ice cream !!!

[jac]

we have an advertising campaign goin on over here for “Ben an Jerrys” ice cream.. is this just another big company using clever marketing or is it indeed a decent operation as the ad says ??..it says its made in Vermont so just wondered …. John

[goodcompanion]

As ice cream companies go I suppose you could do worse. B and J started out with very high ideals, became very successful, and ultimately sold out to an international food conglomerate several years ago. Supposedly the day to day operations are unchanged and certainly the factories in-state are still big sources of employment, but the high ideals are gone forever. What started out as an ice cream to change the world, in the end, just makes you, and the corporation that sells it to you, fat.

I used to live in St. Albans where the largest plant is. They gave away 3 pints of seconds to their workers every day. Of course nobody can eat 3 pints of that kind of ice cream per day and survive very long. So most turn it down. I knew some people that hoarded it in basements, and in fact there was a weird pseudo black market in seconds. Large quantities were exchanged for day to day goods and services, like an oil change for 100 pints of karamel sutra with the caramel cores off-center.

[Michael Colby]

Ah, Ben & Jerry’s — a subject near and dear to my activist heart. I waged a battle with them in the late 1990s while I was running Food & Water. We were putting a spotlight on the herbicide Atrazine (a carcinogen that is forbidden in organic agriculture) and thought we could get one of the state’s largest users of it (via its farmers), Ben & Jerry’s, to phase it out and go organic. To make a long story short, we got our asses kicked. Worse, to this day, Ben & Jerry’s is still not organic — relying, instead, on the meaningless “natural” label.

Here’s a link to a more detailed version of my encounters with Ben & Jerry: http://www.broadsides.org/food-waters-memory-lane-the-ben-jerrys-campaign.htm

[jac]

Jeez… just goes to show the power of clever advertising Michael.. thanks for posting this..
John

[goodcompanion]

Right on. Michael, my estimation of you just went up.

I’ve long believed that B and J were more part of the problem than anyone around me was willing to accept. Our collective willingness to be “greenwashed” is pretty high, I guess.

Things like this much on my mind as I am attending a sort of alternative farming entrepreneurship conference shortly. Most of me believes that capital always works to the detriment of sustainability in the end. On the other hand a total lack of it isn’t so great either.

[Carl Russell]

Ben & Jerry’s was always an exercise in business management strategy. There’s no doubt those two were hippyish, and had some appreciation for the so-called social bottom line, but they were straight up from the beginning that they just used ice cream as the basis for a scheme. They found a great recipe, made it seem better than it was by sharing some details about its obscure source. Then they made it “The people’s” ice cream by letting customers pick the M&M’s or whatever they wanted to mix in. The social responsibility was also a value added product they tacked on to market to the yuppie consumers prevalent at the time….. but in the long run it was an advertising and management project, selling franchises to build grassroots followings, etc, all the while building the business on to higher and higher levels…….

I agree they should have put their money where their mouths were, but they really didn’t have to, they got rich anyway. I think it is kind of disingenuous for folks to find fault with them…. I mean yeah their shtick was misleading, but as long as I have known them (1980 in the small service station-turned-scoop shop with 5 gallon ice cream makers) they have been honest and open about the building of the business model. I may have a jump on most who only know them as a hugely successful supposedly socially responsible business, but both B&J came into a business class I was taking at UVM back then, and they laid it out basically as it happened.

That is not to say that I agree with the capitalization of mega businesses, nor do I endorse profiting from the use of poisons, artificial colors, or garnering market share with misleading greenwashing. Actually I think it sucks, but they are not alone….. Stonyfield Yogurt is another one….. Sierra Club……

Oh well, I don’t eat much of their product anymore, but it tastes as good or better than most…..

Carl

[dlskidmore]

@goodcompanion 29831 wrote:

Our collective willingness to be “greenwashed” is pretty high, I guess.

…Most of me believes that capital always works to the detriment of sustainability in the end. On the other hand a total lack of it isn’t so great either.

I always find myself an outsider to either pole of these arguments. My father is an energy conservation engineer, not because he’s “green” but because he’s a cheapskate, and hates to waste money on fuel he doesn’t have to. I’m in the same boat, hating waste but not being a total environmentalist. I think the green movement needs to be more self-aware of what’s really preventing waste, and what’s just internally generated misinformation and marketing hype. Like the window farm people that think they are going to save the planet by trucking purified hydroponic fertilizers into the city and running a small growing operation that is dependent on electricity generated at a coal burning power plant. Or the guy I knew that proudly ordered his lawn mower from Switzerland that has all the same “green” features as my reel mower I picked up at the local hardware store. (He consoled himself by the end of the conversation that he had probably gotten a higher quality one for his extra money and transportation overhead.
) It drives me nuts some of the things I see, although mostly I bite my tongue because people like their happy delusion that everything at the “natural” market is better for the planet and that their dollars are doing real good in the world.

