Local or Organic? I'll Take Both

page 2 of 5 | PREV 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5  NEXT 

The shiitake really hit the fan with food writers and small farmers issuing warnings that Wal-Mart's well-documented tactic of squeezing its suppliers to lower prices would further imperil and threaten the existence of small diversified farms and compromise the integrity of organic agriculture itself. "Wal-Mart will likely be buying from large farms, but that won't necessarily harm smaller farmers since their sales channels are growing too," Samuel Fromartz, a business reporter and author of Organic, Inc.: Natural Foods and How They Grew, told The Green Guide in a recent telephone interview.

As for the National Organic Standards that forbid the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers and anything other than organic vegetarian feed for animals, "the drive to produce organic food cheaply will bring pressure to further weaken the regulations," wrote Michael Pollan, author of the delightful book, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, in The New York Times Magazine in June. "It's hard to believe that the lobbyists from Wal-Mart are going to play a constructive role in defending those standards."

I found myself agreeing with Pollan's argument. But then I ran into my friend Donna, an editor at a mainstream magazine. "How can you know it's bad if it hasn't even happened yet?" she asked. "Isn't it a good thing if more people can afford to buy food with fewer pesticide residues?" Fewer pesticides is good, indeed. And although 20 percent of retail sales in the U.S. take place at Wal-Mart, consumers still have a choice, and a role to play in what happens next. "You can make an impact," Fromartz says.

At the Union Square Greenmarket, which carries only food produced within 170 miles of New York City, I asked a few shoppers what they thought of the Wal-Mart news and whether, given a choice, they would prefer local or organic. By the Ronnybrook Farm Dairy table, which sells products from cows free of genetically modified growth hormones, Siobhan Fagan paused, holding the handlebars of a bike affixed with a laden basket. She said she shopped at the Greenmarket because she lived nearby and liked the relationship with the farmers. "I prefer to support local produce. It's better for the environment because it uses less fuel. And I don't want to give Wal-Mart my money," Fagan added. At the Hawthorne Valley Farm counter, Manena Frazier, pregnant and pushing her young daughter in a stroller, also mentioned shipping distance as a reason she chose local food. "I look for things that are not 'shallow organic,' things not made in a mass-produced way. Large farmers are pushing the limits of organic, pricing out smaller organic farms," Frazier said as her child took a big bite of a whole wheat bun spread with fresh organic cheese from a grassfed cow.