They aren’t words you’d expect from the mouth of an organic food devotee but restaurateur Jesse Ziff Cool is no stick-in-the-mud.

She wants people to eat the best they can most of the time, but a little indulgence every now and then is just fine by her. “I call it my 80/20 rule,” she says. “I raised my kids that way and I tell everyone not to beat themselves up for occasionally wandering off the path. We’re only human after all.”

If anyone deserves the occasional “poison” (she favours gin, organic gin), it’s Jesse. An advocate of organic eating long before it became the flavour of the month, she defied those who said it couldn’t be done and operates not one, but three organic and sustainable restaurants in California.

Her approach to food is simplicity itself, a philosophy reflected in her latest cookbook, Simply Organic: A Cookbook for Sustainable, Seasonal and Local Ingredients: Choose the best quality produce you can afford at its peak and marry it with ingredients that let it shine.

Homegrown wisdom: Jesse Ziff Cool knows the value of fresh produce.

The affable cook (she’s not a big fan of the word chef) was born into an Italian-Jewish family whose lives revolved around good food.

Her parents and grandparents lovingly tended their backyard produce without resorting to pesticides, they raised and ate their own chickens, her father presided over a small supermarket in Pennsylvania where locally grown produce reigned, and home was always awash with the smell of something delicious brewing.

Not that she knew it then, but Jesse was already getting an education in the organic way.

At 27, she opened her first organic restaurant with her then husband Bob. To say it was a challenge was an understatement; they were repeatedly told a restaurant offering organic and sustainable produce was not viable, assuming they could even get hold of such fare to begin with. But Jesse persisted, even when she and Bob parted. More than 30 years on, she still has to pinch herself to think how far the organic movement has come – out of the fringes and into the mainstream.

“The local movement has been very important for organic too; it’s important to start with where you are, eat food that grows near you,” she says. “Of course if you live in upstate Maine that message from someone in California with its abundance of fresh produce can sound a bit mean. But we need to change the notion of what people think of fresh food.”

Jesse believes fresh produce canned and frozen at its peak is just as “real”, tasty and nutritious. “I still dry my own tomatoes and make pickles,” she says. “There are so many ways to make use of food in season for later in the year when it’s not available.”

And despite the global financial crisis already hitting sales of organic fare, Jesse is optimistic about the future. “Human beings are extremely impatient,” she argues. “But I’m more of a big picture person. When I think of what it was like when I started 35 years ago, I never imagined we would be where we are now. It’s so much more than a fad and in some ways, we’ve moved beyond organic, beyond local… it’s really about cooking and connecting. We’re getting back to thinking about the importance of fresh food, as well as the sense of community it brings.”

A big supporter of local farmers, who she describes as her heroes, Jesse believes this connection with where food comes from is vital. “You know I go to these farming conferences and these people are my real teachers,” she says.

“We need to nurture a real feeling for food and then take it another step further and cook for each other.”

Her two sons might not have been as keen on her homemade style when they were growing up, craving the junk food hits of their peers, but she’s proud to say as grown men they totally get it.

“My youngest, who is doing his PHD at Duke University, spends more money on food than anything else because he knows how important it is… he’s always cooking,” she says. “You know food plays such a vital role in our lives. We sit, we eat and we talk. We can stop doing that for a while but not for long or we start to suffer.”

Now a grandmother, Jesse sees her role as an advocate for the politics of food, for food justice as she calls it, as an ongoing one. She wants to see a fair price for the freshest, most sustainable food available – for farmers and consumers. And she’s in hot demand as a speaker on the topic.

She’s proud of the project she does with student teachers from Stanford University, showing them (and the children they bring along) the joys of growing food from scratch and cooking it in simple and enticing ways. She is also relishing a new assignment to get healthy organic food into the university’s hospital.

“I’m a very present person. I tend to do things and let them go, but my work is very meaningful. I get a lot out of it,” Jesse says.

She has also obviously put a lot into it. “I almost went bankrupt a couple of times… but because I came from humble beginnings I didn’t need a lot of money. You know, I had no clue about being a businesswoman and I’ve learnt a lot with some incredible people along the way,” she says.

“I wasn’t always perfect, my restaurants weren’t always perfect and I didn’t make money for a long time. My success has been in learning to hire people who are different and better than me. I’ve surrounded myself with talented people.”

