Local or Organic: Must We Choose?

The debate between supporting organic or locally grown foods is a hair-splitting argument. The issues are not necessarily mutually exclusive. A farmer or producer that primarily sells locally is likely going to use organic practices to sustain the land on which he or she depends for long-term income. The heart of the meaning of sustainability includes the continuation of practices into posterity. This means not only assuring the land stays healthy, but also even improving the condition of the land.

Lynn Brakke, a Moorhead beef producer, also plants a variety of crops on his land. He rotates crops to prevent soil depletion, plants a variety of grasses for the cows to graze on, and rotates his cows onto different pastures. The website eatwild.org states, “On pasture, grazing animals do their own fertilizing and harvesting. The ground is covered with greens all year round, so it does an excellent job of harvesting solar energy and holding on to top soil and moisture.” Lynn’s aim is to not only maintain the land, but improve the land so the cows have the healthiest possible grasses to eat. Healthy grasses lead to healthy cows with meat higher in vitamins, minerals, and omega-3 fatty acids.

Lynn had a hard time marketing his beef in the Red River Valley. He found willing markets in the Twin Cities and shipped his product 250 miles to the southeast. More recently, he saw the value in doing all he can to sell his beef locally in order to reduce the use of fossil fuels and thus overall costs. The demand for locally-grown, grass-fed beef in the Red River Valley is growing. Whether the beef is organically or conventionally grown matters less when we can claim the product is local and saves resources. Nonetheless, Lynn is one of those producers who went through the process of becoming USDA organic certified. It certainly helps with marketing your product to health conscious consumers.

The road to becoming a USDA approved organic farm is a long, expensive, and slow process (but no doubt, for many, worth the effort). Some farmers choose to opt out of the government system, but still raise their crops or animals within organic parameters. Buying from these local farmers, although perhaps not strictly organic, has both health and environmental benefits. Practices that preserve the environment are usually also good for human health. Local, minimally-processed foods are often the antithesis of industrialized, heavily-processed foods.

Our Industrialized Food

Industrial and large-scale practices dominate agriculture. The main industrialized agricultural products, corn and soy, are then further manufactured into ingredients such as high fructose corn syrup, citric acid, vegetable oil, soy isolates, animal feed, and hydrogenated vegetable oil, just to name a few. Most of the corn and soy grown in the United States enters our bodies indirectly through the animals we eat.

The heavy manufacturing of food strips it of essential nutrients such as heart-healthy oils, vitamins, minerals, and all-important, non-digestible fiber. Some African countries have an average fiber intake of 96 grams per day, which is much higher than the adult daily fiber recommendation of 25-30 grams. Americans have an average daily fiber intake of 12 grams. A high fiber diet is related to the prevention of cancer, heart disease, obesity, and diabetes.

Meeting the fiber recommendation can be accomplished by consuming a plant-based diet containing whole grains, fruits, vegetables, beans, and legumes. The Pima Indians in Mexico consume a diet high in whole corn tortillas, dried beans, and vegetables. They also perform about 22 hours of hard labor every week. The Pima Indians in Arizona get perhaps two hours each week of exercise and consume a relatively high-fat, high-processed food diet. Approximately 50 percent of the Arizona Pima Indians suffer from type 2 diabetes. Diabetes in the Mexican Pima Indian community is virtually nonexistent.

The Mexican Pima Indians are in balance with the ecology of their surroundings. They understand where their food comes from because they either grow their own food, or know the people that grow the food for them. In contrast, American consumers have lost the knowledge about where food comes from. In high poverty areas of the United States (whether urban or rural), many people have no access to fresh, locally grown foods. The nutrition research literature is full of articles documenting the differences between type and quality of foods sold in high-income areas and low-income areas. Regardless of income level, many Americans are out of balance with their food.

Even people in the Red River Valley, with some of the richest soil in the world, are removed from where their food is grown. Most of our food is shipped from thousands of miles away. And, the different selections available at FM area grocery stores in relation to the income area in which they are located is quite notable. Making the move to healthy, less-processed, locally-grown foods must be an equitable endeavor so all individuals have access. That means creating local food markets by raising the conscience of individuals and the institutions that serve food to those individuals (e.g., schools, workplaces, prisons, and restaurants)
.

Industrialized Organic Food

Organic food is not immune to industrialization. Mergers and acquisitions in the food industry are as common as in the airline industry. Philip Howard, Assistant Professor at Michigan State University, illustrates the merger phenomenon in his social network analyses of food corporations. The big food corporations are rapidly buying up the small “mom and pop” food companies that we always thought of as “small” and maybe even “local.” A few examples: Smuckers owns After the Fall and Santa Cruz Organic, M & M / Mars owns Seeds of Change; Heinz owns Earth’s Best, Walnut Acres, and Westbrae (to name a few) through their company Hain Celestial; and Coca Cola owns Odwalla. Not to mention that now, many of the large food manufacturers have their own organic divisions including General Mills, Kraft, Tyson, Hershey, and Anheuser-Busch.

When corporations increase their scale, they inevitably make compromises in order to increase production. Growing acres of salad greens in one field, as Earthbound Foods does, uses lots of water and prevents the replenishment of the land through rotation. You could argue that growing one crop organically on lots of acres saves those acres from the chemicals used in conventional farming. But the real issue with scale is the need to increase profits and is often less environmentally conscious. Corporations have the means to create a distribution system that reach the farthest corners of our country. Food travels incredible distances. On those long trips, nutrients are lost and fuel is spent. But, more than that, people lose control over the food they put in their bodies.

A Local Food Economy

Buying local foods saves resources in so many ways. It reduces the amount of fossil fuels burned to deliver calories to our table. A local food system keeps local dollars in the local economy through direct marketing, local processing, and value added activities. It provides the community with ways to reconnect with the food supply and strengthens social, economic, and physical health. Now is the right time to connect Red River Valley consumers with hard working producers who often ship their food far away because they believe only a few will buy their products here. Let’s work hard to keep the food grown in the Red River Valley, one of the most fertile areas of the world. Buying local foods brings back the control we have lost over food.

Questions and comments:

Visit the following websites for more information: www.fargolocalfoods.net, http://www.localfoods.umn.edu