08-19-2009 by dan
I heard this essay read aloud on VPR the other night, and didn’t pay much attention to it as I listened. But the message really stuck with me, and I’ve thought about it a lot since I originally heard the program. The question that Mr. Budbill asks boils down my concern about organic/locally grown food to its essence.
I ask myself when I am buying any food these days (because in VT this question is always front-and-center) whether to spend the extra money on Organic, or Fair Trade certified, or Locally Grown, or whatever the case may be. My experience in VT is that ALL local food, organic or not, costs significantly more than the alternative. This is in stark contrast to buying from a farmer’s market in upstate NY, where the prices tend to be cheaper than the store. (Or even going to Wegmans, where the in season locally bought produce is usually very inexpensive)
What is the difference between upstate NY and VT? A few factors come to mind –
- VT has a much smaller population, so demand is perhaps much smaller
- VT has almost exclusively organic products, which are probably more expensive to produce
- VT has more small scale farmers, which don’t get economies of scale
- VT has a somewhat “yuppie” mentality for buying local/organic/whatever, by which I mean that it appears no price is too high for the label
- VT has a less extensive road network, and this may make transporting goods more expensive
- VT has a population that is more interested in “livable wage”, which means that the “cheap labor” is probably more expensive.
In VT, it’s actually somewhat difficult to find “regular” produce. To make matters worse, a lot of products get a boost in price just by being competitive with these more expensive products. If you are struggling to make ends meet, these inflated costs are certainly not helping you put food on the table. Who can afford these “luxury” food items? Do I have to trade off “quality” of food for cost? Is the higher cost of the organic/locally grown stuff a mere “yuppie tax”?
Everyone knows that I am a very frugal person. I get accused of being cheap quite often, but that’s just because I think very hard about any dollar that I decide to spend. I try to figure out what purchases are most worth it to me, and what the impact is on my other needs/wants.
My major problem here is that the extra cost of organic/locally grown/etc is in direct contention with my desire for frugality. I don’t notice much of a difference between an organic cucumber and a run-of-the-mill cucumber, so it doesn’t make much sense for me to pay twice as much for the organic one.
I was visiting a friend and ranting and raving about how cheap I could get a fake pair of Crocs sandals for at the dollar store. She asked me a question that I hadn’t really considered up to that point — “Sure, they were cheap, but do they wear out faster? Do you end up generating a lot of waste by buying the cheaper ones?”
This puts me in even more of a dilemma about the local/organic products. If I buy local/organic, am I adding less waste to the world? The organic farmer theoretically uses less chemicals, reuses more compost, and ships the goods less distance. How much is this environmentally conscious view worth to me? Why do I have to be wealthy to be environmentally conscious?
Finally, if a place like Burlington VT can set up rules that ban big box stores from locating downtown, which allows smaller stores like the City Market to move in instead, how does this affect the cost of food? What about those that do not have the money to afford the luxury of locally grown? Most of what City Market offers is locally grown/organic food that carries a luxury premium with it. A farmer’s market might help offset these costs, except that the Burlington farmer’s market doesn’t offer better prices than the City Market. Is food just more expensive in VT, or is there something else going on here?