She’s also refused to let go of a dream that many others thought was hippy-dippy at best, complete madness at worst. “To have something you believe in suddenly not be part of the lunatic fringe is wonderful. For it to be understood and embraced by more people is incredibly satisfying.”

For more on Jesse and her work, click here.

Tough going: Craig Sams battled inertia and skepticism to create organic success stories.

Pioneer isn’t a label that Craig Sams feels comfortable with. The man who is synonymous with so many innovative brands in the organic sector simply chuckles when I describe him as a trailblazer of the movement.

So, put his modesty aside for a moment and consider his record. He was the owner of London’s first macrobiotic restaurant, Seed, which was frequented by John Lennon, Yoko Ono and the Rolling Stones, as well as many other sixties icons; he founded Whole Earth Foods; created the first British Fairtrade product, Green and Black’s maya gold chocolate bar; and has been the chairman of the Soil Association since 2001.

Throw in other titles such as author, ambassador, grower and baker and you start to get a picture of the man who is now putting all his energies into a smaller enterprise, Judges Bakery, in Hastings on the UK’s south coast.

“It was very difficult in the beginning,” recalls Craig. “We were marginalised in the extreme, as we weren’t just pushing the organic message – it was about macrobiotics, too. When I launched my first business with my brother in the late sixties we thought it would be a matter of years before the whole world swung around to our way of thinking because it made such perfect sense not to poison the environment and not to damage your own internal environment. The combination of healthy eating and healthy farming was a no-brainer.

“We were young and had no idea of the vested interested of big business and general human inertia. People like their burgers and chips and you can’t just tell them to stop eating them. It turned out to be a much longer, harder slog than we could have imagined.”

It was health problems that Craig, now 65, suffered while travelling as a young man that prompted him to pursue a life without chemical nasties. “While I was in India I became very ill, so much so that I actually could conceive of my own mortality for the first time. While I realised that immortality wasn’t possible I certainly treasured life enough to live it as healthily and as long as possible. I never wanted to feel as awful as I did in Delhi again,” he says.

“To me eating a healthy diet of food that I really enjoyed was an obvious path forward. What I fail to understand is that most of my contemporaries haven’t had that eye-opening experience – like every other teenager they felt like nothing would ever wither them. I’ve realised that it’s quite hard to persuade perfectly healthy people that changing their diet makes a difference.”

He admits that although he has been largely successful at getting the message out to the general public, he still doesn’t have all the answers. “It is the greatest mystery of my life,” he says. “It is nothing to do with race, sex, education or income – some people get the healthy and organic message and some people don’t. What I do know is that people who go organic never go back. It is the single most effective choice you can make to make the world a better place – you can do yourself, the planet, society and the economy good all at the same time.”

There is no doubt that Craig Sams is a successful businessman. For example, his recent sale of his stake (20 percent) in iconic organic chocolate brand Green and Black’s to Cadbury Schweppes is believed to have earned him and his wife, beauty journalist Josephine Fairley, around £4 million.

However, this success has not come easily, as the man himself attests when he talks of having many sleepless nights over cashflow problems in the nineties. But his entrepreneurial spirit has driven his career forward. Matched with a strong ethical and health stance, it has seen product innovations such as fruit juice sweetened jams, organic peanut butter and the organic herbal energy drink, Gusto, as well as the runaway success of Green and Black’s (the name represents the green of organic and black of the dark chocolate).

“The history of my business career to date has been an innovation, a period of monopoly and then aggressive competition. I was the first to do fruit juice sweetened jams, organic peanut butter and Fairtrade chocolate,” Craig says. “The great thing about the chocolate was that it was very hard for anybody to compete with us because we built the business on our relationship with cocoa growers. We had farmers who produced the best quality cocoa beans and so that particular niche lasted a lot longer.

“Sometimes you realise that you’ve taken the brand as far as it can go and it’s time for a bigger company to move in. That’s what happened with Green and Black’s and Whole Earth Foods, and in both those cases we sold to people who had huge respect for the brand and took it further than we were able.”

His businesses have always been a family affair. He began Whole Earth Foods in 1967 with his brother Gregory, set up Green and Black’s with his wife and is helping his son Karim with his own organic fruit juice smoothie enterprise, Soma.

