Editorial

2/27/00 I republished this article, first published in February after the 1999 Annual Meeting, in September. I am putting it on again because its message is even more relevant today.

How much has changed in five months? Ocean Spray and the cranberry industry find that their problems have gone from bad, to worse, to worse than ever was anticipated. Large Ocean Spray growers are pitted against small growers in a battle that will see the ruin of the less fortunate. Ocean Spray itself seems to be so hell bent on  trying to "clobber the competition" that they are willing to use the small family farmer as cannon fodder. Taking a bite out of Northland's market share will do nothing to reduce the surplus. Rah rah cheerleading about how Ocean Spray will teach that cheeky upstart Swendrowski a lesson may inspire the troops; but it detracts from the far more difficult task of growing the market for all things cranberry.

Robert Hawthorne, who is by all accounts a top-notch CEO, is saddled with internal dissension and bad press that cannot help the image that Ocean Spray wants to cultivate with consumers.  First the proxy fight at the Annual Meeting, when the will of the Ocean Spray growers in Massachusetts was overturned, and then the decision by the Ocean Spray board to support a volume restriction, seems to demonstrates further insensitivity to the small farmer. First the small family farmers discovered that their votes were virtually worthless, and then they were told the board supported another 20-30% cut in their income.

The spectacle of the Ocean Spray wave crashing over and drowning small family farmers, who larger growers have called "hobby farmers", is a public relations nightmare. The S.S. Ocean Spray is listing badly and taking on water. Brilliant and resourceful management is needed to save her. But if she is saved at the expense of small family farmers, some of whom who will be forced to sell out for pennies on the dollar to their rich neighbors, and some of whom may go on to start their own cooperative with a true one member one vote policy, the damage to the once mighty S.S. Ocean Spray will take years to repair. Even if it manages to retain its legal cooperative status, the public will know that it is really agribusiness in coops clothing.

Can the high priced talent at Arnold Communication and Fleishman-Hilliard handle the image problem Ocean Spray is bringing on itself?  I advise both Hawthorne and the board to put the saving of the smaller growers on priority level equal with saving Ocean Spray. If wisdom prevails, they will realize these goals are inextricably entwined.

If this does not happen, Ocean Spray as you and I, and as the public, know it, will cease to exist. It will become, in effect, the Great Lakes Cranberry Company. Small family cranberry farmers who unite to go their own way in Oregon, Washington, and Massachusetts, may not own the trademark, but they will own the true ocean spray.

Hal Brown,
Editor

(For a personal note, scroll down to the bottom of the page.)

The First Editorial on Cranberry Stressline, from Feb. 1999.

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Misery loves company

or

"I have met the enemy and it is us" Pogo

 

by Hal M. Brown, LICSW
Rural Mental Health Therapist

Introduction

Each farm crisis has its own wrinkles, from pork to pomegranates. There's always something to be learned by analyzing how farmers handle a crisis. Case in point: the cranberry industry is in chaos because the prices predicted for the crop harvested this fall are nearly 30% less than what they have been. It is too heartless to call this an "industry" in chaos, Wall Street talk.

People are hurting. People are frightened. And in the case of a large group of Ocean Spray cranberry growers, people are angry. Not at the drop of prices and the exigencies of the market, but at the management and human relations decisions of those they entrust to work for their best interests. Many of them, perhaps even close to a   majority, who are grower-owners of the cranberry market dominating co-operative, Ocean Spray, are having their farm stress complicated by anger. Some are questioning for the first time whether their Board and management have made the best decisions. Others are clinging to the hope that their trust in management's demonstrated ability to pull through other crises is not misplaced. Thus, the object of my analysis is the crisis among Ocean Spray Cranberry growers which is exacerbated by anger and/or mistrust in corporate management.

We have met the enemy and it is us.

titanic-1.jpg (5487 bytes)The Ocean Spray  co-op is managed by executives who are responsible to a Board of Directors composed, by and large, of large cranberry growers whose personal net worth totals in the millions. Most have been in the cranberry business for generations. While they also stand to lose money, if they don't have seven figure nest eggs, then they don't have the business skills to be Directors. When the market goes into free-fall, they often point out that we are all in the same boat. Indeed, we are. But only a few of the passengers have yachts as life boats.

