. Crit­ics wor­ry the Arkansas-based retail­er will ​“Wal­mart” organ­ic food, push­ing farms to relo­cate to unreg­u­lat­ed regions abroad while under­min­ing organ­ic stan­dards at home.

Wal­mart told the New York Times its new line of organ­ics will remove ​“the pre­mi­um asso­ci­at­ed with organ­ic gro­ceries” so that they were ​“priced the same as sim­i­lar non-organ­ic brand-name goods.” Mark Kas­tel, co-founder of the Cor­nu­copia Insti­tute, a Wis­con­sin-based farm pol­i­cy research group, and own­er of a 160-acre organ­ic farm used to pas­ture beef cat­tle, allows that this is one pos­si­bil­i­ty. He says Walmart’s mas­tery of sup­ply-chain logis­tics, which enables it to bring more goods to mar­ket cheap­er and faster than any oth­er com­pa­ny, could ​“expand the avail­abil­i­ty of organ­ic food in the Unit­ed States.” That could low­er costs for shop­pers, cre­ate more demand for organ­ic farm­ers and spur price reduc­tions at Whole Foods, the lead­ing nation­al health-food chain derid­ed as ​“Whole Pay­check” for the high price of many of its organ­ic offer­ings. But Kas­tel thinks it’s more like­ly Wal­mart will under­mine organ­ics. ​“If Wal­mart [push­es organ­ic food] at the expense of organ­ic farm­ers,” he says, ​“then every­one loses.”

Green-washed organics

Walmart’s expan­sion into organ­ic turf is just the lat­est chap­ter in the evo­lu­tion of organ­ic food from a fringe fan­cy of back-to-the-land enthu­si­asts to a $35-bil­lion-a-year indus­try. Near­ly two-thirds of Amer­i­cans today say they ​“some­times” pur­chase organ­ic food and bev­er­ages, which are grown with­out arti­fi­cial or sewage-based fer­til­iz­ers, pes­ti­cides, genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied organ­isms and most uses of hor­mones and antibiotics.

Organ­ic does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean ​“good food,” in the Michael Pol­lan sense of a bowl of fresh veg­eta­bles and whole grains grown free of indus­tri­al tox­ins. These days, the organ­ic label is more like­ly to be slapped on bags of bar­beque pota­to chips than box­es of dirt-caked beets. But the intent of the organ­ic move­ment is to sup­port region­al food sys­tems, con­nect con­sumers direct­ly to food pro­duc­ers, min­i­mize food-borne ill­ness­es and pes­ti­cide-based dis­ease among farm­work­ers, con­sumers and chil­dren, and enable fam­i­ly farm­ers to make a liv­ing while act­ing as stew­ards of water­ways and soil, wildlife and agri­cul­tur­al bio­di­ver­si­ty. Food-jus­tice advo­cates fear that if Wal­mart nabs a big­ger slice of the organ­ic pie, it will under­mine these principles.

That’s what hap­pened when Wal­mart first entered the organ­ic mar­ket in 2006, hop­ing to lure in con­sumers will­ing to spend more on food than its base of cash-strapped shop­pers. Kas­tel says the attempt ​“failed mis­er­ably,” but Wal­mart did expand its organ­ic line to more than 1,600 gro­cery items and became a lead­ing retail­er of organ­ic milk.

