Frey Farms Fallacy

The commercial shows rual America and tells the heartwarming story of a woman that picked a pumpkins and sold them to a local Wal-Mart store at the age of 8. The Wal-Martians were apparently so thrilled with her pumpkin product that soon her brothers came home from college and joined the effort. Years later they sell millions of carvin' grouds to the giant retailer, and they allegedly represent a smiling, happy beacon of Wal-Mart's kind heart, a clear example of Wal-Mart support for the farmer and America. Insert waving flag image and eagle face here.

My job is to improve the nation's food supply through biotechnology. Farmers traditionally opposed to GMO technology are now very well educated in its potential and intelligent enough to see through the fear-mongering. They embrace my efforts as a likely way to save their jobs and sustain American agriculture in the long term. We are currently devising genetic alterations to help mitigate plant disease, improve quality, and make the products easier to harvest and ship.

Invariably, when I ask a grower "What is the one problem I should focus on to help you profitably produce your product?" the answer is, every time, "Get rid of Wal-Mart".

Wal-Mart is one of essentially four places where growers can sell their plant products, and they are the most steadfast in their price demands. They have plenty of farmers in Central America and China that can produce the same crops pretty cheap, and low price is all Wal-Mart is about. They tell farmers here that they'll buy crop X for $Y dollars a unit. Take it or leave it, let it rot. The cost to grow crops in America is high. Massive amounts of crops are lost to disease because we can't use the deadly chemicals growers in other countries depend upon. Labor in the U.S. is expensive, even with low-wage migrant workers. Restrictions, limits, laws, and protocols make farming in America a constant battle for a thin margin.

Wal-Mart is a key player in the price fixing and offers growers slightly more than it costs the grower to produce the product. The growers have to take it, or their product will rot on the dock.

This is not the happy pastoral presented in Frey Farms propaganda. A quick on-line check shows that the Frey Farms story is credible. However, from my experience they are being paraded as the example of farmer-retailer synergy, but they are absolutely an exception to the rule. If pumpkins weren't so heavy it probably would be cheaper to ship them in from abroad, and Wal-Mart wouldn't give Frey Farms a second look. Just wait!

Wal-Mart is a main player in the grocery industry and they decide the price. Long gone are the days where a grower could shop their product out to 100 potential buyers and sell to the one with the best offer. Instead, they are slaves to corporate giants that buy cheap and sell to the consumer at a comparable price, pocketing the profits and using them to forward company expansion and even fund political agendas.

Please think wisely before shopping at Wal-Mart. The job you save may be your own.

(If you want more specifics or details please email me. I'd like to keep my real identity detached from this via search engines)