that’s very different. Now there is a
deep commitment and a passion
because I know the world’s better off
with this product than without this
product. I know that the people
around me are breathing life into the
same vision that I’m breathing life
into, and that’s why White Wave was as
successful as it was. We were deeply
committed to the whole philosophy
and that gave us the perseverance to
keep going.
OP: Back at the Organic Summit in
June, you spoke in a session titled, “Is
this the organic we wanted?” So is this
the organic you wanted? What do you
think of the evolution so far? What
have we done well and what could we
do better?
Demos: I think it’s exactly what we
wanted and it’s exactly where we want
to be. We don’t want to lose sight of
the fact that life and everything we’re doing is a process. We’ve gone this far
through a lot of creativity, spirit and passion but is it flawed? Of course—I
haven’t seen anything on the planet that’s not. But we set out to draw attention and make mainstream the concept of organic, and we did that, didn’t we?
The question is where we want to be now? Well I don’t want to stop and I
don’t think any of the graduates from my class want to either. I think we all
want to further this concept and take it into even deeper levels of society, making it not only part of their conscious awareness, but part of their everyday life.
Also, going back to right livelihood, “good for everyone” means that in
addition to demonstrating social responsibility and environmental stewardship, the business must be profitable. You can’t just be a bleeding heart liberal;
it doesn’t work. You need to be a very effective capitalist. If you are, you amass
a great resource called profit and you get to allocate that back to your entire
value chain—your employees, community and charities you support. We live in
the world that honors economics and money, and there’s no way of escaping
this. It’s the common consciousness that we have around us, and if we don’t
know how to work with it, we’re just ineffective, we’re dismissed—so go out
and make a whole bunch of money. I don’t have any question about the good
intentions of these people; most of those in the organic industry really do
want to change the world. Just get money into their hands and they’ll do
good. Everybody will have a different passion—helping the homeless or starving people in Africa or furthering environmental causes. So, my message in
this is: be smart, make money, and figure out how to do good with it, but don’t
wag your finger and pontificate from the sidelines. It doesn’t do any good.
OREGON
TILTH
®
A Full Line of
Organic & Cage Free
Eggs & Egg Products
Shell, Dry, Liquid/Frozen, ESL
Industrial, Food Service,
& Retail Packaging Available
“Eggs Produced the Way Nature Intended!”
Farmer’s Organic Foods
International, LLC
W12599 E. Fees Rd.
Alma Center, WI 54611 USA;
Tel/Fax: 715-964-1317/-2017;
Web: www.farmersorganicfoods.com
