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Natural Selection Foods Business Information, Profile, and History

1721 San Juan Highway
San Juan Bautista, California 95045-9780
U.S.A.

Company Perspectives:

Natural Selection Foods' mission is to make the organic choice viable. The company is committed to growing the organic category and making organics viable for customers, consumers, growers, and employees.

History of Natural Selection Foods

Natural Selections Foods grew from a home kitchen to state-of-the-art food processing company. Headquartered in San Juan Bautista, California, it packages salads there from April through November. From November through March, the company utilizes a second facility in Yuma, Arizona. Natural Selections Foods' produce is grown under the Earthbound Farm brand name on 13,000 certified organic acres in California, Arizona, Mexico, and New Zealand. Its product line includes more than 100 certified organic salads, fruits, and vegetables, which it distributes internationally.

Late 1980s: Two Native New Yorkers "Bagging" the Organic Salad Market

Andrew and Myra Goodman--fresh out of college, newly married, and looking for something different to do--founded Earthbound Farm in Carmel Valley, California, in 1984. After traveling extensively in Europe, where they gained an appreciation of farm fresh food, the native New Yorkers decided to take a year off to "work with their hands" before going on to graduate school. They came upon a neglected 2.5-acre raspberry farm south of San Francisco and arranged to fix up the property in exchange for rent. Drew Goodman had his undergraduate degree in environmental studies; Myra Goodman's degree was in the political economies of industrial societies. Although they knew nothing about agriculture, the couple began growing organic raspberries--learning what they needed to know from a book on organic farming--and started experimenting with growing vegetables, such as baby bok choy and red mustard greens. According to Drew Goodman, quoted in a 2002 Forbes magazine article, "Organic just seemed the right way."

The company's literature asserts that organic farming refrains from using herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, synthetic fertilizers, or soil fumigants, instead relying upon the application of organic matter, crop rotation, and beneficial insects--among other techniques--to build healthy soil and healthy plants. A 2002 issue of Forbes magazine states that, compared with conventional agriculture, organic farming is up to 40 percent more expensive.

In 1985, the Goodmans diversified their crops to include a variety of specialty greens and culinary herbs--all organic. When they were not growing their produce, they sold it at a roadside stand. "[T]hat operation was our initial job and 'moneymaking machine,'" Myra Goodman recalled in a 2000 Fresh Cut article. "I'd bake raspberry muffins and make raspberry jam and raspberry applesauce. We did this kind of homestead thing and sold it all at our little raspberry stand on the road." Working seven hours a day six days a week, they had little time to prepare their own meals; so the couple got into the habit of washing a week's worth of greens on Sunday and bagging them in seven bags for instant dinnertime salads during the rest of the week. They also decided to market their fresh greens and herbs as well as their raspberries directly to local restaurants and retailers.

Then, in 1986, Earthbound Farm's biggest client--a chef who bought most of their greens--exited his restaurant after a falling out with its management, and the Goodmans were left with a bumper crop of baby lettuces and no buyer. That was when the idea for "Earthbound Farm Salad Bags" was born. "Drew went to the supermarket and bought a bunch of plastic bags and I hand drew some labels," Myra Goodman explained in a 2002 Bon Appetit article. The couple convinced a San Francisco natural foods store that busy households would want to purchase their washed and packaged salad greens, and Earthbound Farm introduced the first prewashed specialty salads packaged for retail. Also introduced were one-pound resealable bags of salad for food services.

