Chews Wisely

Is it better to buy organic or local?

Posted by Bricolage at 11:39 AM on 18 May 2006

Does locally grown food trump pesticide-free produce, or vice versa? Farmers' markets and produce aisles are chock-full of earnest foodies agonizing over the green conundrum du jour. In a piece adapted from his book Organic, Inc., Samuel Fromartz addresses the local/organic dilemma -- and his advice may surprise you.

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organic food - is it reall y more expensive?

I saw a posting in Grist once from someone who stated that her food bill was a lot less since she started buying organic food. It got me to thinking about whether that could be true.

After doing a little informal research, here's what I concluded:

By restricting my purchases to only organically produced food, I bought far fewer items - I stayed away from foods made with genetically altered organisms and those that had a number of additives intended to extend shelf life. I managed to get everything our family needed to stay healthy, well-fed, and fit, and no longer wasted money on products that are over-processed, unhealthy, and, if you consider their external costs (pesticides, herbicides, worker exposures, depleted soils, GMO'd, etc.) much more expensive than organically grown food.
Grocery chains that offered organic produce, milk, etc. charged a premium - similar items when purchased in season were cheaper in the local store that carried mostly organic food.

So, my advice is, buy organic every chance you can.

Tom Kelly
KyotoUSA

Tom Kelly

by kyotousa at 1:06 PM on 18 May 2006

even if it is more expensive, so what?

Americans spend far less on their food than any other country in percentage of income. Maybe instead of buying that extra TV you could just buy better food.

Although I do follow the rule of local organic first, local second, non-local organic third. But then I'm actually lucky enough to live in a state where local organic is cheaper and available even in meats as long as I'm willing to invest in a CSA or buy 1/4 of a cow.

by latenac at 1:09 PM on 18 May 2006

Do you walk to school or carry your lunch?

Speaking of false choices...Fromartz places these two trends in oppostion to each other, as if local and organic were somehow mutually exclusive. But this is not really the case, at least not in most regions. Depending on where you live, there's usually an abundance of locally grown organic produce...even throughout the winter. All in all, given this, his very trendy argument of local v. organic is mostly one of false tension.

by Caleb Ewing at 2:50 PM on 18 May 2006

oh the logic

how many cases are the 2% arguing over what is the best thing for the other 98% to do!!! That is so on point. Thank you for a logic driven, fact filled, on-target article!

by jakplihal at 5:13 PM on 18 May 2006

It has to start somewhere

I agree that local and organic are often not mutually exclusive. Farmer's markets here often sell what's at least claimed to be organic produce, and the PCC co-ops do their best to provide items that are both local and organic.

As for cost - I don't shop for food by cost. Any price differential between conventional and organic food is going to be dwarfed by other expenses and decisions - and of course how do we measure the cost of eating heavy metals and pesticides?

Latenac, if you truly care about "better food", why do you mistake animals for it? If you abuse your body with corpses it's not designed to digest, the benefits of conventional vs. organic are moot.

by anthony11 at 5:21 PM on 18 May 2006

We're omnivores

With all due respect, human physiology proves you to be mistaken when you claim we're not "designed to digest" animals. We are neither herbivores nor carnivores, but omnivores, with teeth, saliva, stomachs, intestines--an entire digestive system--capable of extracting the nutrients we need from both plants and animals. That's one of the fascinating features of human beings that distinguishes us from many other species: our capacity to digest an enormous range of foods, including other animals. This extravagant omnivorousness is one of the features which has enabled us to spread throughout the world, into most kinds of ecosystems, for good and ill.

The anthropological evidence isn't in your favor, either. As European conquerors marched around the world, they found people eating widely varied diets, but they found only a small number of people eating vegetarian diets and a number of cultures in high latitude climates eating an essentially a carnivorous diet and, apparently, thriving. Even among the people of the land we now know as India, the percentage of true vegetarians is much lower than commonly assumed. Now, if we were truly not "designed to digest" animals, why would the eating of animals be nearly universal among the thousands of human cultures that have existed?

"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith

by John Fish Kurmann at 7:03 PM on 18 May 2006
[ Parent ]

Why people ate meat

Dear John Fish Kurmann,

They ate meat because they were hungry and lacked knowledge and access to other sources of nutrition.

Having such knowledge and access, I don't eat meat.

Being an omnivore means I have a choice. Mine is to be a vegetarian.

Interestingly in Beijing, a number of the universities have opened vegetarian food windows and have found people flocking to them. This spring some schools have held vegetarian festivals. Not clear how far this trend will grow, but it is certainly growing.

patrick

by bookerly at 7:15 PM on 18 May 2006

Organic benefits moot?

How did this turn into a debate about vegetarianism? And surely, even if you don't eat meat, you must recognize that the cow from the small, local organic farmer is indeed better than the conventionally "grown" beef! Not just for the consumer but for the cow itself.
I myself don't eat cows, but I do believe that any time a consumer truly considers the source of his food, it's a good thing. Cows that live on small farms and graze in open pasture are certainly happier and healthier than the cows raised in barns, fed from troughs, with no connection to the natural life of a cow.
I'm not trying to start an argument here; I just believe that we as a community should encourage everyone who makes a movement toward a greener lifestyle. I don't think it is fair to say that "the benefits of conventional vs. organic are moot" for meat eaters, even if I feel that I have made the right decision to cut meat out of my diet.

http://groxie.com DIY Environmentalism

by Heidi at 8:02 PM on 18 May 2006

re eating meat

While I agree that eating meat is a nature-given right of human beings, there are many valid reasons for not doing so. For me, two are important enough to keep me very near to vegetarianism. First, I have never been able to kill animals and turn them into meat. I feel that if I cannot take direct responsibility for making the meat available, perhaps it is best that that I don't eat it. The second is the inefficiency of meat eating. It takes much more energy from the earth to provide a calorie of meat than it takes to provide a calorie of vegetables. Animals are relatively inefficient in converting vegetation to meat. With the human population out of control, it seems that the less soil energy we use, the better for the whole system. That said, I would encourage the meat-eaters among us to consume free range and grass fed animals that are grown without the use of growth hormones and antibiotics.

by drgarlic at 7:29 AM on 29 Mar 2007

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