[goodcompanion]

As Don Hewes very aptly put it, none of us will really know what sustainability is until it comes up behind us and bangs us over the head. Or words very much to that effect.

I’m very doubtful that goods or services billed as green, sustainable, socially conscious, what-have-you, sold through the mass market, will ever have much of an impact on the trajectory of the culture.

Possibly the only way to truly redirect the nature of business is to cut capital out of the equation and engage in reciprocal exchanges on an extremely local level.

[Michael Colby]

I almost always agree with you, Carl. But to say that it is “disingenuous to find fault” with Ben & Jerry’s seems a bit odd coming from you. Just because they’re nice guys who have been honest about bullshitting people into thinking the purchase of a pint of ice cream will lead to peace doesn’t mean we should look the other way on their use of chemicals and farming techniques that are very, very harmful.

I would argue that it is disingenuous to believe in organic agriculture and turn a blind eye toward Vermont’s largest non-organic entity — Ben & Jerry’s. But, then again, I never got a Ben & Jerry’s grant. Only a job offer from Ben if I would just “shut up” about their atrazine addiction. Oh my, another bad career choice….

[dlskidmore]

@goodcompanion 29842 wrote:

Possibly the only way to truly redirect the nature of business is to cut capital out of the equation and engage in reciprocal exchanges on an extremely local level.

Money is just an easy accounting system. I give you four dollars for your goods, and I’m saying that society owes you four dollars worth of goods and services for what you did for me. The problem is that our current dollar was broken when they got rid of the gold standard, and started printing money to lend out to banks. Easy credit throws everything out of whack, throwing the cost of expensive items like land in an upward spiral that no-one can afford with cash any more.

Someone smart figured out that new home building was an economic indicator, and a large group of idiots then decided to start supporting the new home building industry to make the economy look better, and wrecked the economy in the process. You can’t let the tail wag the dog. Pushing at any one economic indicator makes that economic indicator read false, it does not help the general economy. The current economy is the sum of our resources extracted and our labor provided, our future economy is the stability of what we are doing, nothing else.

Not that I care what the money standard is, the denarius was the value of a common laborer’s day. For all I care we could have a potato standard, with the value of the dollar set as two pounds of potatoes.

[Carl Russell]

Michael, I am not a B&J supporter, I just mean that people should have known all along that their initiative was more about business than it was about true social responsibility……

I didn’t mean that we shouldn’t find fault with them for their underlying lack of principle, just that no one should actually be surprised. (It was poorly worded)

And yes, I have never quite been able to justify how organizations who are supposed to be representative of VT ag actually accept B$J grants…… being on the board of one……..which I am finding even more questionable as my perspective seems to be somewhat solitary. (Sometimes working for change from the inside is actually a futile endeavor:confused:)

The point here in my mind is that allowing businesses to add value to their product by attempting to convince us that they are using our money to advance more generous objectives is really the problem. Consumers need to open their eyes. Businesses don’t owe us a frickin’ thing. If you want to be associated with solid community-based commerce, then start a farm, and go into partnership with your neighbors…… anything less is just a business model designed to part you from your money, time, and emotional well-being.

We have allowed a culture to develop where people are incapable, either through lack of skill, lack of time, or lack of motivation, of making for themselves. We have allowed a commercial sector to evolve to where all our needs can be marketed to us, including our sense of social responsibility…… what a crock:mad:.

Of course it pisses me off that they are taking advantage of our communities, but I would rather put my time into creating a successful land-based community-supporting enterprise, where I know my true needs can bet met, in cooperation with people who
share similar objectives around energy efficiency, resource protection, and human development.

Carl

[near horse]

Wow – ice cream is such an emotional topic;). IMHO – as in most issues, the black and white rarely exist in any large quantity. Thus we’re left with a huge grey continuum that is the reality. Not everyone is going to be able to or want to start a small farm but that doesn’t preclude them from wanting to support those ideals. So what do they do? What are their options in supporting those ideals with their consumer dollar? And how do they find out about those options? Usually requires marketing of some type to inform people of those options as well as a product and a place to buy said product. Remember, we just passed the 7 billion mark yesterday 🙁

I most certainly don’t fault B & J for not going “certified organic” as that is as big a scam as I’ve seen. More and more folks here are foregoing that label as they don’t need to have some inspector come and certify their practices for an exorbitant fee. They still employ those practices just don’t need someone telling them they’re doing it up to some standard or other … but that’s another story.