The couple thought of their new venture as a "short-term solution to a short-term problem," according to Drew Goodman, but the fast-growing company--still run out of the Goodmans' home kitchen and barn--soon expanded to become a multimillion-dollar operation with six employees. Drew Goodman focused on sales and receivables for the new business, while Myra Goodman worked on payroll, accounts payable, and marketing. Myra Goodman's father, a retired jeweler, designed and built the machinery for washing the produce and packaging it in small bags. In 1987, Baby Spinach Salad, Fresh Herb Salad Mix, Asian Salad Mix, and Baby Romaine Salad joined Earthbound Farm's Mixed Baby Greens salad mix. To meet growing demand, the Goodmans hired farmers originally from Oaxaca, Mexico, to help them farm their land and the additional acreage they leased. In 1989, in a major leap forward, the Goodmans bought a 32-acre farm in Watsonville, California, where they began to grow more than 20 varieties of specialty lettuces.

Early to Mid-1990s: The Formation of Natural Selection Foods

By 1992, the bagged salad greens commodity that the Goodmans had invented was taking hold nationally. A great boon to the business occurred that year when Costco became a customer. Organic baby lettuces proved to be the perfect entrée into conventional supermarkets for the company, and other major food retailers, such as Safeway, Albertsons, and Lucky's, also began selling Earthbound Farm's one-pound bag of salad greens. The company moved to a 9,000-square-foot packaging plant in 1992, and introduced several new items throughout the first half of the 1990s. In 1994, Earthbound Farm introduced its upscale Ultimate Salad Kits, organic greens paired with all-natural dressings and toppings--a complete salad in a kit. At the same time, the company, true to its roots, opened a roadside farm stand in Carmel Valley, where it offered its full line of organic salad mixes and produce, as well as a line of custom-made foods.

By the mid-1990s, the Goodmans were so overwhelmed by running their business and becoming new parents that they hired Mark Marino, an organic farmer with close to 20 years of growing experience and a degree in communications, to continue their experiments with soil and seeds on the company's Watsonville acreage. In December 1995, Earthbound Farm, which by then was farming 800 acres, partnered with a group of large-scale third-generation farmers in the Salinas Valley in California, called Mission Ranches, and formed Natural Selection Foods. The next year, the company diversified its product line with the introduction of organic vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, celery, green onions, artichokes, radishes, leeks, and red tomatoes, sold under the Earthbound Farm brand. The company moved to a state-of-the-art, 25,000-foot production facility in San Juan Bautista, California, in 1996. In 1997, it launched its web site for trade and introduced organic specialty tomatoes and strawberries.

By 1998, Natural Selection Foods was farming 5,800 acres of organic farmland, adding potatoes, carrots, and citrus fruits to its mix of crops. In 1999, Tanimura & Antle, one of the world's largest conventional lettuce growers and marketers, became a one-third partner in the company. As part of the strategic partnership, Tanimura & Antle transitioned 1,500 acres of prime farmland in the Salina and San Joaquin Valleys in California and in Yuma, Arizona, to organic practices to allow for year-round growing in order to help Natural Selection Foods meet the burgeoning national demand for organic produce. "The organic industry's day has come," Drew Goodman was quoted in the Monterey County Herald article announcing the partnership. "We're no longer a fad on the fringe but instead viewed as a long-term consumer-driven trend to be taken seriously." The organic industry had grown approximately 20 to 24 percent annually throughout the 1990s, while conventional grocery sales had increased 3 to 5 percent from 1984 to 1999. By the dawn of the 21st century, Natural Selection Foods, a pioneer in the mainstreaming of organics, was the nation's largest grower and shipper of organic produce.

As part of its commitment to educating consumers about organic practice, Natural Selection Foods opened the "Kid's Garden" at its Earthbound Farm roadside stand in 1999. The Kid's Garden offered curriculum guides for teachers and activities for students during their farm tour. Natural Selection also produced a musical CD entitled, "We're Next!," for elementary school-age children as part of its educational activities. The CD raised money for children and environmental causes by teaching about the importance of caring for the environment.