How­ev­er, much of the milk was ​“green-washed,” claims Cor­nu­copia. Account­ing for one-third of U.S. gro­cery sales, Wal­mart needs huge economies of scale to feed its sup­ply chain. For organ­ic milk, it relied on agribusi­ness­es like Hori­zon Milk and Auro­ra Dairy. Kas­tel says that because these dairies often con­fine 4,000 cows to pens in a sin­gle facil­i­ty, it’s impos­si­ble to pro­vide so many cows with pas­ture, as required under fed­er­al organ­ic guide­lines, while milk­ing them mul­ti­ple times a day. Cor­nu­copia has filed com­plaints against Horizon’s for­mer par­ent com­pa­ny, Dean Foods, accus­ing it of run­ning huge oper­a­tions that vio­late organ­ic stan­dards, using con­ven­tion­al­ly raised heifers and adding ille­gal addi­tives to its milk. Cor­nu­copia alleges that such prac­tices enabled Hori­zon to under­cut small organ­ic dairies and push them out of busi­ness, all of which Dean and Hori­zon denied. A 2008 report by Cor­nu­copia claims that Wal­mart sourced its organ­ic goods from ​“major agribusi­ness … with lit­tle or no his­to­ry of man­u­fac­tur­ing organ­ic food,” as well as ​“for­eign sources, and domes­tic indus­tri­al-scale farms.” Also alarm­ing, Walmart’s new organ­ic ven­ture appears to involve some sleight of hand. Kas­tel says Walmart’s announce­ment is ​“inten­tion­al­ly con­fus­ing” because ​“Wild Oats is a mix between organ­ic and con­ven­tion­al [foods]. It’s a dis­ser­vice to con­sumers.” Phil Howard, who stud­ies the organ­ic-food indus­try and teach­es com­mu­ni­ty sus­tain­abil­i­ty at Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty, says Walmart’s influ­ence is main­ly indi­rect. For exam­ple, it wouldn’t explic­it­ly tell com­pa­nies to relo­cate to East Asian sweat­shops or cheap­en the qual­i­ty of goods, but relent­less cost-cut­ting left few oth­er options. When ven­dors did not fol­low Walmart’s dic­tates, it’s been known to attack their liveli­hood by out­sourc­ing pro­duc­tion of the goods it desired.

Big busi­ness has oth­er cor­rupt­ing effects on organ­ic food. Over the past 10 years, stan­dards have been watered down, USDA reg­u­la­tions have fal­tered, and out­right cheat­ing has occurred. In 2006, Cor­nu­copia caught Wal­mart hang­ing organ­ic food signs in gro­cery sec­tions that con­tained non-organ­ic foods. Howard says the ero­sion of stan­dards is attrib­ut­able to ​“con­stant pres­sure over the years from big manufacturers.”

Opaque outsourcing

Anoth­er trou­bling issue is that the acreage of organ­ic farm­land in the Unit­ed States is unable to sup­ply the cur­rent demand for organ­ic food. That means much of the organ­ic food found in super­mar­kets is now being grown over­seas. Giv­en how the food indus­try oper­ates, it’s large­ly a mys­tery as to where or under what con­di­tions. Coun­try-of-ori­gin laws to dis­close food sources are weak, and com­pa­nies can claim sup­pli­ers are ​“trade secrets.” Howard says Wild Oats will exac­er­bate this trend because it’s a pri­vate label. ​“It’s not trans­par­ent at all,” he says. ​“It gives the retail­ers a lot of pow­er, and Wal­mart can change sup­pli­ers with­out even hav­ing to change the label.”

That was the con­cern in 2006. Ron­nie Cum­mins, nation­al direc­tor of the Organ­ic Con­sumers Asso­ci­a­tion, told the New York Times at the time that the megare­tail­er would wind up out­sourc­ing from ​“places like Chi­na where you’ve got very dubi­ous organ­ic stan­dards and labor con­di­tions that are con­trary to what any organ­ic con­sumer would con­sid­er equitable.”

To fore­stall this, Kas­tel advo­cates strin­gent inter­na­tion­al over­sight and more gov­ern­ment sup­port for all the ​“won­der­ful organ­ic food prod­uct sup­pli­ers all over the Unit­ed States and farm­ing fam­i­lies” who have been work­ing the land for generations.

If Wal­mart suc­ceeds at dom­i­nat­ing organ­ic, it will be a tri­umph of its enor­mous appetite for prof­it at the expense of organ­ic farm­ers, con­sumers and standards.