On Organic Produce

Just a brief note on organic produce. One image that is usually associated with being a vegetarian is eating organic food. I want to talk about produce. I'm not going to try to talk you into buying organic food. What i will tell you is that organic food lasts longer. The reason for this is that it is typically local. The closer to the source you are, the fresher the food is going to be, for obvious reasons: it didn't have to go through such a strange packing ritual, it didn't have to be shipped, etc. I'm all about supporting local farmers.

Let's iron this all out a little bit. Something might be organically farmed on a local farm, but is not "certified organic." How can this be? The organic certification, to me, is something of a scheme, because the farmers have to pay to become certified organic, and most farmers i know simply can't afford to keep their licence AND have their vegetables sold at affordable prices. That's why i liked to by things in the grocery store that say, "locally grown," because 9 times out of 10, it's also organic. What i like even better is to buy things at the local food co-op that doesn't necessarily say organic. If a food co-op has it on its shelves, the co-op thought highly enough of that farm to sell their produce without it having been certified.

What you have to decide for yourself is whether it's generally more important to you to make certain that your personal food is certified organic, or whether you think it's more important to you to support farmers who are farming organically who can't afford the certification. Of course there are other considerations as to the cost of organic farming -- it's not just the licence that costs money: when somebody farms organically, that means they're not using pesticides, which means they're losing more of their crops to bugs. That's just all there is to it. So naturally, they have to charge a bit more per pound to make up for that loss. All farmers who don't use pesticides have to make up for that loss, not just the farmers who have the organic certification.

Nothing is cut and dry -- organic stickers doesn't automatically mean that the politics behind the food is without its problems. Food that doesn't say "certified organic" isn't always bad. All i ask is that you think a little bit about where the food is coming from, and what you feel best about at the time. For me, what i feel is best most of the time is going to the local co-op and buying the cheapest vegetables i can find. They last longer! I've had too much lettuce and cucumber from Stop & Shop go bad before i could eat all of it because it was shipped from California. It spent the peak of its good-eatin'-hood in a truck. And i'm too cheap to be OK with that.