What we do NOT carry in the Farm Store

I thought you might be interested in what we do NOT carry, and why.

There are several categories of “not in our Farm Store,” so today I’ll focus on just one (otherwise this email would take an hour to read, and I know ain’t nobody got time for that.).

So, one thing that we will NEVER sell in the farm store is: Anything owned by the giant corporations that, and this is putting it nicely, would prefer you to have bad health.

Not to mention the fact that money goes up the chain and out of small communities and all the money and power just becomes increasingly concentrated and what do we know about that? Absolute power corrupts absolutely. I have to even be wary of well-known “organic” and “natural” brands because many of them are now owned by giant corporations. 

For example:
Kraft owns Primal Kitchen
Garden of Life, owned by Nestle
Burt’s Bees, owned by Clorox
Toms of Maine by Colgate
Applegate by Hormel
Honest Tea AND Zikka Coconut Water by Coke

And Epic Provisions, Annie’s Organic, and Larabar are all owned by General Mills.

And I just discovered that Kraft bought Primal Kitchen a couple of days ago. Gah! So, we won’t be carrying that anymore.

This is a perfect example of why it’s so hard to ensure the products we’re selling are legitimately good for you. Mergers and buy-outs happen every day.

We all know that once an organic/natural company gets bought out, it's only a matter of time until it's whittled down to be the same as all the other edible foodstuffs that make up the Standard American Diet (SAD).

And not only are brands destroyed once they are eaten up by large corporations, but the individual products are likely degrading over time as well. This is something else I did not know until just last year.

For example, I had a class with a former consultant for Digiorno pizza and I learned that every year the cost to produce a pizza needs to be cut by some small-ish percentage (don't remember the exact number anymore).

The cost of ingredients isn’t going down, so that means the quality of the ingredients has been slowly and consistently compromised to the point where it's no longer the product you thought it was.

Digiorno pizzas were probably great when they first came out. But over time, like the frog in the boiling water, the state of it grew worse and worse until now, it’s no longer recognizable compared to what it was at the beginning.

Well, we're hoping to do the opposite here at the Farm. We want to continue improving our products and supporting producers who care about uncompromising quality, the environment, and improving your health (and life).

So, the store is still in its infancy but as we mature, we plan to get as local and small as possible. Some things are there. Some things we are seeing there is a demand for but it doesn't exist locally, so we are working to create a new market.

There are some local things we are not going to carry just because we don't think we can sell it or that we can’t sell it fast enough, like local veggies and dairy (I try to not support ultra-pasteurized) or anything with a crazy short shelf life.

So, those are some of the products we will never carry in the Farm Store, and for good reason. I’ll tell you about some of the others in another email, because we’ve about run out of time for today. 🙂

Oh, and we can’t carry something in the Farm Store if we don’t know it exists! So if you know of any local-to-the-Farm producers that would be a good fit (and it’s something you want to see in the store), let us know!