Consumers Mean Business [Opinion]

Hearty congratulations are in order to Brian Sparks, who has been promoted to group editor on American/Western Fruit Grower. With the promotion and added responsibility comes the opportunity to have the last word, or for those who read your magazines back to front like me, the first. Brian will write the back page Editorial in American Fruit Grower while senior western editor David Eddy will continue writing his Editorial column in Western Fruit Grower.

For the time being, I am taking over this column, so please allow me to introduce myself. I have been writing for American/Western Fruit Grower for a little over a year as senior staff writer. Previously, I worked for six years on AFG’s sister publications Greenhouse Grower and Today’s Garden Center in the ornamental horticulture department here at Meister Media Worldwide.

Consumers Mean Business

One thing that has struck me coming over from the ornamental side is how closely that industry follows this one. Trends that start in the food industry quickly are adopted in floriculture. The best and most recent example I can give you is the ever-growing demand for organic products and the increasing effort growers are making to “go green.” We all know how big the organic movement has become in the last few years, especially with large-scale retailers like Wal-Mart spearheading the act of bringing affordable organic food to the masses. On the ornamental side, growers are beginning to realize that the demand for organic products is no longer a trend. Fruit growers realized that long ago.

But there is another big thing coming down the pike that may knock all of our socks off — our personal and professional responsibility to lower carbon emissions. Sustainability is all the rage now, it’s a big buzzword in the media, it’s everywhere. Car manufacturers are quickly building hybrid models. Filmmakers are producing eco-friendly movies in Hollywood. And food manufacturers are putting carbon labels on their products.

Yep, you read that right. A new government program unveiled in May in the United Kingdom will label consumer products with the greenhouse gas emissions created by their production, transport, and eventual disposal, similar to the calorie or salt content figures on food packaging. The measure will allow shoppers to see “how much damage their purchases do to the environment,” said an article in The Guardian. Experts involved in developing the plan noted in the article that “vegetables grown in Africa and imported by air may have a lower carbon footprint than those grown in heated greenhouses in the UK.”

While the program will be voluntary, the goal is to make Britain a low-carbon economy, with ministers working with the Carbon Trust and BSI British Standards to “develop a benchmark for measurement of carbon emissions over the next 18 months so businesses can calculate their impact and label their products accordingly,” the UK’s environment minister, Ian Pearson, said in the article.

If it’s happening in the UK, it’s only a matter of time before it catches on here in the U.S. Not to mention how carbon labels on U.S. products will impact concerned consumers overseas. Whether we like it or not, consumers are going to start taking us to task for our “footprint” on the earth’s resources. Perhaps we should stay ahead of the curve and start taking measures now to reduce our carbon emissions so we can be prepared for what consumers demand from us in the future.