If I understand the sequence of events correctly, the bad news was presented to the members of the Board by management following the Annual meeting in Florida in early February. The Chairman of the Board was apparently the only Board member to know of the dire situation prior to the Annual Meeting, but he elected not to break the usual tradition of having the Board Meeting following the Annual Meeting. Thus even Board members were lulled into complacency by the upbeat management predictions and the entertainment and good cheer at the meeting. Growers left the meeting feeling positive about their future. Many went on to travel in Florida unaware that up north the sun had set and the ship of cranberries was about to sink beneath the waves. Those who came home received a revised price forecast, with a drastic price reduction predicted to last for at least three years.

Not only is the lack of sensitivity in how the news was disseminated being criticized; but there are hard questions being asked as to how it is possible that the best and brightest minds at "corporate" couldn't foresee the collapse of the market and forewarn growers. The notion that they didn't complete their data analysis until just before the Annual Meeting and when they hit "enter" to bring up the final figures they were as shocked as anybody is difficult to believe.

Independent growers are reeling with the same news from their handlers. Many had signed contracts to lure them away from Ocean Spray with prices a good 30% a bbl higher than what Ocean Spray was paying. While they may have benefited from this windfall, they were now facing a dismal future themselves because, at the least Ocean Spray growers are guaranteed a "home for their fruit".

Recipe for rage

When the forces of nature decimate your crop, you can stand alone or with your neighbors and raise your fist to the heavens and lament "why us, God". (God would probably answer, "because you're a farmer.") When market forces such as supply and demand or competition drive prices down, you can vent your anger at an abstract enemy, for example "those damn carbonated non-nutritional beverages and the sugar addicted teenagers that drink them". If you succumb to the trend of agribusiness grinding up small farmers you can rant about the inevitable loss of a way of life to so-called progress. The point is, in all these examples that farmers know so well, there is no clearly defined enemy.

While the farm stress is great for the above farmers, there is a another ingredient added when farmers can look to their own brethren and see suggestions of duplicity, if not outright withholding of vital information needed for business planning. A simple example is that a farmer could have prepaid for supplies and employee health insurance in the 1998 tax year to lessen expenses in 1999.

There is a solace in having the company of fellow farmers who are in the same crisis as you are. Indeed, any therapist or clergyman would recommend using each other for emotional support during such times. If clinical symptoms such as those described here in Cranberry Stressline and on the other farm stress web sites develop, professional help should be sought.

If it is perceived (and perceptions are all that count) that there is an "enemy within", it is human nature for some to feel betrayed and to vent their rage.  Others, to avoid unpleasant feelings, will maintain their trust that their leaders will take care of them. Different people have different dispositions, and handle stress in their own ways. Certain personality types are more comfortable trusting authority than others. Sometimes the two groups turn on each other, increasing the conflict and stress levels of all concerned.

Just venting anger may provide a brief catharsis, but does no good in the long run. And playing "trust the wisdom of our leaders" only works if, indeed, the leaders have the tools to revitalize the market for cranberries.

Who ever said being a farmer was simple?

Ocean Spray is by any measure a co-op (or company) much loved by its grower/members. Through good times and bad, Ocean Spray has been there. It created the market for cranberries we now know from what was for years, a fruit just enjoyed as sauce during the winter holidays.

There is not a grower, no matter how small, who isn't on a first name basis with every Board member from his or her growing area and likewise with management right up to the CEO. Those who are responsible for the nitty gritty of running the business are held in high regard, but more importantly, we count many of them as our friends. Some we socialize with, serve on committees and other boards with, others come help us out personally when we need their advice or just another strong back. The spirit of family farming is alive and well among cranberry growers. At least it has been.  

Balancing secrecy with honesty.

While niche farmers aren't engaged in designing microprocessors to compete with Intel, we are in a beverage market place dominated by multi-billion dollar giants like Coke and Pepsi. So we obviously have to keep marketing and development plans close to our vests, lest these giants get an unfair advantage. We are used to trusting the Directors and management when they explain this to us and tell us that initiatives are in the works which will work to our benefit. Unfortunately, some companies take this too far, and pull the veil of secrecy too tight.  Sometimes it seems like we have someone whose job it is to wield a Top Secret stamp on information just because he can. Whether this is true or not isn't particularly relevant if the majority of growers believe it is true.

The currency of good management - grower relations is trust. Once that is undermined, it is only won back slowly and painfully. It does the average grower little good to hear a wealthy cranberry grower who sits on the board to intone "I feel your pain", or an executive to say the same thing while he goes home to a high six-figure life-style and the knowledge that his investments, plus a lucrative severance package should he be fired, will pay for a long time of sailing the Caribbean. To truly feel the pain of those who stand to loose their farms and default on loans or to have to pull their children out of college, a lot more than sympathetic words are needed. Sometimes you have to say you're sorry through your wallet.

