Time Magazine: Is Local Food Going Mainstream?
by Michael Graham Richard, Gatineau, Canada on 03.12.07
The cover of Time's March 12 issue shows an apple with a yellow sticker and the words: "Forget organic. Eat Local." We wouldn't go that far, things aren't that simple in real life, but it's interesting to see that local food is getting more airtime after the last few years when organic food took almost all the space on stage. Inside the magazine is a 6-page piece by John Cloud. His starting point is a dilemma between buying an organic apple from California (he is in New York) or a "conventional" apple ("that sounds better than 'sprayed with pesticides that might kill you'," he says) from New York state. The whole point is that food shouldn't just be good for you, it should be good for the whole system too, so organic food that is shipped halfway around the world might cause more harm than "conventional" local food. The best of both worlds is of course community supported agriculture (CSA) that is both local, thus seasonal, and organic. In some cases it might be worth buying organic food that comes from slightly farther away than "conventional" local food because you are voting with your dollars and encouraging more organic production (eventually local producers will switch if there is enough demand) and you are helping protect topsoil, groundwater, etc. These benefits can sometimes offset the extra shipping. But when the organic food comes from much farther away than the local food, local is the way to go (or just substitute with another type of food that you can find as local & organic). But most important, take the time to enjoy your food!
Must say this is also the trend elsewhere (see in Italy, for example).
Seems people poorly care about organic or not organic.
Surely its nice that Time is interested in such an important topic, but what will it take for the mainstream press to promote a balance, rather than one side or another? "Forget" organic is highly misleading, reactionary, and mono-logical. Certainly we don't want to 'forget' organic; why can't Time publish an cover that states something like, "Beyond Organic: Eat Local" or "The Choice between Organic and Local"? A question should be raised, not another destructive either/or affirmative. "Or" sells, I suppose, as well as sex does.
I understand that articles like this need to be 'dumbed down' to a certain extend for the average Time reader to digest (pun intended), but really is honoring two simultaneous truths that difficult for the average reader? Perhaps I give too much credit to the intelligence of the average American...but I don't think so...
jb
there is a simple error from the begening.
a conventional apple is the real one,the real one is organic.
Apple(or any type of food) that is been grow with help of pesticides or is been change by genetics is a fake apple.
eat Organic,local and in season.
Wow, Time has come up to the times. Orion magazine covered this topic, oh, 4 years ago, if I remember rightly, when Michael Pollan wrote a piece called "Getting Over Organic". Better late than never! And too bad about the "foget organic" bit. Orion has a trove of great sustainable ag-related articles here:
http://www.orionmagazine.org/pages/om/OrionSelect/food-agriculture.html
I think it's common sense to see food in a big picture - it's whole impact - so eating local if organic is covered in plastic packaging and shipped from Africa (in the case of UK) is obviously better for you and the environment. Plus organically grown food is not always labelled. Knowing the source if it's local is more possible - certainly where we live. www.thelocalfoodcompany.co.uk lists all it's food miles for everything so you can judge which is going to be better for you overall.