Eat Shoots & Leaves
Organic produce tends to be more expensive because organic farmers don’t use the same cost-cutting, mass production measures insidiously bestowed by toxic and persistent chemicals. The downside of this is that yields tend to be 20 percent lower than those of non-organic crops. Conventional agriculture focuses on quantity, not quality, which is why the nutritional value of U.S. produce has declined dramatically over the last half-century. Not so with organic fruits and vegetables, which are higher in vitamin C, essential minerals, and phytonutrients. You won’t have to worry about eating frankenfied produce, either, or subjecting your children to a pesticide burden that is detrimental to their physical and mental wellbeing.
Here are some ways to get healthful organic greens without having to pay for years of therapy for your bank account.
1. Join a Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) Program
A CSA is an economic partnership between a local farmer and a neighboring community. When you join a CSA, you’ve essentially become a share-holder of the farm, and you and the other members either pledge or put up in advance an annual fee to cover the anticipated production costs of the farm during the harvest season (typically May to October). In return, you get a weekly selection of fresh, sustainably grown vegetables that didn’t have to be trucked thousands of miles to get to your table.
A share in my local CSA cost us $440 for the 2006 season, which sounds like an eye-popping sum, but actually works out to around $20 a week, which is almost criminally low for a big box of fresh, organic produce. Our most recent communiqué from our farmer mentioned preparations being put in place for broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce, celery, celery root, early varieties of tomatoes, kohlrabi, kale, escarole, endive, scallions, parsley, bok choy, and tatsoi. (Conventional agriculture is skewed toward a single-crop monoculture system, which spells bad news for biodiversity.)
2. Grow Your Own Salad Greens
You can start growing your own greens by getting a plot in a community garden. Community gardens have been proliferating even in dense urban environs, offering some natural respite from all that concrete and pollution.
Organic Gardening offers some tips for apartment dwellers, too. Remember my sister who couldn’t afford to buy organic? She sent me an e-mail saying she just signed a lease on a bigger rental, which she’ll be sharing with green-minded roommates.
[W]e have her Earthboxes and we’re going to grow tomatoes, basil, seasonal stuff, maybe even squash? on the deck. And, because now we’ll be three people and we’re all on the same wavelength, we’re going to sign up as a family with a CSA in the summer. We’ll be able to cook better, and share costs better. Less waste is great!
Like the Kool-Aid guy likes to say, “Oh YEEEAAAAAAH!”
Get more green-thumb advice from the “garden hoes” at YouGrowGirl.com.
3. Join a Food Co-Op
A co-op is a business that is owned and operated by its members, all of whom have an equal say its operation and an equal share in any profits if the co-op is open to the public. By combining their buying power, members are able to negotiate for better prices on goods. (You can find a listing of U.S.-based co-ops here. Folks in the U.K. can locate co-ops by postal code here.)
4. Shop At Different Stores
I swiftly replaced my former favorite cereal, Mother’s Peanut Butter Bumpers, with Panda Puffs by EnviroKidz upon discovering that the former contains genetically modified ingredients DESPITE being marketed as being “all natural.” (Oh truth in advertising, where art thou?) But color me mortified when I found my Panda Puffs selling for $4.99 at one store and $3.59 at another! Not. Cool.
Me: Do you think we’ll embarrass our kids because we shop at three different stores for the cheapest prices?
Husband: Without a doubt.
Feel free to humiliate your existing or unborn children by casting a wider net when you shop—they’ll appreciate it when it’s time to pay for college.
5. Buy from Wal-Mart (No, Really!)
Besides assertions that it will double its current organic grocery offerings, Wal-Mart recently announced plans to market its own house brand of organic food, along with adult and infant lines of organic-cotton apparel. The retail behemoth’s move is significant because of the sheer enormity of its supply chain, which could also make organic goods more-accessible to people with lower incomes.
While the environmental community remains cautiously optimistic, Wal-Mart’s detractors worry that the company will be importing its organic inventory from overseas, where labor is cheap and plentiful, which could flood the market with low-price organics and drive U.S. farmers out of business. Some critics have also expressed concern that Wal-Mart will use its sizeable clout to lobby for weaker federal organic-food standards.
We also need to remember that Wal-Mart doesn’t exactly have a pristine record when it comes to employee healthcare, workplace discrimination, and outsourcing. I would peg this only as a final resort.
Liz said,
April 5, 2006 at 10:15 pm
What a treat to come back home after teaching a class on organic gardening, and finding this post. I can’t express how important it is for everyone to do the first four of those things on your list (I just can’t get behind the Walmart thing. Sorry.) Like you said… last resort.
