We decided a while back to go local and organic as much as possible. Joined an organic co-op from which we receive a veggie box once a week May - November. As for meat, a local producer has free-range chickens several times a year, and we found a supplier for grass fed beef who is several hours driving time, but brings orders to our next largest city every few months. For times when the co-op is not active, I buy organic fruit/veggies from the dirty dozen list at the grocery store and their origins are clearly marked, mostly California, Florida and, for some of the apples, New Zealand.

I'd just watch out for labels that say "Distributed by..". Those products can be from anywhere. Mostly these are bottled or boxed foods.

All of the fruits have to be marked as to the country it was grown, according to the FDA. I do not mind buying them from South America or Australia, New Zealand, etc., since they are seasonal (yes, I want citrus in August), but I do highly balk at garlic from China.

Nancy

I just finished reading "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (a year of food life) Barbara Kingsolver. The family moved from Arizona to the family farm in Virginia deciding to grow and eat "off of the land" as best they could for one year.
The book was an eye opener for me...I'd like to read the "What to Eat" that you mentioned Donnar57 :)

Palm Springs has been extra difficult to find farms/farmers to purchase my food stuffs from...even though I have the Coachella Valley at my doorstep.
Went to the "farmers" market (so called as in maybe 5-6 vendors) yesterday, the choices were pitiful and expensive. It's not classified as organic yet you sure wouldn't know from the prices... $7.00 for a dozen eggs, $6.00 for a cube of fresh butter (although it tasted divine and tempted me). I did pick up a bunch of small yellow carrots that look nice at $2.50, and the $3.00 pint of strawberries were actually sweet.

Wow, deborah, those are some prices. Whew. I'm just starting to see the Amish farms putting up the "brown eggs, $1 a dozen" signs here.

I just planted some lettuce, but other than that, the first local produce will be asparagus, maybe in a month. Strawberries after that, then everything will be available.

I do find it difficult to find where things are from. I'm far more likely to buy mustard from Canada than China or even South America somewhere, because it's at least closer and isn't burning up fuel for shipping.

Thankfully we have lots of local farm markets around, although none of them are open yet and I'll eat my homecanned/frozen stuff before I'll buy something that got shipped thousands of miles and tastes like styrofoam anyway.

I agree with that "distributed by". It's mostly code for "it came from someplace a million miles away". If they are going to hide the origin of the product, I'll put it back, I'm not buying it.

Annie

I shop at Trader Joe's a couple times a week...love the choices yet when checking where a product is from many/most/all products just say:
dist. & sold exclusively by: Trader Joe's Monrovia, CA.
So, do I give Trader Joe's up? I couldn't. My shopping choices are pitiful at best.

Waving...............Hi Deborah!!!

I'll agree that the choices were limited in Palm Springs when I was there in Feb. We didn't do a lot of food shopping, but did try to find some local stuff.

I am SO blessed to live where I do.
A co-worker raises my pork, a church member raises my beef, I butcher my own chickens (and supplement with Oregon grown as much as possible). Some fish comes from that caught off our coast by my SIL/BIL ("why, yes!, I'd love Halibut for my birthday, thank you").
I can and freeze most of our produce except.....celery, fresh carrots, a few bell peppers and lettuce in winter (working on that green house.....), bananas and citrus.
What I don't grow, I buy from a local farm.
Milk comes from a dairy less than 20 miles away. I make my own yogurt. Butter, sour cream and cheese are not local.
I'm slowly working on that one...
Still choking on $8/gallon for raw cow's milk. By the time I'd skim the cream, it's only a little over 3 quarts. And the cream isn't going to make THAT much butter!!!

My garden seeds are 99% NON-Monsanto. I don't use chemical fertilizers and I make my own compost.

Yeah, you could say I'm a little obsessed about knowing where my food comes from. However, I am not opposed to eating in a restaurant or grabbing a quick bottle of Teriyaki sauce or something. I do the best I can and keep trying to get better at it.