It’s no surprise then that Craig admits he enjoys working with his family, citing his partnership with Josephine as a particular highlight. He also observes that working with family enables small businesses to grow “organically”, as family members tend to have the muck-in attitude that is needed to make the business work. “The advantage of a family business is you have people outside of the legal requirements of working hours and the minimum wage. Getting a business like this off the ground means that the whole family becomes involved and there are huge commitments and sacrifices to be made. The benefits come much later.”

In addition to being proud of his achievements with organic brands, Craig is equally satisfied with his involvement with the Soil Association. As chairman he has overseen an intense period of growth within the organisation and the recognition by public figures of its important role in food and farming policy.
“It has been gratifying that now people not only hear when the Soil Association speaks but also feel obliged to address the comments we make. We have put food and farming on the agenda and I’m thrilled about that.”

While he is coming to the end of his tenure as chairman, he will continue to be involved with the organisation that is so close to his natural values. Having recently published Sweet Dreams, an account of how he and Josephine created Green and Black’s, Craig is happy to keep expanding Judges for now. I wonder if there are any more innovations in the pipeline? “Well, I am working on a new technology project,” he says. “But that’s a whole other story.” Maybe next time.

Organic pioneer: Arran Stephens lives his life by his father's dictum to leave the soil as you found it.

Arran Stephens has been offered ridiculous sums of money to sell his family business.

But while the founder of Nature’s Path, North America’s leading organic cereal company, admits to fleeting temptation, he and his wife Ratana have no regrets about turning down each and every offer.

“One day several years ago, I received a phone call from Kellogg at 10am, and another phone call from Kraft two hours later. The dollars offered were staggering,” he recalls.

“We asked ourselves if all the money that was offered was going to improve the character of our children, and would it improve the lives of our many employees and stakeholders, the communities and economies that we worked in, the organic movement that we have served and helped build over so many years. And we decided no.

“We would run our company better independently, and make it strong enough to survive and thrive into the next generations. The offers still come every week, but they find themselves in the round file, and the voice messages are deleted.”

Raised to respect the land

When you take a look at Arran’s background it is perhaps not surprising that he would turn his back on mega bucks for higher ideals. The seeds were sown by his father Rupert, fondly described as an “odd duck” on the company website, and mother Gwen on a farm on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Life was far from easy but Arran says some of his happiest memories are of “helping his Mom and Dad gather and spread kelp on the fields, planting corn with his Dad and wandering through the farm eating sun-ripened berries”.

Rupert, he says, left him with an abiding love of nature and unspoiled beauty and the dictum he lived by: “Always leave the soil better than you found it.”

Natural taste: Arran, with Happy, enjoyed the benefits of growing up on a berry farm.

It’s a dictum Arran, named for that windswept Scottish isle, has been doing his best to follow ever since. After studying spirituality and meditation in India in the 60s, Arran was barely in his 20s when he returned home to open the first vegetarian restaurant on Canada’s west coast in 1967.

“Organic grains and vegetables were on the original menu. There was nothing else like the Lotus in Canada at the time, and like a time-ripe idea, caught on and transformed many lives for the better,” he says. “Money was never my first consideration, but I was forced to learn that ‘if you’re not a profit, you’re a loss’.”

It was challenging sourcing organic produce, too. “There was little supply, little demand, and little understanding. Our job was to educate and take the risks of investing in what others thought were hare-brained ideas.”

He must have seemed something of the odd duck himself, then, to start a natural supermarket in 1971? “I’ve never followed the beaten track, and often celebrated the eccentric,” Arran says. “I wanted my values to proceed ahead of and infiltrate my actions, keeping in mind that deeds speak louder than words.”

Keeping organic farming alive

LifeStream was a pioneering company but was torn apart by a partnership squabble in 1981 and eventually ended up in the hands of Kraft/Phillip Morris. In a nice reversal of industry trends, however, it has been back in the family fold for some years now. “It was so small, they didn’t know how to run it. Fourteen years after Lifestream was sold, my family and I bought it back from Kraft, and it went from losses to profitability within nine months.”

A lot of the suppliers Arran found for LifeStream have also been bought out over time, but there are still independents going strong, such as Eden Foods. Many of them Arran and Ratana helped nurture through the supermarket, and continue to do so today with Nature’s Path.

Family first: Arran as a baby with brothers John and Godfrey, parents Rupert and Gwen, and dog Happy.

