muninnhuginn | Ethical Juggling

Statement (well it's hardly a confession, since I make no secret of the fact): I buy and eat organic* food, when that's possible.

This is partly because I'd like to live in a manner which is as kind to the environment as possible and sometimes organic farming helps in this direction. I can see that there may be a counter-argument that runs: intensive farming produces more per acre, so we can leave more land unformed. It just don't work that way.

It's partly because I'm all for bio-diversity (both in the choice of crops and variety seems to be a feature of organic methods, but more importantly in the number of other species that survive around the cultivated areas), something which intensive farming does not encourage.

I admit, however, that the major reason for consuming organic produce is, with the exception of Green and Black's Dark Chocolate and their Maya Gold Chocolate (their milk and white chocolates are brilliant), organic produce tastes better. Organic bananas are more flavoursome; organic leeks have a taste, and it's a good one; organic broad beans, well I won't eat broad beans if they're not organically-grown and podded immediately before cooking.

I don't always live up to this aim, but I try. I'm stricter about items we can do without. No organic chocolate in the shop, I'll do without; no organic potatoes, buy some other potatoes.

One thing I don't believe is that organic produce is intrinsically more healthy. The lack of chemical residues might be more healthy. But an apple, tasy or otherwise, is essentiallly an apple.

Statement (2): I prefer to buy fairly traded food.

Again, I'm not perfect in this. But when I can, I do.

Statement (3): I prefer to use local, independent retailers and producers to large supermarkets.

I like to think I'm helping my local economy, local employment. I like to think that if everyone did this, the amount of traffic might not continue to rise (hoping for an actual reduction seems foolish).

I don't like supermarkets, because they're hostile environments. I'm half-blinded by the fluorescent lighting, which always flickers. I'm generally frozen by the freezing fog coming out of the chiller cabinets (wearing gloves makes picking up the groceries hard and makes you look a prat in August!). I can't always reach to the highest shelves.

So where's the juggling?

Well, which of the above principles is the most important? What happens if they conflict with one another?

Example: Milk

[I'd still use a milkman (local trader and dairy), and buy organic, except the deliveries weren't daily and the 'frdge couldn't cope with the amount we'd need to store. And it was often stolen from the doorstep.]

Where possible I buy organic milk. The little local shops don't sell it. The new Tescos on our road does. Do I buy organic or support the local traders?

My current compromise is that if all I need is milk, I shop "local", although this definitely goes against the notion of buying organic if available. If I need more than just milk and, say, a bag of potatoes, I use Tescos.

Example (2): Bananas

I buy organic bananas. We get organic bananas in the organic fruit and vegetable box we have delivered once a week (from fine folk who grow and source locally when they can, and from whom we get our eggs (from happy organic hens) and a loaf, organic). Only once have their organic bananas been fair trade. They can't get fair trade bananas wholesale (or they would do it). Fair trade bananas all go to the supermarkets. So, what do I do? Well, since there are never enough bananas in the box, I buy fair trade when I get the extras.

Example (3): Meat

I like our local butcher. It's a friendly place. They're well stocked and have a game licence. It's good quality stuff. It's not organic, except possibly the wild game, though that depends on what they've been living on. At the supermarket, there is organic meat. Again, the current solution is that on the big supermarket trips, organic meat is bought. In between, I buy from the local shop. I've not yet gone so far as investigating other small local suppliers of meat. Perhaps I ought, if I'm keeping up with principle 3.

The Result?

(There are endless other examples, but they're more of the same really.)

A whole heap of compromises, unsurprisingly.

What a tedious woolly liberal waffle? (Now, can I get an organic one of those?)

* I loathe the use of "organic" to mean food stuffs produced by non-intensive, non-agro-chemicalled means. The pedant in me instantaneously pipes up every darn time to remind me that most food (I'm not certain about all) is organic. Still, it's the apparently accepted term. If I've used it, it was in error and I meant pedantically and awkwardly to modify the term with "-produced" or "-grown" or whatever.</p