In 2000, organic farming sales reached $2 billion, and packaged organic salads did about $700 million in sales. Natural Selection was marketing its produce in all 50 states, enjoying about 65 percent of the organic salad market. The company also sold conventionally grown produce to foodservice clients--about 40 percent of its business--to support its transitioning land to organic ground. It farmed on 13,000 certified organic acres in three states and Mexico, with production facilities in California and Arizona and approximately 1,000 employees. The company formed an alliance in 2000, a marketing partnership with Rainbow Valley Orchards, to supply certified organic citrus and tropical fruit under the Earthbound Farm organic label, as well as another alliance with carrot grower Bolthouse Farms, Inc.

Organic farms still provided less than 2 percent of the nation's food supply and took up less than 1 percent of its cropland, but organic food sales were one of the fastest growing categories in supermarkets. In 2001, to keep pace with the growing popularity of organic produce and with its own growth, Earthbound Farm updated its logo and began an aggressive advertising campaign, the only organic produce company to advertise directly to consumers. It also expanded winter operating capacity by increasing the Yuma, Arizona facility to 115,000 square feet.

Also in response to the new emphasis on organics, the U.S. Department of Agriculture moved to standardize regulations for foods grown without synthetic pesticides or other chemicals in 2002. The National Organic Rule, a product of ten years of deliberation by growers, scientists, and consumers, reserved the term "100 percent organic" and "organic" for foods produced without hormones, antibiotics, herbicides, insecticides, chemical fertilizers, genetic modification, or germ-killing radiation, according to Newsweek in September 2002. Food producers that documented their compliance with the rule qualified for a new USDA seal declaring their product "certified organic."

Natural Selection continued to introduce new items, such as Baby Spinach Salad and tray-packed organic vegetables, and to maintain its commitment to supplying easy-to-use healthful foods for healthful living. The company's next goal, according to Myra Goodman in Bon Appetit in 2002, was to "convert the borderline customer." With sales of organic produce increasing by more than 20 percent a year, the Goodmans hoped that more growers would switch to organic farming and drive consumer prices down. According to an article in Bon Appetit magazine, sales of organics were still anywhere from 15 to 100 percent more expensive than conventional products. The company's and couple's commitment to organic farming would never waver, given their belief that this type of farming produces the best food and helps ensure a clean planet now and in the future. "I don't have time to save the world," Myra Goodman was quoted in Bon Appetit, "but with organic food, I know that I'm both feeding my family something healthy and doing something good for the environment."

Principal Competitors: Fresh Express; Dole Food Company, Inc.; Ready-Pac.

Related information about Natural selection

The complex process by which the totality of environmental factors determines the non-random and differential reproduction of genetically different organisms. It is viewed as the force which directs the course of evolution by preserving those variants or traits best adapted to survive.

otheruses

Natural selection is the process by which individual organisms with favorable traits are more likely to survive and reproduce than those with unfavorable traits. Natural selection works on the whole individual, but only the heritable component of a trait will be passed on to the offspring, with the result that favorable, heritable traits become more common in the next generation. Given enough time, this passive process can result in adaptations and speciation (see evolution).

Natural selection is one of the cornerstones of modern biology. The term was introduced by Charles Darwin in his 1859 book The Origin of Species Darwin C (1859) On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life John Murray, London; modern reprint , by analogy with artificial selection, by which a farmer selects his breeding stock.

An example: antibiotic resistance

A well-known example of natural selection in action is the development of antibiotic resistance in microorganisms. Antibiotics have been used to fight bacterial diseases since the discovery of penicillin in 1928 by Alexander Fleming. However, the widespread use and especially misuse of antibiotics has led to increased microbial resistance against antibiotics, to the point that the methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has been described as a 'superbug' because of the threat it poses to health and its relative invulnerability to existing drugs. MRSA Superbug News (accessed May 6, 2006)

Natural populations of bacteria contain, among their vast numbers of individual members, considerable variation in their genetic material, primarily as the result of mutations.

Recently, several new strains of MRSA have emerged that are resistant to vancomycin and teicoplanin }} www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1469-0691.2006.01343.x. This is an example of what is sometimes called an 'arms race', in which bacteria continue to develop strains that are less susceptible to antibiotics, while medical researchers continue to develop new antibiotics that can kill them. A similar situation occurs with pesticide resistance in plants and insects.

