Organic or local? One parent’s take on the ethical tug-of-war

Shopping for produce used to be so fun and sexy. The rounded bottom of a butternut squash, the outrageous purpleness of the eggplants, the bad-boy chili peppers acting all laissez-fair…but recently I’ve been stuck in the middle of an ethical tug-of-war that has just killed the joy. Which is why, on a drizzly morning in Richmond, my stroller clogs the aisle of a local produce market as I panic over my apple choices.

I can buy either organic Galas from New Zealand or conventionally grown McIntoshes from the Okanagan. I can’t find apples that are both organic and local today, so which do I choose? Before having children, it would have been a no-brainer: reject the Kiwi apples with their massive carbon footprints and go for the Macs. Now that I’m a mom, though, “conventionally grown” suddenly sounds more like: “cloaked with poison” so I’m vacillating (nearly hyperventilating actually) as I try to decide.

The reality of Canada’s pesticide laws is anything but sexy; our standards are among the lowest in the developed world. The government already allows 58 chemical ingredients onto our food, substances that have been banned in the E.U. and other western countries. It gets worse. In an effort to streamline regulations between Canada and the US, our conservative government plans to further lower some of the pesky pesticide controls that they call a “trade irritant.” Knowing this, do I take the short view (what’s on my lunch) or the long view (the future of the planet)?

An oft-quoted statistic is that shipping one (organic) strawberry from California to New York requires 435 calories of fossil fuel but provides only 5 calories of nutrition. Not only is this an obnoxious level of consumption, it means that whatever I spare my children in pesticide chemicals will be made up for in carbon emissions spewed out while transporting their organic foreign fare, which my children (or someone else’s) will ultimately breathe or consume in the water. The complexity of the issue means no single food ideology is going to solve the earth’s problems. The website EatLocalChallenge.com understands this and has created a helpful cheat-sheet for navigating our food choices:

If not LOCALLY PRODUCED, then Organic.
If not ORGANIC, then Family Farm.
If not FAMILY FARM, then Local business.
If not a LOCAL BUSINESS, then Fair Trade.

I have two children under age three, which means I’m the proud owner of a sleep-deficit that could make you cry. On a good day I’m able to tell you what month it is—give or take–—but my mental dexterity stops there. The Eat Local Challenge guidelines give me permission to just do the best I can, and I don’t have to think too hard.

Good choices are difficult to make when as a society we’re stressed-out and over-extended. Nothing numbs my soul more than doing the big shop at Save-On twice a month, with both my kids in tow. It’s not Save-On’s fault; their helpful produce labeling tells me what is BC grown and what is organic, and the rows of bulk bins absolutely delight me. But after my son has rolled several kabocha squash down the aisle before being restrained, after I’ve unloaded the cart while my daughter sticks her index fingers up my nostrils (from her vantage point in the baby sling), after assuring the cashier that I’ll put every chocolate bar back that my son has laid out in a train track along the floor, and after noticing that same cashier’s slight sigh as I pull out my canvas bags (because I guess they’re a little harder to load than the plastic ones?)…after that interminable drama, I always stumble into the glare of the parking lot hauling children and groceries and blinking into the sunlight like a dazed survivor of a nuclear holocaust. Did I mention I have to do this twice a month?

Compare this to the days we can walk the dike from our home in Steveston to shop at the neighbouring farms. We watch the river shift from copper to green, depending on the weather. We wave at the tugboats and the eagles (you do a lot of waving when you become a parent). At JS Nature Farms, Susan Buerger tells me exactly what she puts on her famous German yellow potatoes—nothing—and invites me to look around her farm. My son races through the muddy field, stopping to pat the tractor wheels, while Susan gives me a friendly lecture on how to spot food that is being sold as local but is actually imported. Hint: it makes an appearance in Vancouver out-of-season.

This kind of shopping experience is what people who work in the food system call transparency. It’s the same concept as having a restaurant kitchen in plain view (I love that), because when customers can see what’s going on, it creates a relationship. Experiences like this are at a premium because BC farms are in decline. And no wonder¬—the farm now gets less than ten cents of the retail food dollar. Buying direct from farmers lets them bypass the middleman, so they get the full retail price for their food. (It also reduces food miles, and 80% of food energy is consumed after the food leaves the farm, mostly through transportation.)

Food from small, local farms is GMO-free, and buying local preserves genetic diversity. I have to admit that when I first learned this, I understood why GMOs were bad things, but genetic diversity sounded like something I’d take on as a cause sometime after learning how to churn my own butter. Then I read that the planting of a single crop (a common practice in modern agriculture) depletes the soil and makes the fruits and vegetables become more susceptible to pests and disease, requiring ever increasing amounts of chemicals to control them. Like so many industrial agricultural habits, mono-cropping is inherently destructive.

By contrast, local farms grow a large number of crops for a long harvest season and superior flavours. No plant is an island, and the varieties protect one another in a finely tuned dance. Many of these are from heirloom seeds, passed down for generations. A friend of mine (she’s 73) talks about an apple that once grew on her father’s farm in Abbottsford. It was faintly zebra-striped, and very sweet (“chocolatey” was how she described it). It’s extinct now, along with thousands of other apple varieties, and even though I never got to meet this fantasy apple, I find myself missing it at the oddest moments. Fortunately, several local farms are committed to preserving heirloom varieties; you can find them at Allaboutapples.com .

Proponents of the organic-only movement like to remind us that organic foods are higher in nutrients than their conventionally-grown neighbours. But that only applies if you’re eating the food fresh. The average distance food travels from farm to plate is 2400 kilometers—that’s at least a week-long delay from harvest to dinner table. That organic strawberry from California has one foot in the grave before it even hits the border, let alone your cereal bowl. This, of course, is one reason why local food tastes better: it was likely picked within the last 24 hours.

And so where did I end up with my Mom dilemma, back in the apple aisle?

I’d like to raise children who understand that just because they can get a strawberry shipped from anywhere in the world, doesn’t mean they are entitled to it. (Isn’t that the kind of imperialism that got our world into this mess?) I hope our weekly trips to the local farms will mean my kids grow up to understand that squash doesn’t grow in a grocery store bin and coffee doesn’t magically appear in Mommy’s mug in the mornings (if only). Buying squash, coffee, oranges, or bread requires making choices. Just being aware of those choices is a great beginning.

So I bought two bags of the locally-grown Macs and decided to make apple sauce for the babies and apple bourbon tartines for the grown-ups. After we’d wrangled the kids into bed, my husband and I settled onto the couch balancing tartines and big glasses of Blue Mountain pinot (we’ll pair red wine with anything). The Blue Mountain Winery in Okanagan Falls is one our favorites and tonight their pinot serenaded us, all smooth and sultry… she was positively slutty about it, actually. The tartines were so good that I’m tempted to call them sumptuous. With food like this in our backyard, who needs berries shipped from California?
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Becky Southwell is a recent transplant to Vancouver from Los Angeles, where she spent ten years writing for TV and film.  Her new focus is on writing fiction and getting five hours of sleep in a row whenever possible.