On the day after all the vitality of the Natural Products Expo West came to an end, I felt thoroughly depleted. Since it was 80 degrees in San Diego when I got home, I went straight to the beach to allow myself to ‘desensitize and decompress’. The breeze was unbelievable for March, and surveying the surf proved to be a wonderful way to unwind. For some reason, seeing one particular paddle boarder catch wave after wave got me daydreaming about the organic industry and the 20-plus years during which I have watched it evolve.
Considering the sheer size and scope of this year’s convention – which seemed to cover the entire city of Anaheim, with over 70,000 people in attendance and something like 6,000 booths – I couldn’t help recall the humble origins of the event. It all started with a few people who looked at the world differently, envisioning how it could be if pesticides and herbicides were eliminated, insects were accepted as a part of the natural order of things, diversity was embraced, farm workers were treated with dignity and respect, and the soil was seen as a delicate, living organism.
These organic pioneers included people like Michael Funk whose Mountain People’s Warehouse began marketing organic food before hardly anyone had heard of it; Michael Besancon, who has spent more than four decades promoting healthy foods and environmental causes, and Steve Demos, the founder of Silk, which went on to become the biggest user of organic, non-GMO soybeans in North America. They were just a few of the many entrepreneurs whose determination to eliminate the proliferation of chemicals in our food supply turned what began as a small, uncoordinated movement within the counterculture into a powerful and irresistible force in the marketplace.
As I recalled the contributions these individuals had made in bringing us to this point, the paddle boarder I had been watching suddenly emerged from the water right in front of me. I immediately noticed he was much older than I would have thought. Then he surprised me by putting his board down and forming some letters in the wet sand, after which proceeded to pick up the board and go on his way. I walked over to see what he had written, and was kind of dumbfounded, wondering if he had been reading my mind. Because there, inscribed in that damp stretch of ground where the land intersects with the sea, were the words “THANK YOU.”
