ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, September 9, 1996 TAG: 9609090005
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
Bill Wolf looks good.
Gone are the circles beneath his eyes, and the haunted look.
He is traveling a lot - to India, Texas, California, Washington state, Oregon and, at the moment, to England for a trade show and Iceland to check out the seaweed crop.
He is consulting with companies involved in sustainable farming and organic foods - an Australian aggregates company that needs advice about marketing a soil conditioner in this country, a company from India seeking to sell worm secretions as a plant nutrient, some giant, traditional food producers who see at last the viability of organic product lines, and who, for competitive reasons, demand confidentiality.
He is marketing seaweed for Thorvin Kelp, the company Ellen Coleman, his wife, operates out of the garage behind their house near Salem. As North American agents for an Icelandic producer, they sell it by the trailer load, hundreds of tons per year.
And, as always, he is looking for bigger and better ways to spread the word of renewable resources, sustainable agriculture and organic eating and living.
Wolf and Coleman have traveled a long road since 1973, when they moved from New England to Monroe County, W.Va., to create an organic farm. They were propelled there by Wolf's experiences as a researcher for Buckminster Fuller, the poet, philosopher, engineer and architect best known for developing the geodesic dome.
As farmers unable to obtain the environmentally-friendly feed and fertilizers they needed, they started the Necessary Trading Co., an organic farm supply outfit, and based it in New Castle in Craig County.
Their objective was "to develop a model for ethical, profitable business," Wolf said, meaning, among other things, a business that turns a profit and promotes the environment through the products it sells and the packaging it uses.
They ran it full time from 1978 to spring 1995, and ultimately they employed some 20 people and harvested more than $2 million in annual revenue.
Back then, Wolf had the worried look of someone who was trying to reconcile major, opposing issues: He wanted to educate humanity and save the world; he had to make a living, too.
"The conflict would always emerge when I was negotiating for financing from venture capitalists or banks the hard numbers of business," he said.
Potential investors had trouble understanding why he didn't focus on the most profitable products and ditch the rest.
He accepted venture capital in 1989 to expand the distribution of Concern, Necessary's organic pest-control line. The new partners had strong business instincts and less interest in the sort of worldwide philosophical and behavioral change that Wolf was trying to promote. Disagreements occurred, and Wolf ultimately left.
His parting "wasn't everything I would have liked it to be. I accomplished what I could do there and successfully launched an organic alternative in retail. My partners wanted to buy me out and it was time for me to move on to other things."
Wolf is committed to sustainable agriculture, said Fran Addy, who came to Necessary two years ago to be sales manager and is the current president, "and it's not that we aren't. It's just that that's more his world than lawn and garden retail. We're just a marketing business that happens to know the lawn and garden retail market."
Case in point: The Necessary mail-order catalog. Addy and others thought it expendable. Its appeal was shrinking, Addy said, because natural pest-control products finally were becoming available at mainstream stores. Wolf wanted to keep it as a service to the people who depended on it.
"We're a marketing company," Addy said. "Leaving them high and dry versus losing money is a choice we had to make. It was a struggle for him to make."
The Wolfs had already moved to Roanoke County near Salem to cut the time they spent driving their daughters, Emily and Crystal, to Salem schools. Though they talk of moving back to a farm in Craig County eventually, they seem well settled into their house on five acres and the converted garage they share.
Wolf, 46, said if he looks relaxed it's "probably because I'm not managing other people. It also comes from the fact that I see some progress."
The organic industry is nearly a $3 billion business and it's increasing at 20 percent per year. Major food companies are starting to play an active role: H.J. Heinz bought Earth's Best baby food company; Cascadian jams and preserves sit on Kroger's shelves.
He is using his time and freedom to give seminars on "Thinking Like an Earthworm''; to sit on and advise boards and associations concerned with standards for organic foods; to attend trade shows, including a big one coming up in Baltimore, where he will lead a discussion of biotechnology in the natural food industry; and to network and consult through Wolf & Associates, his current firm.
The telephone in the garage-office rings steadily with calls from kelp customers, organic producers and food processors needing his help in getting through government regulations and into the marketplace and from Wolf's vast web of like-minded people.
Over the years, Necessary has been mentioned in The Wall Street Journal, Martha Stewart's magazine and other national publications. Wolf has served as an adviser to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and as president and vice president of the Organic Trade Association, formerly the Organic Foods Production Association of North America. He has written two books about organic farming.
He is a big-picture guy who envisions a society built around organic clothing, cosmetics, landscaping and more - "an ethical choice industry that's good to the earth and people and planet."
As a species, he said, we are moving from a 500-year mechanical era to a biological one. He figures we're 20 years into a 50-year transition.
It makes him "modestly optimistic."
He is trying educate people and stimulate behavioral change. That takes time.
"We're not selling Pet Rocks," Wolf said.
"It can be pretty frustrating," Coleman said.
"I guess I keep erasing my memory and starting over," her husband said. "I'm keeping an eye out for the next opportunity that really can make a bigger difference."
LENGTH: Long : 115 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: PHILIP HOLMAN/Staff Bill Wolf of Salem has dedicated hisby CNBprofessional life to "developing sustainable biological systems that
people can feel good about buying." color.