Nothing irks me more than to see produce shipped from hundreds of miles away (or more) when it IS ripe in our area. I refuse to buy. PERIOD. There's some things we just don't grow. I don't buy a lot (except bananas...LOL), but once in awhile, I just need citrus!

Deanna

deborah, the closest Trader Joe's is 4 hours away from me, LOL, so I don't have to make that choice. Because of the distance I never buy anything fresh, anything frozen or anything that requires refrigeration.

I do buy their chocolate, in spite of the labelling, and the orange champagne vinegar, so I guess I do make some exceptions. Elery always buys their 3 buck chuck. I go there about twice a year.

I have one small independent grocery here, in my town of about 800, and one SuperWalmart 30 miles away, along with a Meijer's, also 30 miles away, so my shopping choices aren't all that great either.

I have a lot of local stuff available to me, from fresh produce to dried beans and I raise my own beef and garden, or I'd be stuck. The local Amish community sells me farm eggs and I have a local farmer's market that grows everything they sell and it's all organic.

I did buy Grade B maple syrup at Trader Joe's once, until I realized that I could buy local Michigan maple syrup from Cook's SugarBush in Niles, Michigan, and they'd ship it and it was still cheaper than TJs. The other product that I loved at TJs was the red pepper/eggplant spread. Then I found that the ajvar at the Mediterranean market was the same thing, about half the price AND clearly labelled as to country of origin. I will admit, though, that I'm not sure something made in Bangladesh or Morocco is any better than not knowing where it came from, it's still a long darned way to ship something.

Annie

I borrowed the book from my local public library system. They had to request it from another branch, but it came in very quickly. I didn't read it word-by-word, though; I skimmed it for the products I usually use. (It's a very thick book and the print is not very big.)

Donna

Deanna, amen to 'non-Monsanto'.

Anyone remember Gardenlad - he once talked about how all the canola is ruled by GMO Round up Ready Monsanto. It gets ugly, a Canadian farmer (and others) were sued for royalties by Monsanto when their fields were cross pollinated by wind. Luckily, David beat Goliath but it was brutal. Since then I have been looking for non-GMO Canola or any veggie oil (not corn) and right now I'm using olive and safflower oils . 'Seeds of Deception' is on my to-be-read pile.

When Annie gets done with the wedding, I'm going to ask her (and Deanna, because this is apparently an Oregon issue as well) to look into GMO sugar beets. linky.

GMO products are one thing - it's the pressure and tactics put on the non-GMO farmers that is disgusting.

Jessica, our local sugar is, I'm afraid, at least partially from GMO beets. Pioneer/Big Chief is a cooperative, so all the farmers "pool" their crop, whether GMO or not. There are some smaller companies that are making noises about producing non-GMO sugar, but I haven't found any yet.

this i9s relatively new, 2008 was the first year that a lot of the sugar beets were the GMO "round up ready" beets.

so, I can go back to buying cane sugar, shipped thousands of miles at an environmental cost in fuel and pollution, or I can buy the local GMO sugar. It sucks and our food choices are getting to be fewer and fewer, soon we will eat only what the government and companies like Monsanto want us to. And, once again, the assault on the small farmer continues...

Annie

We always check the labels on all food. We try to buy organic if possible; locally grown too.

Linda

This is a subject dear to my heart, but unfortunately, I didn't see this thread till time to head off to work, so I'll be brief.

Monsanto is EVIL, and not the good kind of evil like Jessy is. ;-)

I buy eggs from a farmer that has free range chickens he feeds organic feed to.

I buy honey from a bee keeper in my town.

I grow what I can, but that's not much, due to lack of sun and room.

the rest I just have to depend on the lousy choices of grocery stores I have in my area. There is an organic, pick your own farm about 30 or 40 miles from me I should go to more frequently, but time and gas prices prevent me from doing that very often. I work during the best farmer's market days, and the Dallas farmer's market is a joke. It's almost all distributers with very few actual farmers selling the stuff they grow. Why bother going all the way to farmer's market to buy the same produce that the grocery stores have?

I want to read that book you mentioned. I'll see if it's at our library.

Sally