About

Casual Conversation with Terry Brett

I was hired to become the first dairy processor at Seven Stars Farm. We started a farm store. The original mission, from the store’s point of view, was to help the farm become self sustaining. It was officially incorporated as Seven Stars farm in 1988. Eventually the store was bursting at the seams, exceeding the zoning for the area. We moved to Village of Kimberton.

In 1986, there were not a lot of natural and organic foods available. By 1994 the mainstream was starting to pick up natural and organic foods, and certainly by 2004 it was going mainstream and people had other choices than to drive all the way to the farm or to Kimberton. When we moved here, Fresh Fields arrived and they took 25% of our business away overnight. We had people come from the Main Line to get their natural foods because there was no other place to get it, especially at the low prices we were selling at. In order to stay in the marketplace, and to do what we do which is to try to be a positive outlet for local farms, to be really supportive – okay yeah, we decided we’re going to go there so that people don’t have to drive all the way here. So that’s why we moved to Douglassville so that people could reach us.

What’s your feeling about the role of Kimberton Whole Foods to help the local farmers? What is it that you feel is important to tell your new customers?

One thing is to be an option for a positive retail option. That there is a retailer that isn’t trying to negotiate a low price, who is willing to take a lower margin on a product from a farm product in order to give the farmer what the farmer needs to have a viable farm, even though the pricing with standard retail markups might make the price so high that it would limit the sales.

Last year we contributed $10,000 to PASA ( the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agreculture). That may have no relationship back to Kimberton Whole foods, but that doesn’t matter! Whether they sell to us or someone else is fine.

For those who don’t know you directly, what can you tell people about KWF and it’s mission?

Yesterday, I had an invitation to go have a symposium with Joe Biden and Ed Rendell on sustainable businesses. Because we’re a B corporation, there aren’t a lot of them. It’s about trying to come up and cut through the green wash. I had an invitation to be part of this, but I just couldn’t get away. Yesterday I was at the Agriculture development council for the Chester County Economic Development Council which is looking to see how to support agriculture. I testified before the agriculture committee on organic sustainable agriculture because they were trying to get monies appropriated. KWF is on the map, I don’t know how you say it, but I’m asked to be there because KWF represents support for sustainable agriculture.

So it’s known as a bit of a pillar of this movement in the area?

That’s right, we’re a major sponsor of PASA. Even the Obama team recognized PASA as the most progressive sustainable organization in the United States. And we won the award from them for excellence in business two years ago.

I’m always trying to think what the next best thing would be in order to help develop the local sustainable agriculture. I’m already thinking about the next thing, because of our experience in the whole retail end. The next step would be to say okay, what kind of relationships do we want locally.

How can the farmers get together? Well, we want to be supportive, in the end regarding the political aspects and the economic part with the end result being so that people can go back to the land. And they’re talking about it, it’s actually part of political type conversations. But we need to get more people to go.

We’ve created a situation where we’ve gone from 80% of the population being involved in agriculture to 2%, but in order to do that we have an economy that is absolutely exploitative of resources of people, of people from distant lands who are working to create stuff that we don’t need. But those people have nowhere to go. In the depression, from talking to people who went through the depression they say ‘well we didn’t really notice it because we were on the farm, we didn’t have any money then so we didn’t have any less – but we had food.’ We are in the position of how can we get more young people involved; there are farms out there where those in charge are getting old and there’s nobody that wants it, but somehow we have to create opportunities so that there are business plans for young people to say ‘okay, I can go and have a viable income’ but we have to turn the whole prevailing agricultural mode upside down because the big forces that control the Dept. of Agriculture don’t care about the culture of family farm life. They have a very exploitative relationship with farmers. Agricultural policy has created a situation that has destroyed family farming going back to the ‘60s. All of that is something that going forward I would like us to help articulate.

For the most part, we’re just a grocery store. But we generate enough money so we can support PASA, so we can do all this while at the same time, in a modest way, we can support these efforts. The bigger we get, the more support we can offer. We’re looking to continually redefine how products come to the market, even through a retail chain.

So, KWF is a bit of a conduit for that: ideas, how to build relationships with local farmers, how to make that viable for them.

That’s true, even now. Hopefully we’re the progressive element…looking to create sustainable farms and opportunities for people to get involved in farming in small scale things. It’s a move from the large corporate farms, or businesses. Some of the best farmers, the ones who have been able to succeed, are the ones who run a huge business. They’ve capitalized so much that they could b e carrying 500 to a million dollars in debt in order to have a combine and they have to farm 1000 acres even in PA in order to make it. It’s a battle. KWF can only go so far as consumer demand. Consumer demand only comes from people who try to understand the dynamics of what’s happening. And that’s part of our job too, is trying to be able to communicate why it’s important, regardless of whether they buy anything from us. Whey they buy shredded wheat from us, even though it’s not a KWF product directly and may not be very personal, we take those dollars and we reinvest them towards sustainable agriculture.

With Whole Foods, that profit goes to stockholders. KWF doesn’t have stockholders, and as far as the profits we continually put more and more into the business so that we can go to the next level.

What fuels things for me is that I still want to be a farmer. That’s what I said when I accepted the award at PASA. This is a very demanding job, and so is farming, but I’m looking forward to the time when I can be on the production end again. So I have an innate sympathy for those who are trying to make it because I would love to be able to create something. If we can create the networks of production and distribution through whatever channels, but especially the retail channels that sees the benefit to the farmer then I would sell stock. I would sell stock to producers. If there’s a profit to be made, I would rather let the farms have it.

Money often corrupts the situation. As businesses get bigger, often the hard-nosed business types who make the companies function are the ones who profit.

Big picture stuff. How will our actions affect farmers in the long term?

The representatives for the people are somewhat removed from the economics of the daily lives in the agricultural world. The agricultural world needs to have representatives. That’s what PASA is all about.

Whatever we can do to help that. That what sets KWF apart from other businesses. Get customers and staff on the same mental wavelengths.

Make sure people realize what’s local. Why they might want to support it. Making sure that what we come up with actually gets to our other stores. Better focus on what’s local. Demos and promotion on local items.

Direct relationships with farmers, wherever they may be. In the bigger picture, that there will be viable farms that will be able to produce food locally. We need them now but we will really need them in the future. And if they’re not there then it’ll be a real disappointment.