IN THE GARDEN: ENTHUSIASM FOR ORGANICS WANES
Push and pull: Lack of consumer interest and incentive from government has seen the industry slowly shrink
How is the organic gardening business doing in Canada? Ask Simon Hart, a technical whiz at Langley-based Greenstar, one of Canada’s leading suppliers of garden products, and he will give you a simple gesture: two thumbs down.
The organic garden product business, as far as he is concerned, is crashing due to lack of consumer enthusiasm and a lapse in environmental focus that has blurred the edges around the issue of pollution.
The industry that produces organic gardening products, from natural pesticides to earth-friendly fertilizers and soil amendments, has been ailing for quite some time, Hart says, and it is now slowly shrinking and sinking.
“I wish I could say it was doing better, but we have still not reached that tipping point where organics become the norm,” says Hart, who has been responsible for developing and marketing numerous organic garden products.
“If you look at the big companies involved in organics across North America, they have all started to edge away, some of them quite dramatically.
“You don’t see this translating in stores yet, but the industry has lost its momentum.”
Hart says part of the problem can be blamed on inferior product when organic fertilizers and pesticides and other natural products first became available in garden stores.
The urban green warriors, or whatever you like to call them, want organics to takeover but there are just not enough of them to support the makers of organic products. SIMON HART GREENSTAR TECHNICAL EXPERT
“The organic industry was a bit of a snake oil show for a time,” he says. “A lot of people were getting burned along the way with products that didn’t live up to their promotion. It soured things for all of us.”
Brent Jackson, president of Greenstar, says another significant factor has been that the driving force for organic products has always been more of a “regulatory push” rather than a “consumer pull.”
“It takes government to push consumers toward using organics by saying we are going to take away the harmful products you are using,” he says.
The small pockets of enthusiastic organic gardeners, such as ones you will often find growing organic vegetables in East Vancouver, are not enough to fuel an entire industry, says Hart.
“The urban green warriors, or whatever you like to call them, want organics to take over but there are just not enough of them to support the makers of organic products.”
The majority of lawn and garden products sold in Canada are sold to people living in the suburbs. Less than five per cent of that business is organic, says Hart.
“Lawn care is a huge business but the people with these large lawns are not buying organic products to feed and take care of them.”
Greenstar carries an inventory of more than 12,000 garden products and supplies about 1,500 independent garden centres across Canada.
Grotek is its manufacturing wing and Greenstar has also partnered with various large producers of garden products, such as Scotts Miracle-Gro and Premier Tech, to deliver products to consumers.
“We basically distribute anything you are going to find in a garden centre other than plants,” says Hart.
That means everything from tools, gloves and bird feeders to watering devices, garden ornaments and pots and containers of every size, shape and colour.
In terms of organic fertilizers and natural pesticides, Greenstar is proud of its Earth Safe line, which Hart helped develop.
Being an organic gardener himself with a three-acre garden in the Mission area, he says he made sure that ingredients of each of the Earth Safe products were totally organic.
“We have six liquid and four granular fertilizers and everything is clearly listed on the label.
“I want us to be completely open — full Monty — and transparent about the ingredients of each product,” he says.
Greenstar also distributes the popular Safer’s line of natural pesticides, such as Trounce, End-All, Defender and Insecticidal Soap, as well as the Gaia Green line of natural fertilizers.
Two other top product lines Greenstar distributes are Scotts EcoSense natural weed and bug killers, such as Bug B Gon, Path Clear and Weed B Gon, and Premier Tech’s Myke products, a line of micronutrient growth boosters used at the time of planting.
Greenstar started out in the late 1990s as Allie’s Wholesale.
In 2006, Allie’s changed hands and the company was renamed Greenstar.
Today, the company has a warehouse facility with 48,000 square feet of space in Langley and another with 60,000 square feet in Ontario.
In 2012, it acquired a major lawn and garden product company in Cambridge, Ont., called Manchester Products.
At the same time, it also acquired a pet food and pet products business that Jackson says has been a “stunning success,” with sales increasing at the rate of 30 per cent a year.
“In our business, it is a case of survival of the fittest, which has meant that we have had to diversify and seize opportunities. We never thought we would be in the pet food business but here we are.”
Overall, Greenstar has grown four times what it was in 2006, says Jackson.
Key competitors continue to be Eddi’s Wholesale here in B.C. and Halifax Seed based in New Brunswick.
“We have a national reach whereas our competitors tend to be more regional,” he says.
Greenstar also exports, mostly fertilizers, to 16 countries in Europe and South America and into the U.S. and it has a manufacturing facility in Valencia, Spain, which provides easier access to the European market.
In order to make money and stay in business, Greenstar needs to supply a wide range of products, but both Hart and Jackson would love to see the organic business recover its former momentum.
“I think we need to get back to focusing on the real problem with the environment. We talk about climate change but at the heart of the problem is pollution.
“We seem to have stopped talking about how we are polluting the environment.
“That is why we need to get back to the organic nature of the discussion.”