The decadence of Organic Vegetables

12:30 / 12.05.04

Me and me "bird" (she loves being called that, in a spirit of post-feminist ironic japery) were thinking of getting a veggie box from these people. I think they sound like an excellent organisation, lots of community involvement, volunteering opportunities and so on, not two expensive either for two. So I thought you lot should know about it.

Does this single me out as a decadent, Guardian reading, museli snorting, liberal milksop? I also wondered if anyone else here used a similar scheme or makes a point of eating organic stuff?

Psi-L is working in hell

12:40 / 12.05.04

I'm not sure it singles you out...I also get an organic veg box, read the Guardian etc etc, there are lots of us around these parts...haven't tried the one in your link but it looks pretty similar to the one I use. I get mine from a lovely little enclave of Organic shops round the corner from me called Bumblebee Natural Foods, who also sell home products and are about to open an organic cafe too. *yum*

I love getting the box each week as you never know quite what you are going to get, so you're forced to be creative about your cooking each week....my only complaint is the over proliferation of green peppers i seem to get....which often turn to unidentifiable goo at the bottom of my fridge...

12:41 / 12.05.04

Me and 'ma man' have been thinking about it, but have never got around to it. Needing to be in when things are delivered is one of the big problems. Though whether the neighbours would actually want to steal some mud-covered beetroot is a good question.

I want to eat organic but am often too mean to pay the prices or too lazy to go and find things. A box scheme sounds ideal, not least because you would find yourself eating different things from normal and eating them in season. Good luck, let us know how it goes.

bitchiekittie

12:44 / 12.05.04

ooh, ooh. some local friends were recently discussing this and ever since, I've been terribly excited about the idea.

it's not cheap but if you can consume what you can get, it's way way way worth it, I'm told. another drawback is you get what produces, so you may end up with tons and tons of one thing and nothng of another.

I'm considering it this year; though there's only one and a half in my house, so I don't want an overabundance of goodies I can't eat.

13:13 / 12.05.04

Needing to be in when things are delivered is one of the big problems.

With this one, we can pick it up from near where we live. This cuts the "food miles" out of it a bit more. Might be worth considering when you get up to bonnie Scotland, if you can find a scheme.

Bitchkittie: The main reason we were considering it is 'cos it's not that expensive. It's about £8 a week, which is bugger all between two of you. I'm sure we'll have to supplement it a little but I don't think it'll
cost us that much more. It's certainly cheaper than buying organic stuff in the supermarket anyho, with the obvious advantage of none of your money going to the greedy bastards.

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:17 / 12.05.04

Oddly enough, the Guardian is here to tell you the organic food is the Devil, and those who consume it are credulous hippes who are killing the poor to no purpose...

13:20 / 12.05.04

Organic food is a capitalist status symbol and any good little anarchist should be ashamed of eating the stuff.

By the way, Ariadne, there's a great place called the Knowes Farm outside of Edinburgh, near a town called East Linton where they sell organic produce fresh from the ground at really good prices. Well worth checking out if you've got a car...

Ganesh

13:24 / 12.05.04

And if you've got a car, SHAME ON YOU! Etc.

The organic pick-up scheme looks interesting. If me and me battyman lived further East, we'd be tempted to give it a go. Even though I'm allergic to green.

Psi-L is working in hell

13:25 / 12.05.04

What the author neglected to mention which may or may not have an effect on his stance is his time working for PR companies touting the wonders of GM foods, nor his group called Sense about Science, which has supported the introduction of GM crops all the way along and branded opposition to them as 'public hysteria' not based on sound science...

and I just love the way he equates organic food production with old ancient rituals as if the mere association with them (despite most organic production probably not haveing anything to do with them these days) means we should discredit the whole thing.....

*tsk*

for more info on him see Dick Taverne

bitchiekittie

13:28 / 12.05.04

interesting article - I always bought that pesticides and other engineered chemicals were THE DEVIL and that natural methods were far, far superior (not sarcasm. well, except the devil bit). intrigued, I am!

there's a local co-op (you can either give money or trade for your time - I'd pay, cause I live too far away, though I think I'd quite enjoy helping) that you pick up your food from. what I like about it is it's all locally grown and distributed and that you're directly supporting their efforts, putting your money into the community rather than some giant chain with goods from dubious sources. I AM a semi-hippie, aren't I.

that settles it, I'm going to do it this year.

bitchiekittie

13:31 / 12.05.04

Organic food is a capitalist status symbol and any good little anarchist should be ashamed of eating the stuff.

his time working for PR companies touting the wonders of GM foods, nor his group called Sense about Science

I just love the way he equates organic food production with old ancient rituals as if the mere association with them (despite most organic production probably not haveing anything to do with them these days) means we should discredit the whole thing

it's getting hot! I love this place! HOTT!

13:32 / 12.05.04

I am a wholesome non-car driver. Well, non-car owner.

I could cycle my pollution-free bicycle to pick them up, I suppose. Wearing a home-knitted hemp jumper and a peruvian-patterned bag to put my carrots in.

I'm a bit disturbed by the prospect of Scottish organic boxes. What the hell can they grow in Scotland? I'm afraid I'm not prepared to survive on nothing but neeps and cabbage and raspberries. I do tryyyyy to be good but if I have to ruin the earth to fly in the aubergines I crave, so be it.

13:34 / 12.05.04

The dude is quite right, however, in saying organic veg is a middle-class indulgence. There is absolutely no way that the planet could produce enough food at affordable enough prices if everybody suddenly chucked away all their pesticides and nitrate fertilisers...

