Monday, August 6, 2007

Organic Trumps Local?

Here's an article from today's NYTimes on "food miles". I thought the conclusion was going to be "eat local AND organic/grass-fed", but the author has a different suggestion - hub-and-spoke food production. In other words, (if I understand rightly) main-stream agriculture like we have now, with all our spuds coming from Idaho, all our lamb coming from NZ, etc., but organic/grass-fed and (possibly on a somewhat smaller scale to mitigate the cruelty and environmental costs)?

UPDATE: Here are some more, one (from the Times) about food production vs. transportation and two more on the varying costs of how food travels, here and here.

3 comments:

  1. It is a very interesting conclusion - and one that appeals to me. You may want to look at the original article - it's much more complete than the NY Times synopsis: http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2564

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  2. Hi Leah!

    Thanks for all the great ideas for the new cookbook I received. I've heard the chickpea pancakes are great from just about everyone, so I'm going to try those first.

    And I just found your blog and was excited to see it's about a CSA! I have an organic CSA for the first time this year through Mattawoman Creek Farms.

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  3. I am new to this forum, so I'm sure it's already been mentioned, but Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma, also deals with food miles and other issues related to our ailing food system. I am currently reading it, but I find it well written thus far. I also read the book "Food Fight" recently. It details the Farm bill and its various struggles. It had some interesting graphs, but I found I already knew a lot of it. Good for a newcomer to the issues maybe.

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