The cereal brand the couple started out of the back of their restaurant in 1985, which now sells certified organic waffles, bars, and cereal and baking goods among other products and exports to Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, is responsible for the produce of more than 100,000 acres of organic land.  Hundreds of organic farmers owe their livelihoods to this innovative couple. ”We have also invested in 2240 acres of dry grain farmland and are converting it to organic, with the help of our farmer partners. But this only represents about two percent of our grain requirement,” Arran says.

Given his refusal to sell to the big boys, how does he feel when another independent organic company is snapped up?  ”I can’t help but feel a twinge of regret every time I see another organic brand swallowed up by a Kraft, a Kellogg, a General Mills, or a Cadbury,” Arran says.

“But, let’s move on. As long as more land is being converted to organic, and more family farmers are receiving a decent living for their toil, and less agri-chemicals are introduced into our water, air, earth, and our bodies, the better it is for all.

Organic farming is the only viable option

“Organic is destined for mainstream. In fact, it is already mainstream in a small way, but has great room yet to grow. I believe that eventually, organic farming will be the only really viable farming for the family farms of the world.”

Despite the move of multinationals into the organic market, Arran does not believe that the term has lost any of its value with consumers of authentic brands. “Nature’s Path continues to grow from strength to strength, because we started out on the organic journey decades ago, and that is our single focus,” he says.

“Often, when a non-organic company acquires an organic company, the values start shifting. Some say that the soul is gutted out. Focus is lost.  Sometimes, the sale of an icon brand has helped us because of the acquisitor’s loss of focus. It goes from an ideological commitment to one of profit only. Profit is not bad, but we believe in the triple-bottom line: Socially responsible, environmentally sustainable, and financially viable. Consumers continue to reward us by their support.”

Mother earth: Gwen Stephens, circa 1952, gets her hands dirty.

But, like all companies facing competition, Nature’s Path has had to become much more sophisticated in its financial and operating systems, as well as in areas such as research and development and human resources.

Organic companies also have to battle arguments that their method of farming is too costly, pushing up the price of the resulting produce, and that genetically modified crops are the only way to feed the world.

“One of the biggest frauds ever perpetrated has been the promise that GMO crops have higher yields and require fewer chemical inputs because of desired engineered traits,” Arran says, citing a three-year study at the University of Kansas which showed reduced yields for a GM soya crop as further proof of the wrong-headedness of such a position. Organic supporters are also opposed to the use of GM seed because of its detrimental effect on seed diversity, as well as attempts by the very companies promoting it to control world seed supply.

As for the cost, Arran says any discussion needed to take into account the real effect of substantial farming subsidies. “What is the real cost of food, when all agricultural subsidies are withdrawn? Organic farmers are paid a significant premium for their crops, and you don’t hear of many organic farmers going bankrupt, abandoning third or fourth-generation farms, or even committing suicide as is happening in the chemical farming world.”

Critical of high costs

But while Arran believes that an organic premium is justified for farmers he is critical of the cost of some organic lines. “Consumers will accept a 10 to 15 percent premium, but when an organic counterpart is double or triple the price, the mainstream is left with a major disconnect,” he argues. “Now, if we pay a 50 percent premium for organic wheat, or a 75 percent premium for organic oats and the farmer family is able to make a decent living and not go bankrupt, I have no quarrel with that.

“However, our production, packaging, labour, energy, overhead, administrative, finance and marketing costs do not carry a premium cost over conventional food operations; therefore while we process large quantities of organic grains for which we pay a big premium, our retail prices may only carry a 10 percent to 15 percent premium, and often are at par with non-organic.”

It is also worth noting that while the cost of chemical agriculture continues to climb, the costs of organic farming – other than the higher cost of seeds – are relatively stable.  “I see that the price inequity between organic and non will narrow as volume continues to grow,” Arran says.

Awesome foursome: Arran and Ratana work with daughter Jyoti and son Arjan in the business.

As an innovator in the organic business world, Nature’s Path has won many awards over the years, including for entrepreneurial flair and export achievements. But Arran says his proudest relates to the company’s credentials as an employer: “Being recognized as one of the Best 100 Companies in Canada to work for, three years in a row.”

