Several weeks ago I was contacted by the people behind a new gardening/food blog and website called Organic Guide. The reason for contacting me was to ask me to consider adding them to my blogroll.
I must admit, I was a little apprehensive at first. While I am very much an organic gardener, I don’t often say this because I feel the term has been a bit hijacked recently by corporate interests. Regular readers of this blog will know I have said some unkind things in the past about ‘certified’ foods, including such things as organic or Fairtrade. How could I be against such good things as certified organic or Fairtrade foods? It’s not so much that I am against them, but rather they are only a very small start and many people use them as an excuse to ignore larger issues. I feel I can do a lot more good by making purchases as directly as possible from the people who produce the goods, locally where possible, and based on personal knowledge. I have always felt this was a better approach than buying certified mass market products.
Another thing fresh in my mind was some recent attempts by newspapers or magazines to create their own gardening blogs. Many of these have been at best uninteresting, and in some cases bordering on arrogant.
While I might have expected Organic Guide might turn into a blog run by mainstream journalists, full of banner ads for mass market organic products and articles promoting the health benefits of Omega-3 and oily fish — nothing could have been further from the truth!
In recent days they have published some really outstanding articles, some touching on things I’ve mentioned in the past:
Preserving the cultural value of food
Interview with Sandra Slack from Garden Organic
Public unaware that most milk, dairy and pork from GM
These last two are probably of more interest to Europeans. These are also just a few of the best articles, there’s lots of other good stuff there to read.
While the people behind the blog are professional journalists for sure, they are also bloggers and very much aware of the issues facing biodiversity, gardening and food production. Their definition of organic goes far beyond supermarket certified foods.
This is definitely a site worth paying attention to. They are also looking for input from their readers, as well as guest writers.
I looked at the first article on the list and one thing sticks with me from it: Who in the world did they talk to that throws out leftovers 90% of the time? Must be the people with enough money to think chicken is too cheap! *laugh*
Seriously, though: The longer I think about it, the more that number just astonishes me. Who are these people? I toss leftovers maybe 5% of the time, if that much, and I can’t think of anyone I know who does it more than 10%, and that includes a marching horde of bachelors.
Thanks very much Patrick. I certainly agree that the concept of what constitutes an organic approach to life goes well beyond the latest items appearing on our supermarket shelves. Unfortunately, much of the mainstream media tends to focus on this aspect of organic living. Personally, I think that’s why sites like yours (and hopefully in time, ours) are really important. If anything, I think that organic living is about keeping things simple.
Metta – I tend to agree with your comments. LOL!!! With a wife and two kids to feed on what is a fairly basic income, I can assure you that I can’t afford to throw out too much of anything either! Not 90% of the time – that’s for sure. Any chicken carcass that comes through my kitchen generally makes it to the stock pot courtesy of my good wife. But, that’s one of the good things about having different writers contribute – different points of view….
I’m glad you’ve raised this point though – it’s given me an idea for a new post.
Once again, thanks for all of your help Patrick – Alex (Organic Guide)
Hmmm. I’m with you in my scepticism of the marketing labels/certifications being applied in the food sector. In fact I very nearly turned in my membership to the HDRA, I was that disenchanted with the new moniker – ‘Garden Organic’. They’ve dispensed with their heritage for a sound bite that will very soon be so watered down as to have little or no meaning. Scanning the recipes on the Organic Guide’s site I can’t help but notice that not only the recipes themselves but every ingredient has been stipulated to be ‘organic’. But doesn’t state that the organic ingredient must not have traveled by air from a vast monocultural farming enterprise in a far flung corner of the globe. My interpretation of what is organic will certainly be miles away from the DEFRA guidelines. Wendell Berry says what I want to say much better than I ever could in his essay “In Distrust of Movements”(read it in the prose online section of http://www.brtom.org/wb/berry.html – if you haven’t already).
I also agree with Metta’s remark but I’ll stay tuned and hope that the “Organic Guide” will turn out to be more than the slightly self righteous greener-than-thou site that it first appears.
I came here from ‘garden desk’ after reading your great post about compost. I really loved it 🙂 Your site seems to be very interesting and i will be coming more often here to read. Do you mind if I link you on my gardening blog:
http://www.ewainthegarden.blogspot.com
Greetings,
Ewa
Many of the people here too are eating GM food and don’t know it.
Er food miles, organic, GM food, problems with the cheap exported food that now fills our shelves (bromide garlic)…
we’re definitely getting the worst of all of the above…drought does that.
Thanks everyone for the great comments!
Metta: I don’t know how this compares to the statistics you and the article mentioned, but the city of Amsterdam did a study to see what people were throwing away and found a huge percentage of it was food. We try very hard not to throw away food, and if we must we try to compost it if possible.
Alex: Best wishes with your new website and blog.
Misshathorn: Great article. I couldn’t have said it better myself. My initial impressions of Garden Organic have been along the lines of what you said, but because I don’t live in the UK I don’t have many reasons to deal with them. The Heritage Seed Library does seems like a great resource however.
Ewa: Poland! I don’t know any other garden bloggers in Poland. Thank you for the nice comments, both here and on Garden Desk. That would be nice if you linked to me. When I get a chance, I’ll also put up a link to your blog.
Blue: I can imagine having to import your food means getting the worst of everything. More reason to grow your own, if you can.
Labels,movements,certification is not always what it appears to be. I try to shop local and was happily buying a ‘locally produced’ (about 50miles away)Italian style hard cheese. (Regulations would not allow them call it parmesan which it essentially was.)When it was no longer being stocked by my local shop I called the producers to ask why not – the shop didn’t know why it wasn’t available.
Surprise when they told me that the cheese was made made on site then and get this, in cooperation with their Italian partners it was shipped to Italy to mature, then shipped back to the UK for distribution.The reason why we couldn’t get it was because the Italian company went bust and the receivers have control of the stock.(Cynically I wonder if some of the cheese is sold in Italy as parmesan).
So do as Patrick does – get to know your suppliers and where possible buy direct.
I must say I feel let down. What chance does the more casual purchaser have of making a good choice?