Project: Green Industry

Native or not?

Debate about invasive plants continues to make headlines. The ongoing discussion is prompting many people to look at alternatives, including native plants. Which begs the question, just what is a native plant anyway?

The answer isn’t as clear as you may think. The Federal Native Plant Committee offers this definition: “a native plant species is one that occurs naturally in a particular region, state, ecosystem and habitat without direct or indirect human actions.”

This broad description is only marginally helpful to retailers trying to determine which plants belong in its natives department. To further complicate matters, some diehard enthusiasts believe only plants that grew in the United States prior to the arrival of Europeans (and their imported plants) should be considered native.

I’m going to explore this issue further in the July issue of Garden Center Magazine. In the meantime, I’d like to hear your thoughts. What are your criteria for native plants? Are you even carrying them? Are customers specifically asking for natives?

-- Sarah

Garden centers: Embrace the scuppie

I’m a seasoned journalist, so I sometimes play the part of cynic. It’s something my journalism professors injected into their lessons each day, and it prepared me for the real world. I find sarcasm wickedly funny. So when I read a USA Today story about scuppies -- a Socially Conscious, Upwardly-mobile Person -- I laughed until my side hurt.

Chuck Failla, president of a Connecticut financial planning firm, coined the phrase. Scuppies are basically green yuppies. Failla notes, “Yuppies have moved to the suburbs, spawned families, and are spending copious amounts of their disposable income at socially conscious outlets like Whole Foods and The Body Shop. They’ve begun thinking about bigger, more important issues than whether to opt for the headlight cleaners on their BMW X5s. It’s become not just admirable, but downright fashionable to be concerned about global warming and the plight of the Amazon rainforest, to support organic farming and the rights of workers in Third World countries.”

To help the legion of yuppies make the transition to scuppie, he wrote The Scuppie Handbook: A Practical Guide to Living Well while Doing Good. Did he write it with tongue firmly planted in cheek? Maybe not. After the giggling ceased, I realized there’s more to Scuppies than a witty caricature.

Scuppies love money and conspicuous displays of affluence, Failla says, so why not appeal to their prosperous side and their ecological side. After all, the first paragraph of The Scuppie Manifesto reads, “It is the unalienable right of every man, woman and child to wear stylish, 100 percent organic, sweatshop-free cotton apparel, and to feel befittingly righteous about it. There should be no need to choose between a car’s speed and fuel economy; comfort and conservation; luxury and sustainability.”

If BMW and Ralph Lauren can make oodles from the yuppies, growers and garden centers can profit from the scuppies.

-- Kelli

Rain barrels, the hot product of spring 2008

When I visited Bayview Farm & Garden in 2002, the year it won our Innovator Award, I noticed that rain barrels were hooked up to downspouts throughout the property. The store is on an island in Puget Sound, which makes protecting and conserving fresh water a big priority.

Those barrels stood out in 2002. They were a throwback to slower times. Charming. Rare.
Judging from the e-mails I’ve been getting from retailers over the past couple months, rain barrels have transformed into up-to-the-minute fashion. Everyone wants them and is trying to figure out the best manufacturers to use. I visited a store last month that had an extensive rainwater capture system in place, holding up to 15,000 gallons.

Homewood Nursery in Raleigh, N.C., which is just now moving out of a record drought, has a WaterWise section on its Web site, where it shows off a customer’s homemade cistern. If they can’t get a convenient supply of rain barrels, consumers are making their own.

The last product I heard this much buzz on was Crocs. But the way people are talking about rain barrels is a little different. I’ve yet to hear anyone talk about the huge volume of sales made, or the margins. I get the impression that customer demand snuck up on a lot of retailers, and they are now scrambling to bring in supplies and haven’t had enough time to analyze sales, projections and marketing.

So are the e-mails I’ve gotten isolated? Have you had any requests for rain barrels? Are you having a difficult time finding sources? Are customers satisfied with the relatively small size of rain barrels, or are you hearing of more ambitious projects like the ones undertaken by Homewood Nursery customers?

-- Carol

Time, money crunch thwarts organic gardening

Last fall I decided to turn over a new leaf. I promised myself that I would ditch the synthetic fertilizers and pest controls and go organic. I’ve got two small kids after all, and it only makes sense to keep chemicals out of their play area.

The transition hasn’t been so easy. To be honest, the transition hasn’t really happened.

This winter I did a lot of research on organic lawn care. Read all about the importance of aerating, spreading corn gluten, etc., etc. My husband and I created a maintenance schedule that we planned to start this spring. ‘Planned’ being the key word.

March arrived, and both of us were extremely busy at work. Rainy weather kept us inside most weekends. Then our second child arrived on the 29th. Priorities certainly shifted after that. We had a stack of medical bills and a newborn to keep our time and resources occupied. May rolled around and with it the realization that our organic gardening plan would have to be shelved for now.

