LOCAL VS ORGANIC

Which is it organic or local?
There is a raging battle on as to whether we should be eating local versus organic. While there are only a few clear answers I hope I can provide some insight.
Over the past years organic food has shown up in most supermarkets, outside of local food stands Whole Food seems to have gotten the ball rolling in 1980 but now you can clearly see that all the large chains from Kroger, Giant, Fresh Market, Food Lion and even most of the big box stores such as Super Target, Super Wal Marts and Costco all carry organically grown food. In 2000 roughly 17% of all the food shoppers purchased organic at least once a week. That number now is hovering just above 25% and on the rise. The new food purist, many were on the organic bandwagon are now touting “local” as the way to go. The conventional thought process seems to be that many organic early adopters are now outraged that organic has gone to “Big Organic”. These firms now use the same industrialized farming and long distance shipping methods as conventional agribusiness.
I care deeply about how my food tastes and that is one of the main reasons for starting cusinemanager.com in the first place and it makes sense that a snap pea grown by a local farmer and never refrigerated will retain more of its delicate flavor than one shipped in a frigid plane from Central or South America. And I realized that if more consumers didn't become part of the local-food market, it could disappear and all our peas would be those tasteless little pods from far away. Then there is that nagging feeling that not all local food is organically grown. If your fortunate enough (food wise certainly not tax or otherwise) to live in parts California, Texas or where I live in North Carolina it is possible to find a reasonably good supply of local organically grown food pretty much on a year round basis. Well most people don’t have that luxury so what can you do!
While I am not a food lefty, I certainly have had my share of Big Mac’s and various other food malfunctions I do understand that eating healthy is important and there are several easy things we can do about it. Probably the foremost thing you can easily do is check out your local Farmers Market. According to Samuel Fromantz’s History of Organic Inc: Natural Foods & How they grew; there were 1,853 Farmers Markets in the US in 1994, a decade later there are 3,706 and still growing. On Cuisine Manager.com we have posted a link National Directory of Farmers Markets that will allow you to find your local Farmers Market. A few weeks ago we were in the Farmers Market in Raleigh NC, we are fortunate to have a 7 day a week year round market. There was stand after stand selling produce, apples and various other products, I must admit a lot of the junk outside of the food was cheesy and could just as easily have been sold at the State Fair. I was after apples; there were many stands from various parts of the state selling local organic apples, they were much smaller than the ones at Kroger, did not have anywhere near the great coloration but a 10 lb bag was the same price as a 5 lb bag of organic apples at Kroger. After selecting a bag stating organically grown, Boone Mountain NC. and taking them home they turned out to be the best tasting apples we had eaten in years at half the price of our local grocery store. You do the math on how much jet fuel, trucking fuel and how much quicker they landed on our kitchen counter then organic from California or South America.
A quick definition of “what is local”
Everyone’s definition is different, some put it at 100 mile, some put it at 150 and still others put it at 200 mile from where they live. My definition is and easy drive from home. We can be at Wilmington Beach NC in two hours, this could be a day trip from my home but there are some great local produce stands along the way and they become as much a part of our trip as the beach. The bottom line is the term local is completely arbitrary so define your own local definition.
Organic adherents take it on faith that the way food is grown affects its nutritional quality. But advocates of local eating are now making another leap, saying what happens after harvest, how food is shipped and handled; is perhaps even more important than how it was grown. Locavores.com a site popular among local purists, asserts that "because locally grown produce is freshest, it is more nutritionally complete. Another good blog that comes out of AZ is eatlocalchallenge.com they adhere to a 250 mile radius but many who blog at the site call for a more stricter 100 mile limit.
This is a concept that you need to decide on, visit the websites mention above, they have some great ideas and some good plans but ultimately it is up to you to decide on what local means to you and if you go entirely local define local to fit your needs and wallet.
You first choice should be local organic products, when this is not possible look for local products and do some homework on the farm where the food was produced. Sometime minimum amounts of chemicals are necessary.
There is a third option and it is my belief that this is by far the best and most suitable option for us all, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). More on this in a few days. I still have some research to do, check out community harvest on Cuisine Manager.