Local to Organic And All Stops Inbetween

Thanks, snoodess, for the wonderful linkage! We're on our way now!

I've been thinking a lot lately about eating locally and eating organically and whether or not one is more desireable than the other, and whether overlap between them is a given. And then there's the related issue of Big Food vs. Small Food. For now, my personal eating hierarchy looks like this:

local organic small

local conventional small

local organic big

local conventional big

non-local organic small

non-loal conventional small

non-local organic big

non-local conventional big

One reason that I put the greatest value on small providers is the hope that faced with a loyal, interested clientele they might be open to the idea of engaging in more or enhanced sustainability practices. After all, if the community providing one's livelihood clamors for raw or organic or whatnot, it seems to me that one is more likely to listen given that every dollar earned has a face or name attached to it.

Similarly, I value local over organic for pretty much the same reason, with the added issue of fossil fuel conservation. I'd rather eat a conventional item procured from a local small business than its organic sibling trucked in from California by the subsidiary of the same mega-corporations that routinely lobby our elected officials for favors and breaks that erode the meaning of organic in the first place.

But this is just me. I know that there are as many ways to parse these very complicated issues as there are families which contemplate them. And my thoughts are always evolving. I'm dedicated to procuring as much of my family's food as I can from local sources, if they're organic then so much the better.