AND LET'S DITCH THE TERM "ORGANIC" TOO

Last time I posted I was chasing after the use and abuse of the words artisanal and rustic. I proposed that we ditch them, at least for awhile, until we can give them meaning and substance again…

The next word on my hit list, even more abused and distressing, is of course “organic”. Do we really want to keep on with this hopeless label? I remember when the first mindful grocery opened in my hometown of Ottawa, an “organic” shop in the Market area, selling bulk this and that and vegetables and fruit fresh and dried and frozen, grown without pesticides or other chemicals. It was entirely new as an idea for a food shop. I’d been lucky: most of what I’d eaten growing up had come from my mother’s vegetable garden, or from local farmers, and bore little resemblance to the offerings in the grocery stores, for sure.

But why is it called “organic?” I remember asking the woman who owned the store. Well we want to convey that it’s “naturally grown or naturally produced food” she said. You know, like the magazine “Organic Gardening”.

Yes, I knew the mag, for my mother had a subscription. Sometime later she also took out a subscription to Harrowsmith, then a small Canadian-published magazine.

I don’t think the words “sustainable agriculture” were in the air at all then. We knew about pesticides because of Rachel Carson’s work… but still, they weren’t scary to most people. Soon after the opening of the store I had a chance to work with farmers and people in small rural communities in the Ottawa area. I met a woman who was very engaged in local political issues. She and her husband farmed, and she also had a huge vegetable garden. It’s so great she told me, I have no weeds in my garden. The pesticides my husband puts on the fields also go into the garden before I transplant my starts in the spring. It’s so clean and weed-free.

Yikes! I thought, but tried not to show any appalled reaction to her. I did ask her if she wasn’t concerned at all about the pesticides, and no, she wasn’t. It’s such a small amount, she said. And the food is washed and cooked…

There are probably still many farm gardens which produce huge amounts of food for families thanks to chemical fertilizers and the application of herbicides to keep weeds down. For sure people need to be fed.

But it occurs to me that perhaps we’d have less wasted food if it tasted better and if we paid a little more for it. Wouldn’t we be more mindful as we shopped? And more mindful about figuring out how to use leftovers?

So if when you see the word ‘organic” you try substituting the word “sustainable”…see how it feels. Of course we all have different views about what sustainable means. But it’s less about “purity” (not achievable and frankly an elitist idea don’t you think?) and more about process and an acknowledgemnt that we’re all in this together.

We need to figure out food systems that give us all access to food that tastes good and has nutritional value, and in a way that enables us to go on farming and feeding humanity. That means paying more for food, paying attention to food and how it’s grown and produced, and most of all, that means having respect for the people who do all the work of directly feeding people every day, all over the world: the farmers, the people who transport and process agricultural production, and those who sell it, as well as the cooks who get it onto the table.