Background and context

Until the early 19th century, the established view was that differences between individuals of a species were uninteresting departures from their Platonic ideal (or typus) of created kinds. Naturalists of the time tried to reconcile this with the emerging ideas of uniformitarianism in geology - the notion that simple, weak forces, acting continuously over very long periods of time could have radical consequences, shaping the landscape as we know it today.

In the early years of the 19th century, radical evolutionists such as Jean Baptiste Lamarck had proposed that characteristics (adaptations) acquired by individuals might be inherited by their progeny, causing, in enough time, transmutation of species (see LamarckismChevalier de Lamarck J-B, de Monet PA (1809) Philosophie Zoologique). He realised that this simple and apparently inevitable process might be powerful enough to explain the evolution of the astounding ways in which organisms are adapted to their environments and the origins of the millions of species that exist.

Evolutionary change can also happen without any selection, as a result of genetic drift or gene flow. other mechanisms of evolution such as 'evolution by genetic drift' were not explicitly formulated at that time, and Darwin realised that: "I am convinced that it has been the main, but not exclusive means of modification."The Origin of Species, page 6 Now, scientists use natural selection mainly to describe the mechanism. In this sense, natural selection includes any selection by a natural agent, including sexual selection and kin selection. Sometimes, sexual selection is distinguished from natural selection, but a more useful distinction is between sexual selection and ecological selection. in this sense, the mechanisms of selection are "blind".

However, the term natural selection is often used to encompass the consequence of blind selection as well as the mechanisms to describe the complete process that leads to the enrichment of the beneficial characteristics in the next generation. Fisher RA (1930) The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection Clarendon Press, Oxford

Nevertheless, it is sometimes helpful to distinguish clearly between the mechanisms of selection and the effects of selection. When this distinction is important, scientists define "natural selection" specifically as "those mechanisms that contribute to the selection of individuals that reproduce", without regard to whether the basis of the selection is heritable. Sinauer Associates, Inc., Sunderland, Massachusetts. 1: 480-487

This article discusses natural selection in this sense of being the mechanisms of selection of individuals to reproduce.

Overview

Natural selection acts on the phenotype. The phenotype is the overall result of an individual's genetic make-up (genotype), the environment, and the interactions between genes and between genes and the environment. Often, natural selection acts on specific traits of an individual, and the terms phenotype and genotype are sometimes used narrowly to indicate these specific traits.

Some traits are determined by just a single gene, but most are affected by many different genes. Variation in most of these genes has only a small effect on the phenotypic value of a trait, and the study of the genetics of these quantitative traits is called quantitative genetics.Falconer DS & Mackay TFC (1996) Introduction to Quantitative Genetics Addison Wesley Longman, Harlow, Essex, UK ISBN 0-582-24302-5

The key element in understanding natural selection is the concept of fitness. Fitness is measured as the proportion of progeny that survives, multiplied by the average fecundity, and it is equivalent to the reproductive success of a genotype. Related to relative fitness is the selection coefficient, which is the difference between the relative fitness of two genotypes. The larger the selection coefficient, the stronger natural selection will act against the genotype with the lowest fitness.

Natural selection can act on any phenotypic trait, and any aspect of the environment, including mates and conspecifics, can produce selective pressure. However, this does not imply that natural selection is always directional and results in adaptive evolution; natural selection often results in the maintenance of the status quo through purifying selection. The unit of selection is not limited to the level of individuals, but includes other levels within the hierarchy of biological organisation, such as genes, cells and relatives. There is still debate, however, about whether natural selection acts at the level of groups or species, (i.e. Selection at a different level than the individual, for example the gene, can result in an increase in fitness for that gene, while at the same time reducing the fitness of the individuals carrying that gene (see intragenomic conflict for more details). Overall, the combined effect of all selection pressures at various levels determines the overall fitness of an individual, and hence the outcome of natural selection.

