The below article is a re-posting from the most recent local harvest newsletter. It's a good read, and one I can definitely relate to! I'd love to hear your thoughts. --Rachel

Local or Organic?

Photo by: Z & D Frago FAMILY Farm

At our house, this is the hardest season to find anything good to eat. The freezer, stuffed to barely closing last October, is almost empty now, as are the canning shelves and the makeshift root cellar. Thankfully, it was a warm and early spring here, so we are eating garden salad greens to our heart's content. To be honest, though, my heart is content with just a few salads a week, which leaves a lot of other meals to plan and not a lot of food in the house around which to plan them. Consequently, I have been giving a lot of thought to the question of what to eat.

This is a subject I avoid, even though I love to cook. It's the deciding what to cook that I don't like. Give me a week's worth of menus and I'm happy, but send me to the grocery store without a plan and I could wander around for hours, made miserable by too many choices, too many dilemmas.

I suspect that this is a problem shared by many. Sorting out the most decent and honest options amongst everything at the grocery store is time consuming and difficult. Worse, the ultimate unknowability of which choice is "better" can make it an unsatisfying endeavor. Is the fresh organic broccoli trucked in from 1200 miles away better than the conventional broccoli grown and frozen 200 miles from home? How about the big-ag organic dairy's cheddar versus the small, local rBGH-free but not organic version?

We want to do the right thing. We want to feed ourselves and our family well. We want to do right by our farmers, farm workers, the environment, and the local economy. If we choose to eat meat or dairy products, we want those animals to be treated well. Yet we don't want to be confused or duped, and we don't want to spend our entire paycheck on a week's worth of food. Hence the dilemma.

On the local versus organic question, the ideal of course is to select foods that are both organically and locally grown. But as we know, it doesn't always go that way, and too often we have to make a choice. Many people maintain that we are better off choosing local over organic, the better to influence and strengthen the local food system, and to save the fossil fuel that would otherwise be involved in transportation. Where 'local' also means 'small scale,' many people argue for the value of getting to know the farmer and supporting a network of family farms. Others say that organic is preferable over local, pointing out that while keeping pesticides out of our water and off our food, organic production practices also prompt the soil to sequester significant amounts of carbon, an activity that is key to addressing the climate crisis.

In some ways, there is no reason to belabor such decisions. Small scale local and any sized organic are both good choices. As Samuel Fromartz has rightly pointed out, both are vastly better than anything offered by the conventional food system, which is still responsible for over 95% of the food eaten by our nation.

Still and all, some of us are wont to dwell on the small choices that one after another fill our grocery carts and kitchens and bellies. What about you: how do you choose what kinds of food to buy? Do you make different choices based on the type of food? How much time do you spend sorting out your food choices, and what most influences your decisions?

--by Erin Barnett

www.localharvest.org