13:41 / 12.05.04

It's the same with those guys linked to above, they run schemes you can volunteer on. Since Tower Hamlets has fuck all allotments, I may end up getting down there in my wellies one Sunday. The Dick Taverne stuff is interesting, I wondered who he was lobbying for. Cheers for the link. I think he does raise some good points, but if he's saying that GM foods are all about feeding the poor as opposed to giving huge corporations an unhealthy amount of control over the food chain, I think he's talking out of his ass. And I don't know which blind food tests he's aware of, but every piece of organic veg I've ever eaten has tasted off the scale, when compared to supermarket produce.

13:45 / 12.05.04

My last post meant to reply to one of BK's above.

Jefe - you may well be right. But I like the idea of supporting sustainable agriculture in this country, even though it might not be viable on a global scale. Either way, I still don't want fucking Monsanto owning the DNA to the foods I eat.

13:45 / 12.05.04

I'm not so sure about that, Jefe. If the huge amounts of land dedicated to producing beef and other meat were turned over to grain production, and the grain currently fed to animals was redirected to human food, I think you'd find we could feed a lot more people more efficiently. But that's a whole other argument.

Regrettable Juvenilia

14:10 / 12.05.04

I don't understand. That would mean people wouldn't be able to eat meat, surely?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

14:12 / 12.05.04

The world would live, but flyboy would die. Is this a price we are willing to pay?

Kit-Cat Club

14:18 / 12.05.04

No, no. He could eat meat, but only if he caught it, possibly using a melee weapon, from the wilderness environment where meat product roams free.

14:21 / 12.05.04

Ah, the good lady wife was talking about this just the other day...
Could well be worth it. Even if only that "making sure you're in" is a LOT less hassle than "going to the supermarket".

But that's just me... I will save the world through apathy. I will. (Not being arsed to get my car fixed is just one more way in which I am making the world a better place.)

14:23 / 12.05.04

If it's anything like getting your food delivered from Tesco, you can specify a 2 hour window.

Also, if it's anything like getting your food delivered from Tesco, they will replace anything in your order that is not in stock with Portugese Rose wine.

14:26 / 12.05.04

And if it's anything like getting your food delivered from Tesco, they'll wrap every individual item in a separate plastic bag.

I'm about to move to a flat on the fourth floor, so I plan to get every possible thing delivered, rather than have to carry it upstairs myself.

Regrettable Juvenilia

14:30 / 12.05.04

Melee weapons sound a bit cruel, Kit-Cat. I'm sure if Vtopia is ever achieved, I will have to settle for eating animals that have died of old age or falling off a cliff or poisoning. But not chemical poisoning. Just natural poisoning.

14:34 / 12.05.04

And scaring them off the cliff is not on, Flyboy. I have visions of you hiding behind bushes and shouting 'boo' every time a cow wanders past.
The vegan police will get you. They are everywhere.

Ganesh

14:36 / 12.05.04

You'll see things their way, Flyboy, after a little EDUCATION...

14:40 / 12.05.04

A few years working on an organic farm, and delivering food to my fourth floor high-moral-ground will sort you out.

Getting a leetle off topic here. Joining the dots, is it poosible to get organic meat delivered, along with your veg? I've never seen that but you'd think someone somewhere would be doing it.

14:47 / 12.05.04

Are you a secret carnivore and don't want to be seen going to the shops? Yes, my extensive perusual of the Observer's poncey food porn supplement tells me that many suppliers do do this.

Having weird visions of a salivating Flyboy clad in goatskin chasing sheep.

14:52 / 12.05.04

Just trying to be inclusive, man. And show how open-minded and non-vegan police I am, see.

My Mum and Dad bought a health food shop a few years ago and the local butcher told them that the previous owners got meat secretly delivered, because they didn't think it looked good for the health food shop owners to be seen eating meat.

Presumably Flyboy's goatskin came from a naturally-dead goat. Because goats never fall off cliffs, they're too nimble-footed, I'm told.

Saveloy

15:50 / 12.05.04

Doesn't the occassional goat get blown off? I'm sure I've read about goats being blown somewhere, possibly in the Observer Goat section.

If anyone finds organic beef anywhere, lemme know.

Loomis

16:08 / 12.05.04

I'm sure I've read about goats being blown somewhere ...

Oh, how I laughed ...

And you know, cows take up so much room because they don't keep together and are funnily shaped. I see a future where the fields are full of tofu trees, stacked up all nice and neat.

Just to add my 2 flax seeds' worth to what my sheila was saying about using land to grow crops rather than cows, there's also the need for a different style of famring. Pesticides are used because it isn't natural to grow whole fields of the same thing. In nature different plants grow all over the place and there has been loads of research into companion planting, etc., investigating which plants provide natural pest protection for others when planted side by side, etc. It's perfectly sustainable in large quantities but not as cost-effective, which is the problem when you have supermarkets screwing the farmers and then posting record products.

22:39 / 12.05.04

Yer, all this talk of sustainable farming is nice and all, and I basically agree with you guys that it would be great if we could do it.

But the reason why industrial agricultural techniques are so widespread and popular is because they allow farmers to grow more food, more cheaply. They don't just use pesticides to piss off Greenpeace, y'know.

I mean if it were more efficient to plant lots of different types of food in one field, don't you think they'd all be doing it to save on pesticides?

Lord Morgue

09:49 / 13.05.04

Murder! Murder! Murder! Murder!
There's a pomegranate up your blurter!
Eating fruit is mean and vicious!
Keep your hands off Golden Delicious!
World Bank is wrong! So is fetta!
My voodoo man will make it better
My voodoo man speaks only Hindi
Put super-glue on my bindi

I'm lacto-enzyme-oxy intolerant!
I use breathatarian-based emollient
Meditation makes me ebullient!
I've never earned a day's emolument.

Everywhere, astral-signed hippiness
Primitive as Australopithecus,
Panders to some dead-head's wishes
Next we'll be back to burning witches.

Would the last person to leave please turn out the enlightenment?