My husband gladly bought a $15.99 bag of synthetic lawn fertilizer, broke out the ol’ broadcast spreader and went to town. He just did the front yard and kept the stuff out of the backyard where my older daughter plays. Something tells me he wasn’t as enthusiastic about going organic as I thought.

Oh well. I’m still determined to use organic fertilizer on my perennials and annuals. I just have to get over to the garden center -- when I find some time.

We had good intentions, but time and money constraints got the best of us. I imagine this is something many young homeowners face. We want to take the organic route, but we need products and solutions that fit into our lifestyle.

Retailers, are you seeing customers facing a similar situation? How are you dealing with it? Which products are you recommending to make organic gardening easier?

-- Sarah

Home Depot quits selling pesticides in Canada

Home Depot announced last month that it will stop selling traditional pesticides and herbicides in its Canadian stores by the end of 2008 and will increase its selection of environmentally friendly alternatives. Quebec has already banned the use of “cosmetic” pesticides, The Cape Breton Post reported, and Ontario plans to ban 300 pesticides by 2009.

-- Sarah

Californian has something to say about proposed moth spraying

Mim, of VeganReader.com, posted the following comment on "Ruling helps California residents - and invasive moth - breathe easier." Her response was substantial enough Project: Green Industry thought it warranted it's own posting.

Greetings Project Green Folks!

Thank you for giving this space on your blog.

While it is a good thing that the governor has called for some tests to be done, there are 2 vast problems with his order that aren't allowing any of us to catch our breath or stop fighting.

1) The toxicity studies are going to be short term. They will not measure the short or long-term effects of chronic exposure CDFA is threatening us with. Remember, their plan is to spray us 5 nights a month, 9 months a year for 10 or more years. So, unless the tests include long term studies of what happens to a person after they are sprayed with pesticides and fatal PM10 pollution 450 times over a decade, testing will not give an adequate picture of the actual harm that will be done to us.

2) These tests will be overseen by - guess who - CDFA, author or the spray, in conjunction with OEHHA, the corrupt group that dismissed the hundreds of reports filled out by families who were sickened by the 2007 spraying. They didn't speak to a single victim or doctor. They just threw the data in the garbage and glibly announced that they couldn't make a connection between pesticide poisoning and spraying pesticide on people.

Because the governor is allowing these criminals (CDFA was just convicted by a superior court of violating CEQA) to be in charge of the testing, their findings are a foregone conclusion. They will say the spray is safe, when our doctors and scientists have come forward one by one to say it is incredibly toxic and will result in human fatality.

CDFA has made it their policy to deceive the public in order to receive federal funding for their program of spraying human beings with pesticide.

So, we can't breath easy. We can't stop fighting this.

These things need to happen:

1) The moth must be declassified. It is incorrectly classified as a Class A pest, according to modern science. It needs to be downgraded, and then all this would just go away.

2) Testing MUST be conducted by independent third party experts...not groups like CDFA that stand to benefit financially or professionally from spraying.

3) Our governor and any future governor needs to get the message that human experimentation is a violation of our state and US constitutions, as well as the globally-upheld Nuremberg code. It will not be permitted to happen here and suggesting that human experimentation is acceptable will be immediate grounds for dismissal from public office.

I really appreciate you covering this issue and urge your group to do everything you can to stop America from going down this road. We cannot go green while we're turning blue from pesticide poisoning.

Mim
VeganReader.com

The green party

Growing up a military brat we moved a lot. I soon learned you do one of two things – either become an introvert or an extrovert. Not surprisingly, I am an extrovert. I love meeting and talking with people. People are very interesting, you know.

I think one of the things that helped foster my attitude were the many parties my mom took us to. My brother would haul his Matchbox cars around, find a place to set out his towel-sized cityscape my mom painted for him and play on that. I, being a precocious tow-headed six year old, got right in the middle of things. These were your usual 70s type parties – Tupperware, Avon, jewelry, macramé, I vaguely recall something with candles – fun stuff, regardless.

I was enthralled by the enthusiasm and laughter that always seemed present. The sense of camaraderie and effervescence these ladies displayed. And the cookies. The days of real mom cooking. Yum.

And it didn’t matter that we moved every three years. Mom always found a group of like minded women to socialize and shop with.

These days I continue that trend, though my tastes run to makeup and cookware. I am thinking of branching out though. I recently read a report about a group called EcoMoms. They have the same kind of parties from yesteryear, but everything is geared to easing the strain on our environment. Along with buying things like smart box power strips, green approved light bulbs, etc. (etc. meaning pretty much any product that can be classified as eco-friendly), these groups have actual discussion. Intelligent discourse on the state of eco-affairs and how we can help combat and fix them.

While it’s too late for my son (now a teenager already filled with firm ideas and opinions on such things as politics, the economy, gas and war) to sit amongst an EcoMom party and glean important information, it’s not for many of the kids now growing up. Instead of seeing, b(eco)me green in any of its many variations. Rather than be beat down by the ads, billboards and one-sided diatribes on the evils of not being green, the kids who accompany their moms to these parties will (hopefully) be getting good information as well as a good role model for both conserving and participating in the world around them.

