produce

So, produce. I’ll be straightforward. It’s complicated. It seems that when considering what kind of fresh food to buy from where, there are at least SIX major and often competing factors that matter:

1. Your family’s health (i.e. how pesticide-laden is this?)
2. The Earth’s health (i.e. how many ecosystems are pesticide-laden and how much carbon was burned so that I could eat this?)
3. The health of the people who did the work to bring this to you (i.e. how many migrant farm workers will get cancer in twenty years because of their cumulative direct-pesticide exposure and in any case can’t feed their own families right now because they aren’t being paid a living wage?)
4. Your community’s health (i.e. am I supporting the growth of my local economy?)
5. Our overall food system’s health (i.e. is this purchase enabling the worst of agribusiness–see numbers 1-4?)
6. The food’s taste (i.e. something picked this morning is bound to be more delicious than something picked last week, dipped in preservatives, and shipped across an ocean.)

All of these factors are important and the questions related to them worthy. Every person will probably choose a slightly different ranking based on what is most important to them. (By the way, I listed them in no particular order–but then went back and tried to re-rank them in order of importance to me and found it was REALLY difficult, so just left them in their no particular order for now.)

I’m going to start with the obvious: The BEST choice is locally and sustainably-grown organic (maybe from your own backyard or maybe from a small, worker-owned/co-operative farm–oh, if only!!).

But of course we’re having this discussion because that is not realistic for most people (especially here on the east coast–where apparently the humidity makes it extra hard to grow organically and keep off bacteria and fungi).

So what’s the next best choice?

Well, it all depends on what is important to you…and that decision can be maddeningly complex–so much so that I can’t even begin to lay it all out in clear step-by-step terms that would apply to everyone equally. Let’s walk through my own train of thought on all this and see where I end up.

1) Local AND sustainable is better than organic BUT from 3,000 miles away and/or a giant factory farm.

I belong to a CSA (that pic up top is the bounty of last week’s harvest). Every other week for the spring/summer/fall and once a month through the winter I get to go pick up extremely fresh, locally-grown produce and dairy products. In this instance, it’s nice to let other responsible, like-minded people make the where-to-buy decision for me. Their farm is not technically organic and neither is the food they source from local farms, but I believe them when they say they seek out sustainable, responsible partners. I guess it’s kind of a “semi-organic-in-spirit” if not “in-certified-USDA” kinda thing. Which frankly, gives me a lot more reassurance than, say, this kind of certification. In the end, I know that I’m supporting the types of businesses we need more of in this world, and lending momentum to a movement that is of vital importance to the health of my community and the local environment.

When it’s not my week to pick up the CSA share, I can always hit up one of many farmers’ marketsaround the city to the same effect.

2) Local (from a responsible farm) AND (by definition) in season is better than organic BUT shipped from down south so that you can have your tomatoes year-round.

This is one I’d like to get better at. But because we have come to expect (nay, demand!) that we can get ANYTHING at the grocery at ANY time of year, it is going to require a lifestyle shift on my part that will slowly evolve over the next ten years or so. In some ways I actually look forward to the journey, because I do think it will add to that feeling we all love in temperate climates that “every season is unique and special” (and hey, in 20 years when winter here amounts to like, a month of semi-chilly drizzle, we can probably use all the added ambiance we can get–oh, but wait, when that’s the case I’ll be able to get my tomatoes year-round here, too. SNAP!). In any case, right now you can pry Li’l Miss’s bananas out of her cold, dead hands–thus, it will be a work-in-progress for all of us.

3) If it’s on the dirty-dozen list, organic might very well be better than local, especially if you eat it a lot.

When I think about how many strawberries and blueberries my child eats per day, and how many apples I eat in a week, it just seems to make sense to go with organic when it comes to these guys. Especially when I see that glaring “80% reduction in exposure to pesticides” statistic–feels like a no-brainer when presented in terms that stark. And maybe for the items on the dirty dozen list where organic is hard to find or too expensive or only grown in New Zealand, I need to think about simply skipping them most of the time.

And hmm…I might have just sort of covered most of my bases there! My main rules of thumb then would be:

• Go local (and ideally sustainable) whenever possible (and think about skipping it if it’s not in season near you). Support the small farms/farmers’ markets in your neighborhood over the big chains.

• Go organic when you’re dealing frequently with a member of the dirty dozen.

• If it’s something you’re not willing to give up, but will never be available locally (for us that would include bananas and avocados at the moment), might as well go organic when price allows.

After all that is it really so simple? C’mon guys, time to add your ifs, ands, or buts to the mix!