Work has a subscription to USA Today which published 3, count 'em 3, stories about this:

Consumer Reports has found a growing level of concern among Americans about the safety of our food and the veracity of what's in it, as one food scandal after another rockets out of China.


Rather than taking this moment of public dialog to discover where our food comes from and what it goes through to get to us, 83% of us have, in true American fashion, found an easier way around the problem: We'll only eat American!


Except. Except until we realize that junior will have to give up her bananas, senior his January tomatoes, and sis her beloved Mexican avocados. Oh well. Perhaps we'll limit ourselves to the Americas.


But what of our Italian risotto, our imported cheese? Most of us have forgiven the French enough to eat Brie and drink wine, after all. Maybe we can limit ourselves to the Western Hemisphere. Europeans put so much stock into their Denominations of Origin that surely they're careful about their safety practices.


Then someone informs us that most of our shrimp is from Vietnam and Thailand, that 16% of our ground beef--our hamburger meat, for crying out loud!--comes from China, and we're back where we started.


If American politicians can be frequently and justifiably accused of abusing the slippery slope fallacy in their arguments, perhaps it's because their constituents are comfortably familiar with the process through reductionist solutions like the one above. We're particularly adept at employing simplistic, exclusionary methods when it comes to our diets. In the 1980s, we shunned fats, in the '90s it was sugar, and the new millennium saw Americans abandon carbohydrates, one of four basic food molecules, and a time-honored energy powerhouse, particularly for the poor, who couldn't afford the average American's meat- and fat-rich diet.


This crisis has activists calling for country-of-origin labels on all food, a good idea that's already in practice in multiple other markets, including the EU. Unfortunately for us, many of these markets operate with the ethos that businesses exist to provide something of value to a community, where we in America are an unenviable circumstance: the private citizen has less power over his or her representatives than a company that has its headquarters and the vast majority of its fiscal contribution in someone else's jurisdiction. Indeed, even private groups of citizens dream of holding the kind of influence that corporations have, especially at the federal level. We live in a society where we are expected to provide something of value to business, be it cheap labor, money that we can't afford to spend, or captive audiences of future consumers.


If either house of Congress were to consider a bill requiring country-of-origin labels, it would almost definitely pass, get signed into law, and trumpeted in the media. It would probably also undergo the requisite gutting of standards that we witnessed in the assignment of organic labels. We can assume that manufactured food would be exempt from any labeling standards for many reasons. First, much of this food is produced with commodities, which are grown or made all over the globe and are indistinguishable from one country to the next. Second, no marketer worth his or her MBA wants to admit this to the public. Third, no accountant wants to change this practice, as it makes manufactured food vastly cheaper than less-processed food.


A more realistic solution for the individual American is to do precisely what we tell our children not to: become picky eaters. We can insist on knowing not only where our food came from, but how it was grown, by whom, when vegetables were picked and fish caught, and any of a host of other variables that may be important to a given consumer at a given time. We will undoubtedly run into resistance, but particularly in and around urban areas, it's more than feasible for consumers to refuse to do business with any purveyor who won't research or supply whatever information they want.


An obvious place to start is a local farmers' market; not only can we find fresh, often certified-organic produce, we can meet farmers and learn more about what the local ecosystem produces from season to season, but we can learn what is available in the off-seasons, when farmers' markets close. Those of us with children can demonstrate the links between food and farming, making the process of choosing what to eat more concrete and less bewildering for the next generation.


Much of the environment that we live in has the potential to be toxic in ways beyond our control. I cannot insist that someone clean up the Chattahoochee or any of Atlanta's other water sources, nor can I force my fellow drivers to use biodiesel to clear the smog over my city. I can't rid the old building I live in of lead paint, or asbestos, if it were a problem. But three times a day or more, I can make a conscious decision to ingest something that can help my body or hurt it, something that has been produced in such a way that it adds value to the local community through increased topsoil, a family's income, cleaner water, more available resources--the whole host of benefits that come from sustainable agriculture.


Many times, when I eat out or at work, I fail to do this. But at home, I cook for myself, for Honey, for friends and family who I love and cherish, and it's these meals that I insist give back rather than deplete. When we eat, we have the potential to nourish far more than ourselves, and we should insist that our food give us the chance to do so at every opportunity.

To market, to market...
I've left the CSA fold. What happened? Last year I said that I was about to become a street preacher on the fineness of the CSA, but the short version of the story is that picking up the box and splitting it was inconvenient, I wasn't cooking enough, and Honey and the couple we were splitting were baffled by some of the produce, so lots of great vegetables went to rot. More than that, though, I decided not to sign up for year three because someone in Atlanta was finally smart enough to organize a farmer's market on a weekday evening; I've been attending the East Atlanta Village farmer's market for almost all of my produce for the past three weeks.

