COMMONSENSE COUPLE
The founders of Commonsense Organics, Marion Wood and Jim Kebbell, say their New Year Honours recognise the importance of organic farming in New Zealand.
Wood and Kebbell have been made Members of the New Zealand Order of Merit for their services to sustainable business and the community.
The couple began their championing of organic food production in 1975 with land they bought to grow organic vegetables in Te Horo, north of Wellington.
They opened the first Commonsense Organics shop in Wellington in 1991, which has since grown into five Commonsense Organics stores – four in Wellington and one in Auckland. Their land, called Common Property, is a professionally run, organic foodproducing 11.2 hectares.
‘‘I think [the honour is] a recognition of the huge contribution that organic horticulture and organic food can make to the issues we face today,’’ Wood said.
Wood was born into organic growing, with a mother who gardened organically and who helped the couple find their plot of land while they were still living in Wellington.
‘‘My husband was extremely
sceptical at first, and it was only when he discovered that Shell Oil were pouring their fossil-based fertilisers on our seeds that he thought, maybe there’s something in this organic rubbish.’’
Wood and Kebbell first helped create the Wellington Food Co-Op to sell organic food, and then set up their own store. ‘‘Basically, what we were trying to do was mainstream organics, to make it available to a much wider public and I think if that was our goal,
we’ve succeeded way beyond our expectations.’’
Conventional New Zealand farming, responsible for nearly half of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, was unsustainable, Wood said. The loss of soil – 192 million tonnes a year in New Zealand due to erosion – was also unsustainable, and could be reversed by organic farming, said Wood, who also chairs the Soil and Health Association of New Zealand.
Raising awareness of organic food production and the harm of conventional farming methods helped reconnect people with the land but it also connected people with reality too. ‘‘You can’t eat money but we’ve created a society that’s based on valuing just money. Any society that values money above food has got its priorities all wrong.
‘‘It’s really important that we rebuild society, that we rebuild businesses, and I think one of the things we’re really proud of is we’ve built a business that isn’t just based on making a lot of money,’’ she said.
‘‘Of course, you need to make money in order to pay your staff, in order to survive, in order to grow, but you need to look after the environment because the economy is not the be all and end all ... if you don’t have a healthy environment, you don’t have any business at all.’’
Looking after people – customers and staff – was important to the couple, who are proudly LivingWage employers.
‘‘Our customers are just the most loyal people you can find, they stuck with us through thick and thin. They tell us when we’re doing well and they tell us when we’re not doing well, and that’s good too because it always keeps ... you connected to doing better.’’
On the downside, they were disappointed at how few farmers had adopted organic horticulture in the past three decades, or were listening to the tangata whenua about ways to produce food. ‘‘I would have hoped we would be leading in terms ofmitigations for climate change, instead of dragging the chain, which New Zealand seems to be doing.’’
She wanted to see the regenerative agriculture movement, which aimed to improve the land and ecosystems, combine with organic producers to create a farming system based on both.