All in all, I can’t help but think these parties will do a world of good. I just hope they serve chocolate chip cookies, too.

-- Jennifer

Ruling helps California residents – and invasive moth – breathe easier

Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger did the right thing when he called a time out so scientists could study the potential effects of a chemical pheromone that was scheduled to be sprayed on parts of the state to combat the invasive light brown apple moth (LBAM).

Some background: About 18,000 moths have been found in the state. They represent a serious threat to California’s $32 billion ag industry. California had been granted an exception to environmental review on an emergency basis because of the moth’s potential to destroy crops. The state was scheduled to begin aerial applications, as it had done last year. However, in Santa Cruz County, a state judge ruled last week that an environmental report should be done before spraying resumes in that county. Hours before that ruling came down, Schwarzenegger halted all spraying until a state agency could look into potential human health effects of the material, called CheckMate.

When CheckMate was sprayed last year, more than 450 residents of Santa Cruz and Monterey counties complained of a variety of ailments, including breathing trouble.

LBAM can destroy crops, but also can bring about quarantines and trade actions by other states and countries. So the risk we’re talking about is not just a loss of agribusiness profits; the livelihoods of many thousands of California workers could be at stake.

Wisely, Schwarzenegger halted the spray program statewide until at least Aug. 17, even though the court ruling would have allowed spraying in other counties. Given the widespread protests and the uncertainty of the chemical’s effects, the governor should continue the delay even if the judge’s ruling is overturned on appeal.

This is definitely one of those times when “better safe than sorry” is sensible advice.

-- Kevin

Don’t put a price tag on green

Retail Systems Research (RSR), a Miami-based firm, found out “winning retailers (those who already outperform their peers)” do not consider cost reduction as a reason to implement green practices.

In RSR’s report, “What Can Green Do for You?,” the firm asked how important are cost savings in discussions of green implementations. Some 48 percent of “winners” said it was virtually unimportant.

However, none of the underperforming retailers surveyed responded the same way. Instead, 77 percent of the underperformers viewed cost reduction as a high priority.

“This is a fascinating indicator of how, once again, winners don’t just do things differently, but tend to do different things,” said Steve Rowen, an RSR partners.

A similar pattern emerged when asked about social responsibility.

“From our results, 72 percent of winners view ethical obligation as an ‘important or higher’ motivator to bring about more environmentally-responsible products and practices. Only 28 percent of laggards identify ethical obligation as any type of importance at all,” he said.

And 71 percent of underperformers pointed to ethical obligation as “less than important,” with 57 percent identifying it as of “little to no” value at all.

Retailers that outperform their peers are actually investing now, giving less thought to cost-reduction and viewing the brand building done today as smart business for when customer demand invariably heightens, Rowen said. In addition, winning retailers recognize that their actions have greater impact than that of just financials.

The report will be available for purchase April 24.

-- Kelli

Buying locally grown proves to be win-win situation

There is a growing trend (no pun intended) for consumers, retailers, food processors, restaurants and school districts to buy locally grown, fresh-from-the farm products. Ohio State University Extension is sponsoring the Mid-Ohio Valley Agriculture Opportunities conference on April 26 in Marietta, Ohio.

The conference’s keynote speaker is Joe Kovach, an Ohio State University ecological pest management expert with the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center. Kovach is heading up research on producing high-value commodities in small farm plots. His presentation “How to Gross $90,000 Per Acre on Your Farm” will focus on how operators can achieve high-value production.

Other conference sessions related to horticulture include:

• Extending the Growing Season: High Tunnels and More.
• Herbs: Types, Culture and Use.
• Top 10 Opportunities in Direct Marketing.
• How to Get Higher Prices for Your Products.
• Community Supported Agriculture––Getting Guaranteed Customers for the Entire Season.

In March, Ohio became the 10th state to join MarketMaker. The program is part of a national network of state Web sites that connect farmers with food retailers, grocery stores, processors, chefs and other food supply contacts. Ohio Governor Ted Strickland said MarketMaker will provide more access to local, fresh produce.

A recent article in USA Today discussed the efforts of the National Farm to School Program to connect farmers with local school cafeterias. The newspaper reported that when the program started in 1997 there were only six local programs. Today, the program has expanded to nearly 2,000 programs in 38 states or about 9 percent (11,000) of the country’s 124,000 schools are participating in a program.

There have been obstacles to overcome, including filling smaller orders, waiting 60 days for payment, providing more prep time for raw food and increasing the number of food providers. But, the newspaper reports that farmers, educators and parents are increasingly deciding the benefits of improved nutrition and preserving open space by supporting family farms are worth the effort.

Some states are working to support the locals programs. This spring Washington Governor Christine Gregoire signed the Local Farms-Healthy Kids Act, which aims to “strengthen links between state agriculture and state food procurement to expand local markets, improve nutrition and benefit the environment”. Nearly $1.5 million was appropriated to implement this legislation.

-- Dave