Natural selection occurs at every life stage of an individual (see Figure 2), and selection at any of these stages can affect the likelihood that an individual will survive and reproduce. giant sperm in certain species of DrosophilaPitnick S & Markow TA (1994) Large-male advantage associated with the costs of sperm production in Drosophila hydei, a species with giant sperm. Am Nat 148:57-80) can be limited (fecundity selection). The viability of produced gametes can differ, while intragenomic conflict (meiotic drive) between the haploid gametes can result in gametic or genic selection.

"Ecological selection" and "sexual selection"

It is also useful to make a mechanistic distinction between ecological selection and sexual selection. kin selection) and conspecifics (e.g. competition, infanticide)), while sexual selection refers specifically to competition between conspecifics for mates . More generally, intrasexual selection is often associated with sexual dimorphism, including differences in body size between males and females of a species.

"Selection for" versus "selection of"

Selection targets specific traits of an individual, and if such a trait has a heritable component, the trait will tend to become more common in the next generation. "Selection for" refers to the traits targeted by selection, the causes of selection whereas "selection of" is used to describe its effects. 1993) The Nature of Selection: Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus University of Chicago Press ISBN 0-226-76748-5. This can happen when two or more traits are genetically linked through mechanisms such as pleiotropy (single gene that affects multiple traits) and linkage disequilibrium (non-random association of two genes). However, the interplay of the actual selection mechanism with the underlying genetics is where the explanatory power of natural selection comes from.

Directionality of selection

When some component of a trait is heritable, selection will alter the frequencies of the different alleles (variants of a gene) involved. Selection can be divided into three classes, on the basis of their effect on the allele frequencies.

Positive or directional selection occurs when a certain allele has a greater fitness than others, resulting in an increase in frequency of that allele until it is fixed and the entire population expresses the fitter phenotype.

Far more common is purifying or stabilizing selection, which lowers the frequency of alleles which have a deleterious effect on the phenotype (that is, lower fitness), until they are eliminated from the population. protein-coding sequences or regulatory sequences) being conserved over time because of selective pressure against deleterious variants.

Finally, a number of forms of balancing selection exist, which do not result in fixation, but maintain an allele at intermediate frequencies in a population. This can occur in diploid species (with two pair of chromosomes) when individuals with a combination of two different alleles at a single position at the chomosome (heterozygote) have a higher fitness than individuals that have two of the same alleles (homozygote). Maintenance of allelic variation can also occur through disruptive or diversifying selection, which favors genotypes that depart from the average in either direction (that is, the opposite of overdominance), and can result in a bimodal distribution of trait values. Finally, it can occur through frequency-dependent selection, where the fitness of one particular phenotype depends on the distribution of other phenotypes in the population (see also Game theory).

Selection and genetic variation

A portion of all genetic variation is functionally neutral;

Genetic linkage

Genetic linkage occurs when two alleles are in close proximity to each other. During the formation of the gametes, recombination of the genetic material results in reshuffling of the alleles. Consequently, when selection targets one allele, this automatically results in selection of the other allele as well; At the same time, new mutations occur, resulting in a mutation-selection balance.

Selective sweep

Selective sweeps occur when an allele becomes more common in a population as a result of positive selection. A strong selective sweep results in a region of the genome where the positively selected haplotype (the allele and its neighbours) are essentially the only ones that exist in the population.

Whether a selective sweep has occurred or not can be investigated by measuring linkage disequilibrium, i.e., whether a given haplotype is overrepresented in the population. Normally, genetic recombination results in a reshuffling of the different alleles within a haplotype, and none of the haplotypes will dominate the population. However, during a selective sweep, selection for a specific allele will also result in selection of neighbouring alleles.

Background selection

Background selection is the opposite of a selective sweep.

