Growing Pains

The line between community-based organic agriculture and big business is often blurry.

By Bill Richards | August 2010 | FROM THE PRINT EDITION

Credit: Photographs by Hayley Young


Andrew Stout, owner of Full Circle Farm in Carnation, has enjoyed enormous success raising and selling organic produce, with annual sales of $11 million.

Most small businesses would be satisfied to grow by 50
percent to 90 percent a year. Not Andrew Stout, whose Full Circle Farm, based
in Carnation, has logged that rapid growth since he moved to the Snoqualmie
Valley in 2000.

“You get bigger or you get smaller. And in order to do what
I want to do, I have to grow,” says Stout, 41, who started farming with his
wife, Wendy Munroe, on three leased acres in North Bend in 1996. Stout’s
mission is no less modest than his farm’s growth rate.

“What I want to do,” he says, “is fix the food system.”

That mission took shape, Stout explains, in the organic food
movement, which was just beginning to move into the mainstream of the food
industry when Stout and his wife arrived in North Bend, fresh from a stint as
apprentices on an organic farm in Minnesota. Growing food without chemical
pesticides and herbicides, he says, “was a noble occupation.”

Stout and Munroe were not alone. Driven by concerns about
food safety, nutrition and the environment, sales of organic produce like Full
Circle’s fruit and vegetables have been nothing short of spectacular in the
past decade. Profits for the organic food industry have climbed from $2.55
billion or 3 percent of the total American produce market in 2000, to $9.5
billion or 11.4 percent last year, according to the Organic Trade Association,
an industry group. While the rest of the food sector stagnated during the
recent recession, sales of organic fruit and vegetables have continued to grow,
with agricultural giants like Heinz, Dole, ConAgra and Archer Daniels Midland
now on the organic bandwagon.

Meanwhile, Stout has taken Full Circle from its tiny start
to become an organic marketing powerhouse. The Carnation farm currently raises
organic produce on 400 acres and delivers boxes of organic food to 12,000
subscription customers weekly from Washington to the Arctic Circle in Alaska,
making it one of the nation’s largest organic delivery services. It sells to
some 75 restaurants and 25 farmers markets and grocery chains. During the past
decade, Stout says, Full Circle’s annual sales have grown from $46,000 a year
to $11 million.

But like the organic movement itself, Full Circle’s road