Regarding the whole concept of sustainability, it’s a great goal but like immortality or the perpetual motion machine, never achievable. That doesn’t mean that employing more sustainable practices isn’t a good thing but things (economies, weather, markets, life) are not static so we’re trying to reach a moving target.

I don’t buy Ben and Jerry’s because I too am a cheapskate but I don’t see any other ice cream company supporting the “Occupy” movement. Not sure I understand the Atrazine case. How/what are they using that promotes the use of atrazine? Buying milk from cows being fed alfalfa that was sprayed with atrazine?

Some of this (selling to a multinational corporation) reminds me of the complaints from locals here in Idaho about “them damn Californians” buying up land at inflated prices. These same guys are the ones selling ground at inflated prices to “them damn Californians” when they’re ready to retire.

[dlskidmore]

@near horse 29854 wrote:

Not everyone is going to be able to or want to start a small farm but that doesn’t preclude them from wanting to support those ideals. So what do they do? What are their options in supporting those ideals with their consumer dollar? And how do they find out about those options? Usually requires marketing of some type to inform people of those options as well as a product and a place to buy said product.

I’m still living on the consumer side, and generally am so tired of the hype and meaningless labels that I don’t pay extra for any silly labels in the grocery store except “local”. (Although last time I bought peaches because they were advertising local peaches, I got the wrong variety and saw the sticker when I got home proclaiming how far it had come.) I’ve heard too many stories of “cage free” chickens that are still kept in communal barns, or “pasture raised” animals that are still primarily fed corn. I do pay extra for “grass fed”, “pasture raised” or “non-certified organic” if I know the farmer, or if I know someone who knows the farmer. I got a very tasty (but hugely oversized) pastured turkey last year that way. I also like to go to the public market, and tend to select produce from tables where all the products are in-season. I’m sure the guy with banannas on the table is just a reseller, the in-season stuff I am more likely to believe was grown local even if it’s a reseller. When I buy corn, I look for the guy who came with a pickup truck full of corn who’s only there during corn season. When I buy apples, I buy the variety that I know they will run out of quickly and probably didn’t come from the cold storage unit. Whenever I’m out in the country, I like to stop at farm stands that I pass by. (Hey, can you leave them open until after the big local attraction closes? The tomatoes I see on my way to the attraction won’t keep well in the car all day.) There are little things you can do as a consumer without reading advertising hype, but the more urban you are the harder this is. People in NYC pretty much have to take a little country vacation to get to know any farmers that are not at the overcrowded farmer’s markets.

[goodcompanion]

@near horse 29854 wrote:

Regarding the whole concept of sustainability, it’s a great goal but like immortality or the perpetual motion machine, never achievable. That doesn’t mean that employing more sustainable practices isn’t a good thing but things (economies, weather, markets, life) are not static so we’re trying to reach a moving target.

I kind of have to disagree with this. Just because we live in a time when the word is so misused doesn’t mean that it is an impossible concept. You have past civilizations that have had peaks and troughs with dynastic cycles, like Egypt, Peru, and China, but on the whole have had durable agricultural systems that continued much in the same vein for thousands of years without significant degradation. If we can’t achieve this anymore, that is a problem with us, not with the idea of sustainability.

However if by “sustainability” we are actually talking about some way for the entire global culture to morph and become sustainable, and presumably one that doesn’t entail the planet’s 7 billion dying back to a population of a few hundred million, then I agree. The word is a waste of time for those who see the problem at hand, and false hope for those who are in the dark.

[dlskidmore]

@goodcompanion 29860 wrote:

I kind of have to disagree with this. Just because we live in a time when the word is so misused doesn’t mean that it is an impossible concept.

Sustainability is possible, but the buzzword in my college ecology classes “sustainable growth” is not. At some point you will run out of land, or watts of sunlight to collect. We can keep growing on the technology front, but technology grows it fits and starts, not in a reliably “sustainable” way.

Nature cycles. If deer overpopulate, they become more suceptible to disease or predators. The population declines, the deer recover, and begin to ascend in their cycle again. Humans can’t get away without a down cycle forever.

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