Business Integrity

So there I was, doing my deliveries in the rain again this week.  And as I was driving from house to house, town to town, dropping off baskets of beautifully grown local produce, I found myself tuning out the world and being hypnotized by soft ticking of the rain and regular drum of the wipers.  The misty, watery and gray day wrapped around me like a cocoon.

The world in which I lost myself?   The corporate one.  Did you know that if you were born today you could live your entire life without ever buying anything from an independent business owner?  And then I started thinking about what that means, and the integrity of the system we have created.  I was thinking of how many decisions are made each day in big business and how they affect us, whether it is is a well known fast food franchise deciding to use 60% fillers in taco meat to increase profit or a popular sportswear company combining colloquial language and drug use to increase t-shirt sales, and I started to wonder, is capitalism and integrity mutually exclusive?  Is operating a business purely for profit a sure-fire way to grow the gray area between right and wrong? 

 
Do you want to know what I find most scary about this?  Agri-business.  Corporations farming for profit, there are no farmers, only farm managers, who work for and report to a corporation.  Can you imagine what compromises are made in the field?  Most agri-businesses are in business to grow animal feed or ingredients for processed food and since cutting costs and making money are the primary goals, NOT NUTRITION, it is unrealistic to expect them to be entirely forthcoming about their growing practices or the integrity thereof.  So the same principal applies here that it does in all other industries, it is up to YOU, the consumer to educate yourself, it is up to the you to find out how your food is grown, where it is grown, using what seed and even then these companies are not required to make the information readily available.

Don't you think it is exhausting?  I don't want to have to be a structural engineer to choose a window product for my home, I don't want to have to be an automotive engineer to choose a car or a chartered accountant to translate and negotiate the finance agreement and discounts and I don't want to be a registered dietitian to go grocery shopping.

I do want the companies I bring into my home and my life to operate with integrity, I want sincere value and honest communication and so my last question is, do you think I will find it? 

The answer was sitting in the back of my van.  Yes!  BUY LOCAL.