The Worsted Witch » Whoa, Slow Down, Pard’ner! said,
April 7, 2006 at 2:41 pm
[...] Additional resources: 1. My previous post on obtaining organic foods affordably. 2. A list of food and products containing HFCS, Accidental Hedonist 3. “Live the slow life,” Slow Food USA 4. “In praise of Slow Food,” NPR 5. “Find time to cook,” Rebecca Wood 6. Allrecipes.com [...]
The Worsted Witch » Everybody’s Doin’ the Localmotion said,
April 27, 2006 at 1:33 pm
[...] Personally speaking, joining a Community-Supported Agriculture program in your neighborhood is one of the best ways to get your hands on local fruits and veggies. Another favorite resource of mine is LocalHarvest.org, which helps you locate restaurants, farmers’ markets, CSAs, grocery/co-ops that offer sustainably grown food in your neighborhood. [...]
The Worsted Witch » Maybe Baby said,
May 9, 2006 at 11:22 pm
[...] 1. Eat organically grown or raised foods. Researchers have found that children who switched to organic diets for only a few days “dramatically and substantially lowered the amount of toxic pesticides in their bodies.” [...]
The Worsted Witch » The Price is Wrong said,
May 23, 2006 at 11:55 am
[...] Previously, we discussed just some of the ways you can eat your organic veggies heartily and affordably. [...]
The Worsted Witch » The Sludge Report said,
September 21, 2006 at 2:22 pm
[...] This sewage sludge sitch is worse than I thought, which is just another reason why you should eat organic. For now at least, organic standards prohibit the use of sewage-sludge-based fertilizers for crops. (In 2000, facing a huge public backlash, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) abandoned plans to allow the use of sewage sludge in organic agriculture.) [...]
The Worsted Witch » The Organic Myth? said,
October 6, 2006 at 12:25 pm
[...] Related articles: 1. Organic/Eco Classifications 2. Unfair Organics 3. Organic’s Edge Questioned 4. Eat Shoots and Leaves 5. Not All Organics Created Equal 6. Chekhov’s Eco Tip: Local or Organic? 6. Blog Love: Pocket Farm 7. The Oy in Soy [...]
The Worsted Witch » The Vegetable-Industrial Complex said,
October 15, 2006 at 11:06 am
[...] Pollan makes a case for eating local, not just because we want to support farmers in our communities and eat seasonal fresh food at their most flavorful—or even “sentimental” reasons such as wanting our children to recognize what real food in its natural, unpackaged glory looks like—but also for “hardheaded or pragmatic” reasons. Want to fight off a possible terrorist attack? Shop at your local farmers’ market or community-assisted-agriculture (CSA) program. highly centralized food economy is a dangerously precarious system, vulnerable to accidental—and deliberate—contamination. This is something the government understands better than most of us eaters. When Tommy Thompson retired from the Department of Health and Human Services in 2004, he said something chilling at his farewell news conference: “For the life of me, I cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply, because it is so easy to do.” The reason it is so easy to do was laid out in a 2003 G.A.O. report to Congress on bioterrorism. “The high concentration of our livestock industry and the centralized nature of our food-processing industry” make them “vulnerable to terrorist attack.” Today 80 percent of America’s beef is slaughtered by four companies, 75 percent of the precut salads are processed by two and 30 percent of the milk by just one company. Keeping local food economies healthy—and at the moment they are thriving—is a matter not of sentiment but of critical importance to the national security and the public health, as well as to reducing our dependence on foreign sources of energy. [...]
The Worsted Witch » Pesticides in Produce said,
October 30, 2006 at 3:07 pm
[...] Even washing and peeling conventionally grown fruits and vegetables only reduces the level of pesticides but does not eliminate them. Because a 100 percent organic diet may not be practical or financially feasible, however, our best bet is to avoid conventional produce with the highest pesticide loads in order to minimize our exposure. [...]
Kelly said,
February 15, 2007 at 7:10 am
Hello, I enjoy reading your blog, and saw the “Make the Switch” button - I am putting my blog together, and would like to add that button to mine, but didn’t find it on the site. Can you please point me in the right direction to get that button added to my blog as well?
Thanks!!
Kelly
The Worsted Witch » said,
March 16, 2007 at 11:14 am
[...] “Ethical” parents face extra £700 in the U.K. What this story doesn’t add is that it’s possible to live frugally and consciously—buying gently used, for instance, won’t wallop your wallet. You can also make your own green cleaning supplies, and even skincare products. Fresh organic produce can also be affordable if you try growing your own or join a co-op or a community-supported agriculture (CSA) group. (You can also just avoid the conventional produce that have the highest pesticide loads if money is truly tight.) [...]