Organic or Local?

So. What's your priority when purchasing food?

Is it more important to you that your food be local or that it be organic?

The Blueberry Ranch is the only farm I'm aware of that is both organic AND local to my home.

The Purple Porch Co-op apparently also works with some other local and organic farms. I'm gonna have to check them out this week.

I'm telling you, when I'm walking through the grocery store and the labels show potatoes from Idaho and strawberries from California and other items from areas in South America it doesn't make much sense to me. And it's ridiculously overwhelming. If there's one thing I cannot abide, it's being overwhelmed, especially at the grocery store.

Last night I watched another food documentary, The Future of Food. What it tells me is that as humans, and speficially Americans, we've made some really bad choices. We're on a path I honestly don't believe we can get off of.

We genetically modify food and then we wonder why it makes us sick.

We allow multinational corporations to patent living organisms. This is truly insane. There's utterly no way to control how these organisms will change over time and where they will travel. They continually turn up in farmer's fields where they were not invited. They've even made their way to Mexico where they are not wanted. The Mexican government as well as the majority of Mexican farmers want nothing to do with genetically modified foods.

We've given up a huge part of our heritage.

We've given up entire sets of knowledge that can only be recovered at great cost. Farming as it happens now bears little resemblance to what it was a century ago.

I think we've gone too far. I hope we can come back. And before it's too late.

A little dramatic? I wish. And so, back to the original question. What's more important to you when you are purchasing food? Local or organic?