About Commonsense Organics
The Story of Commonsense Organics
Jim Kebbell and Marion Wood founded Commonsense Organics in 1991 to retail organic products in Wellington. In particular the company was established to mainstream the marketing of organic produce and to introduce organic food to a wide range of New Zealanders.
We have been a part of the organic movement since 1975 when we bought 4.8 hectares of land in Te Horo, one hour's drive north of Wellington with several other families. We called it Common Property and grew organically right from the beginning at the insistence of Marion's mother, Frances. The market garden has now changed from a co-operative of enthusiastic amateurs with a few spades, lots of children and a dream of changing the world to a professionally run commercial unit of 11.2 hectares — but our dream of changing the world remains...
The growth of the shop was similar. In the early 1990s organic shops catered for a small but dedicated group who were prepared to put up with wilting greens as long as they were organically grown. Commonsense Organics aimed to convert mainstream New Zealanders to organic vegetables — so we have always concentrated on offering fresh and top quality produce — in the early days most of the vegetables ended up at the soup kitchen because Jim just refused to sell anything less than top quality.
After five years of Jim running the shop and Marion earning a living elsewhere it finally broke even and we haven't looked back. To mark the new millenium we set up a professional board and moved to premises four times the size of the previous shop. In 2002 we opened our second shop in Lower Hutt, followed in May 2003 by our shop in Paraparaumu.
Our Trading Philosophy
Our business exists to provide our customers with delicious, nutritious and safe food and other products, based on business principles that enhance the environment and everyone in our wider community.
We are committed to:
organically grown food which promotes good health and the long term care of our environment;
environmental sustainability which preserves the earth’s resources for future generations and species
fair trade and social responsibility acknowledging that our business is interdependent with our customers, our staff, our local community, Aotearoa-New Zealand and the rest of the world
It’s just common sense.
Our philosophy is based around a knowledge and care about the origins of the things we sell, which in turn involves a deep-seated concern for the environment. We see no future in an economic system that does not value the land and the food that is grown in it. We reject a system that produces 'cheap' food by pushing the actual costs onto someone else. If chemicals used in production damage the environment, the cost of repairing the damage should be included in the cost of the product. Currently this does not happen — instead these costs are picked up by local authorities (i.e. ratepayers).
Because the real cost of production is not reflected in the selling price of conventionally produced items, organic production tends to be more expensive. In effect growers pay not to pollute the environment and a small portion of this cost is passed on to consumers. Other factors which make organic production more expensive are:
- the longer time it takes to grow a plant because no artificial stimulants are used.
- the greater dependence on the local climate and soil conditions.
Commonsense Organics policy is to ensure the price we pay growers covers the real cost of production, so we are not just a commercial enterprise selling something for which we know there is a growing market. We are also promoting products that enhance the quality of peoples' lives and improve how we treat the planet we live on.
What Is Organic Food?
Organic food is grown without the use of chemicals that can harm humans, animals and the soil. Organic growers build up and maintain the fertility of their soil and control weeds, disease and pests using both age-old remedies and modern tools and practices which organic agricultural researchers are constantly developing. Acceptable conditions for animals and respect for their behavioural needs are important components of organic farming.
You can be sure your food is organically grown if it is certified organic. This means it meets certain agreed international standards during production and processing and has been inspected to ensure that this is the case. As retailers we cannot hope to know where everything we sell comes from and how it was produced and we rely heavily on the certifying process to be able to give a guarantee to our customers that our products are in fact organic. There are four certifying bodies in New Zealand: Bio-Gro NZ and Agriqual Organic (which are recognised internationally), Demeter (the bio-dynamic standard) and a local certifying scheme, OFNZ.
History of organic agriculture
The history of the organic movement only begins at the time of the second world war when agriculture started to change from a largely organic system to one that became increasingly dependent upon artificial chemical fertilisers and pesticides.
The reasons for this change are complex but important among them are:
- the need to produce larger amounts of food to feed a rapidly growing population and the difficulty of doing this without more protection against diseases and pestilence;
- the attempt to speed up production, to increase the number of crops that could be taken from the same piece of land without employing the traditional methods of retaining fertility such as green cropping, rotation etc which take time;
- the need to reduce the cost of food production by increasing the size of the average agricultural operation; and
- the stockpile of chemical weapons that needed an alternative use.
The organic movement saw the need for increased production just as everyone else did, though organic growers differed radically in the ways they sought to do this. They said that there was no point in methods which increased production in the short term but which seriously jeopardised sustaining such levels into the future. The use of chemicals would lead to a short term improvement in the quantity of food production but the quality would drop to the point where the food became dangerous to consume, and the effect on the environment would be so damaging as to render the land incapable of producing anything in the long term.
They deplored the growing tendency to lower production costs by increasing the size of production units because it did not take into account the real downstream costs of such methods.
They opposed an economic system where monetary values were primary in food production and other values such as the health and nutritional elements of the product tended to be ignored.
The organic movement therefore is largely concerned with promoting a system of agriculture which seeks to produce healthy, nutritious food without destroying the environment in either the short or long term. It is primarily a system of agriculture that is sustainable ecologically, socially and economically.