I like the farmer's market. I get to choose what I buy, and how much. I can cruise the produce from multiple farms, so I get access to more variety. I also get to talk to farmers and farm managers about what they're growing and why. Plus, unlike the CSA, I have access to meat and eggs every week. That's a big plus, as I'd never had farm-raised eggs before. Now if only I could find cow shares in Georgia.

For those in the Atlanta area interested in buying local and organic, the EAV farmer's market is convenient, approachable, and affordable; Food for two adults for one week (4-5 dinners per week) costs me about $25 for vegetables, eggs, and sometimes cheese. The week that I bought meat, bread and cheese, I paid $34. To help first-timers navigate the market comfortably, I've put together some pointers.

Browse first: The first thing that you'll notice is that at any given time, most of the farmers are selling the same types of vegetables. In the summer, for example, most stalls will have tomatoes, summer squash, cucumbers, corn, and beans. Before you rush to buy, look around at each stall. Which squash look the best? Do you want smaller specimens, like cherry tomatoes, tiny plums, and baby squash, or will you eat slicing tomatoes on sandwiches and larger squash for grilling more quickly? Think about what you like to eat, what you'll take the time to prepare, and what will go well with the food you've bought or have at home. Most importantly, think about what you need, and what you use; I've discovered that now that I'm out of school, I go through 2 heads of garlic a week, as opposed to half a head previously. Don't be afraid to eschew the corn from one stand only to go to the next and buy their corn either. You're at a farmer's market to buy the best, freshest ingredients, and it's perfectly reasonable for one farm to be a week behind another when it comes to ripeness. Feel free to compare prices as well, which leads to the next point:

Talk to your farmers: And not just about prices, either. Ask if they grow the food in front of you, or sell it for other farmers. Compliment the exceptional-looking tomatoes, and learn as much as you can about the food you want to buy. What is the variety? Does it have a unique flavor profile or an amazing shelf life? When was it picked? Be especially aware of unfamiliar items, and ask about them. Since you'll often find heirloom, rare, or highly regional fruits and vegetables at the farmer's market, a certain lack of familiarity is expected. And some farmers will let you taste a sample, particularly if they're in the midst of the peak season and have a bumper crop to unload. Also ask about items you don't see, like meat, cheese, and eggs, all of which will be kept in coolers if the farmers carry them.

Don't get intimidated by unfamiliar items: Recently, the Moore Farms booth at the East Atlanta Village farmers' market had what looked like very small tomatillos. Upon inquiry, Collins Davis, the farm manager, lit up. "They're ground cherries. Do you want to try one?" The flavor is reminiscent of a pina colada, and On Food and Cooking, the bible of all things culinary, explains that they're relatives of tomatoes and tomatillos, possess "caramelly" flavors, and are often made into pies and preserves. Eating them out of hand, like any berry, is fine too. When you come across something unfamiliar, learn what you can about it, and when you cook and eat it, approach it generally. You won't think of many uses for that black-skinned Russian radish if that's how you think of it. But if you see a large root vegetable, you'll realize it's made to be roasted, and when you do, you'll find a surprising sweetness and mild mustard kick. Imagine what would have happened if, paralyzed by ignorance and a sense of certain doom, you'd just passed it over.

Bring a cooler: This is a good rule for any food shopping that you do. A cooler with some ice (not enough for a deep freeze, just to keep things crisp) gives you the flexibility to search obsessively for wine to complement your grilled Berkshire pork chops with fresh tomato-corn salsa, stop and chat with friends, run other errands, or just avoid traffic for an hour or so. The only caveat is to layer your food, keeping egg cartons, meat, cheese, and cold-tolerant produce like onions and cucumbers on the bottom with the ice, and fragile and heat tolerant items like herbs, tomatoes and lettuce on top.

Bring your own bags: Most of us have the bag of bags of bags in the kitchen or laundry room; the more advanced have those oh-so-attractive bag sausages that make the obscene quantity of single-use bags easier to ignore. Go ahead and bring them to reuse at the farmers market. Most farmers don't provide bags, and the ones that do could surely use the money elsewhere. Many farmers also prefer to keep and reuse their pint containers and baskets, so be prepared, and do everything you can to help them out. They aren't getting rich selling organic produce, and would probably rather invest their container money in their farms. It's also wasteful to use such durable products only once. By reusing bags and cartons, you're reducing demand for products that are produced in factories that pollute and where workers are poorly paid for unskilled labor. The truly advanced among us will invest in reusable cloth bags, but for the immediate future, reusing your old plastic bags until they give out is a responsible option.

Finally, a crop calendar.