Evolution by means of natural selection

A prerequisite for natural selection to result in adaptive evolution, novel traits and speciation, is the presence of heritable genetic variation that results in fitness differences. Genetic variation is the result of mutations, recombinations and alterations in the karyotype (the number, shape, size and internal arrangement of the chromosomes). In the past, most changes in the genetic material were considered neutral or close to neutral because they occurred in noncoding DNA or resulted in a synonymous substitution. Therefore, each new generation will be enriched by the increasing abundance of alleles that contribute to those traits that were favored by selection, enhancing these traits over successive generations.

Some mutations occur in so-called regulatory genes. Most, but not all, mutations in regulatory genes result in non-viable zygotes. For example, mutations in some HOX genes in humans result in an increase in the number of fingers or toesZakany J, FromentalRamain C, Warot X & Duboule D (1997) Regulation of number and size of digits by posterior Hox genes: a dose-dependent mechanism with potential evolutionary implications. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 94:13695-700 or a cervical ribGalis F (1999) Why do almost all mammals have seven cervical vertebrae?

Speciation

Speciation requires selective mating, which result in a reduced gene flow. Selective mating can be the result of, for example, a change in the physical environment (physical isolation by an extrinsic barrier), or by sexual selection resulting in assortative mating. Over time, these subgroups might diverge radically to become different species, either because of differences in selection pressures on the different subgroups, or because different mutations arise spontaneously in the different populations, or because of founder effects - some potentially beneficial alleles may, by chance, be present in only one or other of two subgroups when they first become separated.

History of the principle

Between 1842 and 1844, Charles Darwin outlined his theory of evolution by natural selection as an explanation for adaptation and speciation. If the variations are inherited, then differential reproductive success will lead to a progressive evolution of particular populations of a species, and populations that evolve to be sufficiently different might eventually become different species.

Darwin thought of natural selection by analogy to how farmers select crops or livestock for breeding (artificial selection); In 1858, Alfred Russel WallaceWallace, Alfred Russel (1870) Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection New York: Macmillan & Co. www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=moa&idno=AJP5195.0001.001&view=toc, a young naturalist, independently conceived the principle and described it in a letter to Darwin. Not wanting to be scooped, Darwin contacted scientific friends to find an honorable way to handle this potentially embarrassing situation, and two short papers by the two were read at the Linnean Society announcing co-discovery of the principle. What made natural selection controversial was doubt about whether it was powerful enough to result in speciation, and that it was 'unguided' rather than 'progressive', something that even Darwin's supporters balked at.

Darwin's ideas were inspired by the observations that he had made on the Voyage of the Beagle, and by the economic theories of Thomas Malthus, who noted that population (if unchecked) increases exponentially whereas the food supply grows only arithmetically; the Ionian physician Empedocles said that many races "must have been unable to beget and continue their kind. For in the case of every species that exists, either craft or courage or speed has from the beginning of its existence protected and preserved it". Several eighteenth-century thinkers wrote about similar theories, including Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis in 1745, Lord Monboddo in his theories of species alteration, and Darwin's grandfather Erasmus Darwin in 1794?1796. notably William Charles Wells in 1813, and Patrick Matthew in 1831 — Wells presented his hypothesis to explain the origin of human races in person at the Royal Society, and Matthew published his as an appendix to his book on arboricultureDempster WJ (1996) Evolutionary concepts in the nineteeth century, natural selection and Patrick Matthew. Edward Blyth had also proposed a method of natural selection as a mechanism of keeping species constant. However, of the many ideas of evolution that emerged, only August Weismann's saw natural selection as the main evolutionary force. After reading Darwin, Herbert Spencer introduced the term survival of the fittest; Although the phrase is still often used by non-biologists, modern biologists avoid it because it is tautological if fittest is read to mean functionally superior.