He is quick to point out that his wife, the “wonderful life companion” whom he wed in an arranged marriage in 1969, deserves us much credit for all their success, if not more. “Ratana is co-founder and chief operating officer, and has saved me from several business blunders.”

Two of their four children are active in the company. Daughter Jyoti heads up the sustainability and stewardship initiatives and son Arjan is the vice-president of marketing and production innovation. The apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree with his other two daughters, either. Shanti lives in Illinois and owns and operates Manna Organics, baking organic sprouted Manna Bread (Nature’s Path’s first product), with her husband Markus; while Gurdeep, who has an MA in biosciences, lives in Italy where she is studying finance and hopes to get involved in the company one day.

Theirs is clearly a family who walks the walk, not just talks the talk. But how does Arran persuade other people without the advantages of such an upbringing that organic is the way of the future? “We need to win new consumers by the taste, quality, elegance and real value of our products. We believe in demoing and sampling; getting our product into the mouths of consumers,” he says. “We need to win over others with the authenticity and values behind our brand. We can do this with viral web campaigns, packaging, marketing, PR and advertising, educating our customers about who and what we stand for as a company, such as our long commitment to the environment (avoiding greenwashing) and social causes through our giving campaigns.

“And, lest we forget: let us each and everyone leave the Earth better than we found it.”

For further information on the benefits of organic food, Arran recommends readers visit the websites of The Organic Center and The Rodale Institute.

But if not exactly mission impossible, it’s not an easy one. The recently elected president of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) not only has a powerful anti-organic lobby to contend with but the not insignificant matter of division within the organic movement itself.

“There is real disagreement and there are two main sides I can see,” she says. “Those who really believe that organic is the best way to farm and that if every farm converts to organic then there will be more organic products for retailers to sell. This side argues that fresh food is not enough to make organic sustainable. It doesn’t say you can do anything you want, but that you need to work with different types of companies, producers, retailers etc.”

Working together: IFOAM president Katherine DiMatteo urges unity.

Then there are those with a more political and social viewpoint. “They believe that organic is more than just the farming; it’s about social justice, small farms, about the corporate and global structure and changing global food cartels that have ruined the world. They want to keep out (of the organic movement) those who are a corporation, are mainstream, or who might make conventional products as well as organic. They argue organic should be about eating wholefood, not processed, whether it’s organic or not.”

Local movement

This split has resulted in a new movement in the United States (although it is also evident elsewhere) – the local movement; a campaign to buy local, support local producers, eat wholefood and reduce food miles.

While Katherine believes the movement is not a bad thing, as a long-time supporter of all things organic she is somewhat incredulous that it has been on the receiving end of so much money. “A number of foundations and NGOs have given a lot of money to persuade people to buy local or sustainable and change the way they eat – to the tune of millions and millions of dollars,” she says. “Millions have never been spent on organic, no-one ever wanted to fund organic. The funding for organic has come directly from those involved and only from outside when it’s related to other issues.”

Katherine  probably understands the different points of view better than most. She came to organic through the political and social movement of the late 60s and early 70s, a movement that was asking questions about the way we lived and was looking for alternatives. These “alternatives” included going back to the land, embracing wholefoods and shunning anything produced with synthetic fertilisers.

“Reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was a turning point for me,” she says. (Poetically, among Katherine’s innumerable awards is the Rachel Carson Environmental Achievement Award for outstanding contributions to the protection of the environment.)

Rise of organic

Like many in the academic world, Katherine abandoned her chosen profession (education) and moved to a rural area in Massachusetts.  She bought her food from a co-op, one she eventually ended up working for. So began a long journey down the path to a sustainable future, a journey that has seen her head up the influential Organic Trade Association (OTA), as well as help others bring their projects to fruition through the consulting company Wolf DiMatteo & Associates.

Although it might seem like a more recent development, she says there was a real awareness of organic issues when she first “went back to nature”. Life magazine even devoted a cover story to it.

But it took some time for it to take hold in the public conscience, building slowly through the 90s and really gaining momentum when the US Department of Agriculture implemented national standards for organic in 2002. “This was a critical point in the movement’s ability to go mainstream. It meant that organic wasn’t just the choice of a certain group of people and that it wasn’t unrealistic to believe organic was a practical way to farm.”

Of course, as organic produce started to find favour with the “ordinary person” in the street, more corporate heavy hitters moved into the game. And this is where the debate about what organic really means and who has the right to use the term took off.