We need real empathy, not P.R. "spin"

Like most executives and Board members, when there is a crisis which requires presenting the "facts" to the stock holders (or in the case of Ocean Spray, the grower/owner), they turn to the gurus of the graduate schools of management. They come not unprepared into such situations having gone to seminars given by the best and brightest in the field. (Like advertising executives who use a similar knowledge base drawn from psychology and social psychology, I think they often pervert my own field to manipulate people for profit.)

An interesting thing happens when one is subjected to professionally informed, slick and effective spin control. If it works the peoples' anger is dissipated, and  a civilized riot is averted. Rage may be suppressed. So uncomfortable is it to have a combination of fear, sense of loss or betrayal, and rage, that the anger itself may be relieved for a while. Directors and management, if they are practicing good "spin control", will put a human face on their decisions, no matter how insensitive or even negligent they were. Since these are people all the farmers know and like, it is difficult to be mad at them personally.

But then subgroups form, they process the information. The true believers, and there always are some who want to believe the best, won't engage in a dialogue with the skeptics. But the skeptics will talk to each other. And instead of feeling better, they feel manipulated and end up even angrier than they did previously.

A therapists' goal is to enhance the patients' well being. A P.R. pros goal is spin control and persuasion. You can't be both a therapist and a P.R. pro. One must be utterly sincere, the other must only seem utterly sincere. You can learn to fake all the listening skills a good therapist uses, and it seems like you mean it when you say "I hear you" (except real therapists never say that). But it is just like Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting, a great actor playing a great shrink. If you can't tolerate acting such a role, because let's face it, acting in real life is called lying, you may convince yourself that you believe the lines the script writer provided for you.

Nonprofessional and well meaning people may actually believe they are being sincere, they may "P.R. themselves" into believing the spin that is spun to them by the true professionals. That is a shame, because these are honest  people, whose sincerity is a plus when they present their case to their constituency (like some of Clinton's early allies).

What does this all have to do with farm stress.

Misery does love company. As long as you don't whine, as long as you don't wallow in feelings of despair, misery can and should mobilize you to take action. The first step in a situation like this is to come together with like minded farmers and do some basic "taking care of each other". Everyone has a somewhat different story to tell. Everyone's plight is a little different. As noted, people have different dispositions and ways of handling stress.

Select a moderator whose sole job is to make sure that the positive focus isn't lost. Empathy must be encouraged, but nobody should leave feeling the group is giving up on them. The operating credo should be Action, not anger.

The situation described here is unlike those described on the excellent Farm Disaster web sites I have linked to, where the enemies discussed are forces of nature or the marketplace.  But any anger can be made to be energizing. Anger should not be blind. It must be focused and rational. It must turn into a plan.

Our life boat may be a mere dinghy, but were in it together. Management and Directors need to own up to their mistakes and growers need to move on, working together in an atmosphere of honesty where trust can be regained.


2/27/00 A personal note: When I wrote this article I had no idea that Cranberry Stressline would develop as it has, to become a controversial and often quoted web site. I never set out to be cranberry "industry watcher", as the Boston Herald recently called me, or even a "gadfly" or "modern day David" publishing an "odd and misguided" web site (Boston Globe 4/99). My original intention was to offer online advice as a therapist who worked in rural mental health for my entire career.

Now, much to the dismay of people in certain quarters, Cranberry Stressline has become the number one cranberry industry web site. Those who are critical of the web site tend to focus on the Editorials, Op-Ed pieces, and Forum entries.

There is more to Cranberry Stressline than that. The full title of the web site is Cranberry Stressline: News and Opinion about the cranberry industry. I endeavor to provide timely news and information about all aspects of our industry. News and information that you can use no matter what you think of the rest of the web site. A perusal of the archives will demonstrate to all but the most biased that Stressline has covered stories vital to the cranberry industry.

There are those who disagree with Stressline's editorial policy, and with articles written by those critical of Ocean Spray. Some believe that if they ignore Stressline, the problems discussed here will go away. For those who disagree, but believe in honest and educational debate, I remind them of my standing offer to publish their opinions. This includes Robert Hawthorne, who might follow in John Swendrowski and John Decas' footsteps, and participate in the discussion in Cranberry Stressline. This renewed invitation is certainly extended to all who supported the alternate proxy slate, including Craige Scott and the twelve signers of alternate proxy letter.

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