Organic vs. Local

A lovely (just lovely!) article appeared in Time magazine a week ago. In it, journalist John Cloud described the dilemma between buying organic or local food. This is a recent issue since Whole Foods has begun to sell more local food, and Wal-Mart is now selling organic food. Which is the way to go? Let’s weigh the pros and cons:

Organic Pros:

free of pesticides, benefiting the earth’s soil, plants, and animals
more vitamins in some foods

Organic Cons:

big companies are taking control
food is still being shipped far distances = pollution and use of fossil fuels

Local Pros:

often better tasting because its not shipped so far
not using fossil fuels and polluting the earth
Supports the community rather than big corporations
Connection to where your food comes from

Local Cons:

contains pesticides

According to Cloud, more chefs and restaurants are choosing local food—restricting themselves to 150-mile diets to get the freshest and best tasting produce possible while benefiting the earth (awesome). There's actually a blog site about eating local--check out The Eat Local Challenge! Cloud’s personal decision was to go local because of community supported agriculture (CSA). The main reason was the newfound connection to his food--knowing exactly where it came from and who produced it. I think I would choose local, too—nothing is better than a fresh, locally-grown tomato warm from the sun. My dad grows them in his backyard.

CSA farms are wonderful collaborative farms that are usually year-round. To be a member, you pay a certain amount to get fresh local produce each month. For more info about independent farms, go to Local Harvest! We are planning to visit the Community Farm of Ann Arbor in a couple of weeks, so stay tuned!

Comments

Ok, so this Organic vs Local buisness is driving me crazy. First a little background. I am an Organic Grassfinnished Beef, Pork, and Poultry producer. We raise all the feed for our animals on our own land. I live in the middle of conventional crop land (South Dakota) I work for the Conservation Board and know what the locals are up too. I am 100% sure that unless you are purchaseing Local AND Organic food that local is worse for the enviroment than buying organic from your local store.
Ok so how? Well if you have a field of say Wheat growing and it is Conventional the farmer is going to have Pesticides, Herbicides and Fertilizers that are all non-orgainic proceced in big old factorys that MONSANTO (UGggg) owns. Ok so the ingredents need to be shiped to that factory, the product needs to be shipped to the retailer, then to the farmer who is going to cruze over his land ohhh about 9 times a planteing season to spread all this poisen on the land. If that land was organic tham the rancher (us) would be spreading freshly composted cow manure from his own cattle out there once a year. And takeing care of the bugs and weeds with Bio-Control (other bugs and animals), crop rotations and the old fashion way (buy hand.)
This is just one aspect of many, if you want to know more about my....opinion or would like to debate it with me, you can email me at wto@gwtc.net.

Posted by: wto@gwtc.net at April 3, 2008 02:24 PM