As a former head of the OTA and now taking the helm at IFOAM, how does she straddle the organic divide? “We allow and encourage discussion to try to encourage the differing sides to reach agreement… to reach a middle ground. When an organisation can’t take a position on something it’s not a good thing, but at the end of the day if members don’t like that position, they will leave.”

Broad approach

Personally, she doesn’t believe that organic can survive without a broad approach. “If we don’t then we’re not really going to have major change, and that’s not just for the environment,” she says. “But the environment is my top priority, although that does not mean I dismiss the other values of organic.”

These values include:

• Good livelihoods for everyone, be they farmers, retailers or processors;
• Equal access to market opportunities;
• Equal access to the healthiest food possible;
• Adequate food supplies for everyone;
• A marketplace, banking and government policy that encourages entrepreneurial farms and individuals;
• Acknowledges the importance of cooperatives.

“Organic can partner with all these other values. But the different principles don’t have to become part of the same rules,” she says. “Indeed I would argue you don’t want governments to start legislating on the principles.”

Katherine argues it is even more important for the diverging groups to work together because of the power of the anti-organic lobby. “We’re trying to change how resources are used and who distributes those resources and the naysayers against organic are the ones who have all those resources. They are the ones saying ‘organic is fine for a small segment but that’s all, it won’t feed everyone’. It’s very difficult for grass-roots run organisations that don’t have the financial resources or even the science and, to a certain degree, media, behind them. It’s hard when you have to keep proving your point in the face of such powerful opposition.”

Strong appeal

Two things the organic movement does have in its favour might initially seem poles apart. “Basically what has kept us in the game is emotion, we have much more emotional appeal,” Katherine says. “And logic – logically we have appeal because it makes sense not to treat food with pesticides or damage the environment. Even people who don’t farm organically or who don’t buy much organic recognise it has very strong appeal.”

The biggest challenge for IFOAM is to maintain and grow awareness about organic globally. “We need to build awareness among farmers about the benefits of organic methods, to raise consumer awareness about the benefits of organic farming and all products that use organic ingredients, and work together with key organisations – those with whom we share values, be they farm or advocacy groups,” Katherine says.

“We also need to ensure we’re part of international policy to help direct the agricultural sector. We already work with FAO (the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization) and WHO (World Health Organization) and it’s important to be at their table and work with them for the future.”

Then, perhaps, organic can not just be a way of life, but the way of life.

Global family: Reach out to the organic community.

Working the land is hard graft. Ask any farmer. Organic farming is even tougher. By its very nature, with the emphasis on the word nature, it is more labour intensive.

With the use of pesticides, herbicides and synthetic fertilisers out of the equation, farmers have to resort to traditional, sometimes backbreaking, methods to keep their soil fertile and their crops viable. These include crop rotation, covering soil with green manure and more hands-on work, such as hoeing and weeding.

It can be lonely, too. If you’re spending most of the daylight hours tending to a livelihood it doesn’t leave much time for networking or marketing, or all those other post-harvest steps that help keep a farm viable.

Similarly, although without the backache, if you’re a consumer trying to find local organic producers in your area it can be a bit daunting. Where do you start? Who can you trust? What does the label mean?

Producers and consumers both, however, have a powerful tool at their disposal, and you’re using it right now. There’s something prosaic about the fact that modern technology, via the information highway, is helping to bring together producers who have turned their backs on modern farming methods and consumers who are equally concerned about industrially farmed food.

There is a big wide world out there of people passionate about the organic movement, many of them who were involved way before it suddenly became de rigueur. Start simply by keying the words “organic foods” into Google and you’ll see what we mean – 3.6 million listings and growing. Of course not all of its relevant, or even positive – there is also a powerful anti-organic lobby with vested interests in GM production (but that’s a whole other story). But there is a wealth of valuable information, as well as great organisations to turn to for advice or support.

Find the organic certification bodies in your area. Get help with organic farming practices or marketing. Track down your nearest farmers’ market, if you’re lucky enough to live in an area with one. Source artisan organic produce – chocolate, olive oils and the like, as well as suggestions for dinner. There are all kinds of fabulous resources at your fingertips.

And, of course, TrustOrganicFood.com is here to help. Please tell us what you’d like to know more about and we’ll do out best to find out for you…