Like many Mainers along the coast, Maegan Harvey of Ellsworth thinks a lot about the food she buys for her family. And like many Mainers, her food choices don’t fall into easy categories. She buys organic produce, pasta, and milk, but she buys non-organic naturally-raised meat because of the high cost of organic meat.
She’s also shifted her food thinking to include geography. While she’s been an avid harvester during the berry season, she now has decided to buy only food grown in the U.S. after reading two books about the nutritional and environmental downsides of an international food chain.
“Things don’t need as many preservatives to get to me,” Harvey said. “Do we need to get kiwis from Italy?”
More Mainers along the coast are having these kinds of debates at supermarkets and natural food stores, as they are following a trend toward increased interest in healthier eating and ethical eating. Many health-food consumers used to focus solely on buying organic produce, but there has been a growing shift toward buying food from local sources. The shift toward local food has created a spirited debate over whether local or organic produce is better, if one had to choose between the two.
But if activities at the Belfast Co-op are any indication, local and organic food camps along Maine’s coast are meshing into a new group of food consumers who want a connection to their food and are willing to cross label boundaries to get there. In March, the Belfast Co-op is again holding its bi-annual Eat Local Challenge for Belfast residents. Since 2007, the challenge has asked participants to make one meal a month out of completely Maine ingredients (spices and oils not included). But Erica Buswell, one of the co-ops three general managers, says the challenge will raise the bar this year by asking participants to spend $10 a week or more on locally-produced food, a goal advocated by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association.
“[The old challenge] was kind of getting a little bit tired,” she explained.
In the last few years, she’s noticed there’s more of an interest in buying local than buying organic at the store. The co-op offers many local produce selections, not all of which are organic. Buswell says the co-op tries to find sources of local, organic produce. If that’s not available, the co-op will seek out local produce, with co-op staff members making regular visits to farms.
“We know them and we know their practices,” she said.
But co-op freezers are still well-stocked with frozen organic vegetables from China and Argentina. Many co-op members can’t afford fresh local organic or non-organic produce all the time, so the co-op stocks frozen food from organic giants Cascadian Farms and others. That’s the reality of a co-op, she says; its main purpose is to provide what the members want, not what is best for the planet or nutrition.
“We would stock Coca-Cola in here if they wanted it,” she said.
Many consumers experience sticker-stock when confronted with the price tag for local produce. Local farmers can’t grow, distribute, and sell in bulk like giant agribusiness companies, and they often face a disadvantage in pricing. Their plight is made more difficult by U.S. agricultural policies which encourages the overproduction of commodities like soy, corn and cotton through subsidies, said Bob St. Peter, executive director of the Sedgwick-based Food for Maine’s Future.
“For people who don’t feel they can afford good quality food, it’s not the [local] producer’s fault,” said St. Peter. “People should be really upset about [the system]”.
Food for Maine’s Future is trying to level the playing field and connect Maine consumers with Maine farmers. In addition to working on food policy, the organization also has set up a buying club and distribution center connecting local farmers along the Blue Hill peninsula with customers. The goal is to eliminate middle-man costs and make local produce more affordable, while allowing farmers to earn a living wage.
Again, the organization’s efforts move between the conventional and organic agricultural worlds; the produce they procure is not all strictly local, either. Instead, the emphasis is on knowing and buying from good quality food sources. While several farmers that work with the group are organic, St. Peter said they also source non-organic pecans from a farming group in Georgia that hopes to transition to organic. St. Peter maintains extensive contact with the group and said the pecan growers are taking good care of the land and have policies in place to help the collective of farmers thrive.
“They’re caring for the land and for each other,” he said. “They’re doing all the good things for the food system.”
Americans are experiencing increased anxiety about their food system, St. Peter said. In recent years, some consumers have sought out organic certification and fair-trade labels to ensure food safety and fair labor practices, but those labels don’t often tell the whole story, said St. Peter. Some farm workers on large-scale organic farms are getting repetitive-use injuries from weeding, he said, and some companies are labeling their products fair-trade without certification.
The answer, he believed, is to continue the grass-roots trend of decentralizing food production and connecting with local producers. Such a shift in thinking will take some time and work, he warned, especially since Americans have grown accustomed to easy, cheap food, but the benefits in a stronger local farming economy and healthier food system will be worth it.
What might be needed, says Jo Barrett of King Hill Farm in Penobscot, is a change in thinking about nutrition. Although local produce may cost more, it also often has more nutrition than produce shipped from California or Chile, she argues. Her husband, Dennis King, has been building up the soil of their farm for 25 years, which helps their produce achieve measurably higher nutritional value than imported food. Periodically, they compare that nutritional content using a scientific measuring device called a Brix. Often used in measuring wine grapes’ sugar content, Brix devices measure how much of a fruit or vegetable is usable material for the body, Barrett said. She laughingly said her dream is to have consumers wandering around farmers’ markets and supermarket aisles with Brix devices in hand.
“We think of pounds per dollar, but I want people to think of Brix per dollar,” she said.
While the local versus organic debate may be waning along the coast among some Maine consumers, many others still have yet to think about the subject; organic is still only a growing niche market and St. Peter said he knows of no local farmers in danger of being rich.
And no one knows what the current economic crisis will mean for nascent local/connection food movements. Ultimately, everyone interviewed agreed, no event, policy change or device will compel Maine consumers to connect with their food. The food system will not change unless what ends up in the shopping cart changes, as well.
“Consumers are the only ones who have the power here,” said Buswell.