Amy's Kitchen President Paul Schiefer Explains Difference Between Traditional And Organic Agriculture
- (Photo : Gary Barnes)
More and more people want to eat clean and green - and Amy's Kitchen is so here for it.
According to the Organic Trade Association, sales of organic food in the U.S. have more than doubled in the past decade. Hungry Americans are "voting with their dollar and every time they pick a company that's doing something a little bit better for the world and their community and for their environment, they are changing the world through that action," said Amy's Kitchen President Paul Schiefer on an episode of the "Responsibly Different" podcast.
Amy's mantra is "Organic before organic was cool." But the vegetarian frozen food enterprise is ready to rock as the world catches up. It makes sense for a brand born more than three decades ago with a simple vegetarian potpie that grew into an empire sold in 11 countries and produces 1 million meals a day. But back when Amy's Kitchen started, organic foods were not only challenging to find, but there was no national standard for "organic."
My, how times have changed. Amy's Kitchen landed its B Corp certification in 2020 - it's only awarded to companies demonstrating the highest standards of social and environmental performance.
But even in 2023, not everyone understands the nuances between traditional agriculture and organic agriculture. Amy's Kitchen's Schiefer explained that the distinctions are significant.
"In its most basic sense, organic [is] really avoiding the use of over 700 toxic chemicals that are traditionally used in farming or the production of food. It's a regulated system," Schiefer said on "Responsibly Different."
Amy's Kitchen is part of the history of organic growth in the States. Says its website, "We were organic before it was a national certification. So when the U.S. Department of Agriculture decided to create standards for organic, they looked to us for guidance. Together with other industry leaders, we helped pioneer the organic food industry and, more importantly, we helped make organic food available to more people."
Amy's Kitchen currently offers 124 vegan meals, 140 gluten-free options, 28 light-in-sodium foods, and more than 200 kosher-certified products. All of its products are non-GMO. Amy's Kitchen was also one of the initial brands to hit store shelves with non-BPA lined cans. According to the Mayo Clinic, BPA stands for bisphenol A, an industrial chemical used in plastics and resins since the 1950s. Exposure to BPA could cause possible health effects in the brain and prostate gland of fetuses, infants, and children and is linked to other health concerns.
Schiefer said Amy's Kitchen made a commitment to choosing what's best for its customers. He added that back in 1987, the team got together and decided to forge a new path. "We said, 'We believe in a different form of agriculture, but we want a standard and we want something that we can look to that's objective, that we can communicate about, that we can use as we try to transition our supply chain to this vision that we all had.'"
Farming Freshness: Amy's Kitchen Keeps Standards High
Schiefer pointed out that the company noticed this form of farming was happening in a variety of smaller-scale localized ways in different communities and different pockets of the country.
"We, together with a bunch of certifiers and other food companies, came together and we helped create this national organic program which created the organic seal and created the rules of the road about how you farm without the use of all these chemicals," Schiefer said. "And those could be pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers."
Still confused? Schiefer laid it out in simpler terms as a nature-based system.
"When you don't have that chemical arsenal to take out all the bugs and create a monoculture system to farming, you have to look at soil health, you have to look at non chemical techniques like crop rotation and selecting really highly resistant varieties of plants using nutrient waste management in effective ways," Schiefer said. "In some ways, while traditional ag might try to just get rid of any living thing, that's not what the plant wants, we actually want living things. We want the enemies of our pests in the field. If you're just taking it all out, you take it all out. So we're trying to create a nature-based system, something that's actually biologically complete as much as possible. It's also GMO-free, which is something I think a lot of consumers are looking for."
Schiefer said the organic certification process can also be complex.
"I don't know if the broader world understands how accountable organic is," he said. "Every farm, every process or every step goes through annual third-party certifications where their practices are looked at in depth, their paperwork, how they actually operate and keep policies, and it's being done at scale."
While he acknowledged there are some interesting small-scale ideas out there, none of them are working on a national or global level in the way that organic is.
"I think it's something that really works," Schiefer shared. "For us, is it perfect? No. Is there room to improve it? Yes. But I think in terms of something that you can go out and guarantee is doing a certain set of things, there's nothing else like organic out there in the ag space today."
Sowing the Seeds of Change
Much like the art of farming, the standards surrounding organic certification don't remain stagnant.
"It's designed to be evolving and forever changing," Schiefer said. "The world is changing. The climate's changing. What we know about ag science is changing. So it's very much designed to allow for accountable continuous improvement."
Schiefer said the foundation for organic certification is set through the National Organic Standards Board.
"Most of the rules around organic come through this board and this board is made up of academic stakeholders, farming stakeholders, brands," Schiefer explained. "Any standards board, they assess the evidence on both sides of a particular suggestion or idea. And if it has merit, if it fits the founding values and intention of organic, then they'll pass it forward and then the National Organic Program, which sits within the [U.S. Department of Agriculture], will look at those recommendations and if they do their job the way they're supposed to, they will turn those into rules."
Schiefer admitted the road to organic could move more quickly and involve more accountability.
"A lot of what we're asking for is actually to make organic more robust and a more difficult standard because we think that's really what it needs to fully live up to the value system that we're all behind," Schiefer said. "So, the process is there, but I think we would appreciate as an industry a little quicker use of the process that is supposed to be helping us with this evolution."
