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I was reading in the June issue of Mother Jones an article about organic farming by Barbara Kingsolver in which she wrote:

“I’m always afraid I’m going to get the Mr. Natural lecture,” one friend confessed to me. “You know, from the slow-moving person with ugly hair, doing back and leg stretches while they talk to you.” I know the guy too: standing at the checkout with his bottle of Intestinal-Joy brand wheatgrass juice, edging closer as if to peer into my cart to save me from some food-karma horror.

This made me laugh. I am also afraid of that guy. My choice to live in Berkeley forced me to face my fear head on. I have always had a huge problem with those uptight hippies. People who espouse tolerance but have none. An additional thought occurred to me that the type of person reading the article – ie, the demographic of the average Mother Jones reader – is probably closer to Mr. Natural than not.

But the issue of organic farming is an important one to me. I grew up a farmer’s daughter in Louisiana in the 70s where crop dusters fanning DDT across our horizon was a common site. Our part of Louisiana fast became known as “cancer alley” as the Mississippi River – America’s built-in sewage system – brought more chemicals and waste flowing past us. I know people in these parts that still mix their baby’s formula with unfiltered tap water.

I try to make thoughtful decisions and this includes buying organic. With my children it is a full-blown obsession. The idea that I would give them one cup of hormone-filled milk makes me upset. This is part of the reason I was willing to put up with Mr. Natural by moving to Berkeley. In Berkeley, you can’t throw a stone without hitting a market that sells organic milk.

Living in France it was very difficult to find fresh milk (UHD long-life milk is the rage in Europe), but when you did, you knew it was good. The eggs and dairy and meats were all free-range, hormone free too. But the produce? Availability of European produce seems to suffer from the same malaise as the US. Supermarkets want large waxy-red apples, bright round oranges, giant perfect broccoli. This normally means it was shipped from somewhere far away, even though you knew the farmer on the land next to your house (yes, we lived in a farming village) grew perfectly good lettuce – his was only available on those market days where you were never sure what would be available. Supermarkets are a necessary convenience of modern life. Farmers markets? But I also need to buy cleaning products, toilet paper and cheerios. Who has time?

With kids, jobs, modern schedules we tend to forgo the unreliable for the reliable and as a result we are stuck with what the supermarket wants to sell us. The supermarket claims to want to sell us what we want. So why not more organic? Well, one reason is because organic food is expensive. We see those nice organic beefsteak tomatoes next to the crappy roma ones for half the price and we stop and think; “Maybe I can get away with the crappy ones, after all I am cooking them, no one will notice.” What we don’t consider is the implication this choice has on how the supermarkets stock their shelves. And we certainly don’t consider what it will mean for the farmer that got us those organic tomatoes we claimed to want in the first place.

Going green is risky. It is expensive and take many years to get going. The issue is further complicated by large pieces of policy like the Farm Bill. The Farm Bill makes it possible for highly processed multi-ingredient products packaged in plastic made and shipped from around the world using lots of jet fuel, diesel fuel and human capital to be cheaper than a carrot.

The tangle of issues related to how we eat is immense. But we must realize we live in a time where our food priorities are skewed. It might actually be a good thing if Mr. Natural could save a few more of us from food-karma horror.

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