Not wanting "organic" bread

[GLC1968]

Well, yes and no.

Small-scale agriculture is always local, but local doesn't guarantee non-industrial. As isolated as some people may be from agriculture, there are few places in the USA that aren't within 100 miles of industrial farms.

Buying local industrial-chemical food means I'm poisoning farmworkers whom I might meet, poisoning the aquifer that might feed my own water supply, and infesting my own neighbors and maybe myself with diseases. No thanks. (Not that I mean NIMBY, only that "local" poses no advantage and in fact is a personal disadvantage when agriculture is industrialized.) I'll choose long-distance organic over that. Even though organic standards were severely diluted at the urging of industrial agribusiness, they're not completely worthless.

Also, depending on your jurisdiction and the rules of the particular market, buying at a "farmers'" market doesn't always guarantee that produce is local. It burns me up to go to a "farmers'" market and find produce imported from hundreds or even thousands of miles away.

So, if produce comes from a small-scale local farm; if eggs, meat and cheeses are truly pasture-raised; then yeah, absolutely, the "organic" label is a plus but absolutely not a requirement. But if you're buying some products of industrial agriculture (and face it, all of us except maybe GLC1968 do, and I don't think even she grows, threshes and mills her own grains), then the "organic" label is definitely an important value-added.

Ditto. I can't tell you how annoyed I was to find things like bananas and mangos at the farmers market in NC. These things were shipped there from South America, for pete's sake! Hell, there were even boxes of green beans and tomatoes that could have been grown locally that were imported from Mexico. That's just wrong, in my book. It's intentionally misleading.

It's more than just choosing organic or choosing local. The BEST is to know exactly where you food comes from (which is why we try to produce a majority of our stuff ourselves), but, in the interest of being realistic - even the act of thinking about where your food comes from is a step in the right direction.

In reality, if every single person in the US were to all of a sudden demand that all their food be both local and organic or they wouldn't eat it, a vast majority of this country would go hungry. We do not (and cannot) produce enough food to feed even our own population with these methods. This is why something like Peak Oil is so huge - it's not just about not being able to drive our cars or ship our foods...it's also about not having the fuel to run the agricultural equipment or to fertilize (fertilizers are petroleum products) the crops/soil in order to produce the necessary quantities of food. But I digress...

To be fair, I am by no means, perfect. We do buy products of industrial agriculture. Less each day, but we still do. (Though, thanks to Susan O., we are about to start milling our own grains! )

[OakLeaf]

We do not (and cannot) produce enough food to feed even our own population with these methods.

Not so quick with the "cannot." The info-box on this page has a nice summary.


Spray-on organic pancakes.... Forget the Froot Loops, that just makes me want to have a pancake spray fight.

[GLC1968]

Not so quick with the "cannot." The info-box on this page has a nice summary.

I still stand by 'cannot'. I'm not saying that you cannot produce as much using organic methods. I am saying that without equipment, refridgeration and the ability to ship food, we cannot feed our population (organic or not). Human population boomed because we could feed it. But, our ability to feed it is artificial and inflated. Take away those inputs and the overall yields drop and people go hungry. And additionally, we have large population centers in areas not conducive to agriculture - so local is definitely not always possible. But again, there's so much to it. If it were an easy fix, there would be no debate and we'd all be living large on healthy, fresh, local food and the small farmers would be respected and the big 'evil' agribusinesses would have gone the way of the dodo.

Spray-on organic pancakes.... Forget the Froot Loops, that just makes me want to have a pancake spray fight.

That sounds like a disgusting mess in the making!