Re: Forbes article on organic gardening

**"Susan McCoy" B*@impact-pr.com**

Thought you all would find this of interest. On The Cover/Top Stories:
Organic Miracle Needed
Emily Lambert 09.04.06
God forbid--the people who make your lawn green are going green.
A pregnant woman stoops to pick vegetables from her garden in a TV
commercial for Scotts Miracle-Gro Co.'s Organic Choice
Garden Soil. "Lately we started growing vegetables organically," she says,
as her mate spreads dirt on the ground. A child frolics
alongside a white picket fence. The ad ends by saying the all-natural
product will make flowers and vegetables grow "twice as
big," just what you'd expect from one of the company's less natural
offerings for the garden. The unspoken message: Unlike the
regular stuff, this dirt is chemical free, so expectant moms and their kids
can muck around in it without a care.
It's a precautionary diversification for Scotts. Organic Choice is the first
national brand trumpeted as "organic" by the mainstream
gardening giant. It is part of a quiet move by the company to be less
dependent on synthetically created chemicals, which include
the main components in Scotts' distinctive blue Miracle-Gro plant food.
Scotts plans to gradually introduce more gardening soil, fertilizer and bug
killer made with natural ingredients, including animal
manure and Sri Lankan coconut husks. The key additives in Organic Choice
soil: chicken manure and yucca plant extract, a
wetting agent. Scotts paid $20 million last year for Rod McLellan Co., the
parent company of Whitney Farms, a regional organic
gardening brand. It also intends to reduce phosphorus in its Turf Builder
lawn fertilizer products by 50% by the end of 2008 and
introduce a natural lawn fertilizer line next year under the Scotts brand.
The goal, under Chief Executive James Hagedorn, is for
half of Scotts' fertilizer and pesticides to be naturally derived within as
few as three years. "No one has had a commercial success
in natural lawn and garden products, but I think it's a place where we can
lead and innovate," says Hagedorn, 50.
It's a tricky maneuver. Scotts can't market natural products in a way that
will spook gardeners who buy the chemical-soaked stuff
that helps them grow football-size tulips and tomatoes. Scotts' earnings
were flat at $101 million on $2.4 billion in revenue for the
year ended Sept. 30. Almost all of that came from dirt, fertilizer, bug
spray and weed killers sold under brand names Scotts,
Miracle-Gro, Ortho--brands it owns--and Roundup, marketed through an
agreement with Monsanto. Organic Choice, introduced
nationally last year, will bring in less than $20 million this year.
The balancing act is a concern for many executives at Scotts. Some of its
customers assume that its products are already
chemical free, it learned through focus groups. Perhaps gardeners haven't
bothered to scrutinize the label on their tub of
Roundup: Many apparently don't want to know what goes into these products
even when the ingredients are natural. Scotts execs
were surprised that consumers were turned off when told Organic Choice soil
contained pasteurized chicken waste, which Scotts
gets from a Perdue factory in Seaford, Del. The packaging now reads "derived
from: pelletized poultry litter and manure."
Horace Hagedorn, the father of James, and a partner (bought out long ago)
started Miracle-Gro in 1951. It was a clever mix of
chemistry and salesmanship. They hired a scientist to come up with a
formulation of chemicals that delivered nitrogen, potassium
and phosphorus in highly water-soluble form, so that an impatient gardener
could give plants an instant shot to the leaves, so to
speak. A onetime adman at NBC Radio, Horace pitched Miracle-Gro for its
steroidlike effect on gardens. Why, Miracle-Gro could
produce gigantic strawberries in just 90 days. A typical publicity stunt had
the company offering $100,000 to the gardener who
could grow a world-record-size tomato using Miracle-Gro.
In 1995 Horace merged his privately held firm into the publicly traded
Scotts. Scotts had much higher revenue but a much lower
profit margin, and the Hagedorn family wound up with 42% (now 31%) of the
stock. Horace, who died last year, installed his son in
the corner office.
Is the urea in animal waste different from the urea that comes from a
retort? No, as proven in a famous experiment by the German
scientist Friedrich Wöhler that redefined the field of organic chemistry.
That was in 1828. News of the result hasn't yet reached
Forbes.com - Magazine Article Page 1 of 2
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/0904/066_print.html 8/22/2006
everyone in the organic farming crowd, but why disabuse them? If they want
natural urea rather than the synthetic kind, let them
have it. Salesmanship.
When it comes to herbicides, there is a more substantive difference between
chemical and organic farming. The active ingredient
in Scotts Turf Builder with Plus 2 Weed Control is 2,4-d, which is made from
dichlorophenol and acetic acid. It can kill dandelions,
but it's nasty stuff, capable of causing nervous system, kidney and liver
damage in humans. It would also be a bad idea to ingest
acephate, used in Ortho Orthene Fire Ant Killer. That could cause nausea,
dizziness and confusion.
Hagedorn insists that Scotts' products are safe when used as directed.
Still, he admits the public's suspicion of chemicals means
that Scotts, which surrounds its company greenhouse in Marysville, Ohio with
a razor-wire fence because of its controversial
biotech research, must "reduce the target" on its back. It must also compete
with such rivals as Spectrum Brands, a $2.4 billion
consumer products vendor that sells a line of garden products called Garden
Safe. Its granular plant foods contain poultry litter.
Woodstream Corp.'s Concern brand is one of two dozen companies offering an
alternative to Turf Builder in a lawn fertilizer weedcontrol
product that is derived from corn (but kills weeds like crabgrass only as
they germinate).
The new products don't make Scotts bulletproof. The Perdue chickens that
produce the magic ingredient for Organic Choice soil
don't eat organic feed. The dirt, like other Miracle-Gro soil, includes peat
from a "precious wildlife habitat," says Craig Bennett, a
senior corporate campaigner for Friends of the Earth. Even Hagedorn says
products with animal waste aren't necessarily better
for the environment than chemical-laced alternatives.
Scotts' biggest natural product is Earthgro, a line of composted mulch and
topsoil that brought in $75 million last year, 15% of the
company's dirt sales. In 2004 Scotts pulled the plug on Nature's Care, a
small line of organic products it tested, because of
lackluster consumer response. Still, Hagedorn says he is committed to the
natural push at Scotts, which also sells Smith &
Hawken patio furniture, even if it takes years to make money. "I think
there's a big market for people who say, 'I am concerned
about chemicals around my home,'" says Hagedorn. "We want to own that space,
if it's ownable, and not be painted into a box of
being a chemical company."
Forbes.com - Magazine Article Page 2 of 2
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/0904/066_print.html 8/22/2006

Suzi McCoy
Garden Media Group/IMPACT Marketing & PR, Inc.
610-388-9330 - Office
610-220-8400 - Cell
610-388-9331 - Fax
GardenMediaGroup.com
Visit our new blog -- gardenplot.blogspot.com 
1620 Baltimore Pike
P.O. Box 758
Chadds Ford, PA  19317
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