Modern evolutionary synthesis

Only after the integration of a theory of evolution with a complex statistical appreciation of Mendel's 're-discovered' laws of inheritance did natural selection become generally accepted by scientists. The work of Ronald Fisher (who first attempted to explain natural selection in terms of the underlying genetic processes), J.B.S. J Genet 55:511-24(www.blackwellpublishing.com/ridley/classictexts/haldane2.pdf.), Sewall Wright (one of the founders of population geneticsWright S (1932) The roles of mutation, inbreeding, crossbreeding and selection in evolution Proc 6th Int Cong Genet 1:356?66), Theodosius Dobzhansky (who established the idea that mutation, by creating genetic diversity, supplied the raw material for natural selectionDobzhansky Th (1937) Genetics and the Origin of Species Columbia University Press, New York. 3rd edn., 1951)), William Hamilton (who conceived of kin selection), Ernst Mayr (who recognised the key importance of reproductive isolation for speciationMayr E (1942) Systematics and the Origin of Species Columbia University Press, New York. ISBN 0-674-86250-3) and many others formed the modern evolutionary synthesis.

Impact of the idea

Darwin's ideas, along with those of Adam Smith and Karl Marx, had a profound influence on 19th-century thought. The radicalism of natural selection, according to Stephen Jay Gould The New York Review of Books: Darwinian Fundamentalism (accessed May 6, 2006), lay in its power to "dethrone some of the deepest and most traditional comforts of Western thought". Engels in 1872 wrote that "Darwin did not know what a bitter satire he wrote on mankind when he showed that free competition, the struggle for existence, which the economists celebrate as the highest historical achievement, is the normal state of the animal kingdom".Engels F (1873-86) Dialectics of Nature 3d ed. That natural selection had apparently led to 'advancement' in intelligence and civilisation also became used as a justification for colonialism and policies of eugenics —see Social Darwinism. Konrad Lorenz won the Nobel Prize in 1973 for his analysis of animal behavior in terms of the role of natural selection (particularly group selection). However, in Germany in 1940, in writings that he subsequently disowned, he used the theory as a justification for policies of the Nazi state. Am J Psychiatry 162:1760 ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/162/9/1760. Others have developed ideas that human societies and culture evolve by mechanisms that are analogous to those that apply to evolution of species e.g.

Energetic theory

In 1922, Alfred Lotka proposed that natural selection might be understood as a physical principle which can be energetically quantified.Lotka AJ (1922a) Contribution to the energetics of evolution PDF Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 8:147?51
Lotka AJ (1922b) Natural selection as a physical principle PDF Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 8:151?4
Through the work of Howard T. Odum this became known as the maximum power principle whereby evolutionary systems with selective advantage maximise the rate of useful energy transformation. In computer-based systems (e.g., artificial life), simulating natural selection can be very effective in 'adapting' entities to their environments Kauffman SA (1993) The Origin of order. Science 312:97-101
PMID 16601189. The mathematician and science fiction writer Rudy Rucker explored the use of natural selection to create artificial intelligence in his best-known work, The Ware Tetralogy, and in his novel The Hacker and the Ants.

Trivia

In a letter to Charles Lyell in September 1860, Darwin regrets the use of the term 'Natural Selection', preferring the term 'Natural Preservation'.

References

Chronology

Key Dates:
1984: Earthbound Farm is founded.
1986: The farm starts selling bagged salads to retailers.
1992: The company starts selling its products to Costco; the business moves to a 9,000-square-foot packaging plant.
1995: Natural Selection Foods is formed as a partnership with a group of Salinas Valley farmers, Mission Ranches.
1996: Natural Selection Foods moves to a new 25,000-square-foot production facility in San Juan Bautista, California.
1997: The company launches its web site for trade.
1999: Tanimura & Antle becomes a one-third partner in the company.
2000: Natural Selection Foods forms a marketing partnership with Rainbow Valley Orchards and with Bolthouse Farms, Inc.
2002: The company updates its logo.

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