Is Organic Farming Better?
By Christie Keith I had a dog friend over to my house many years ago. She was admiring my vegetable garden, and mentioned she’d just sprayed hers that morning with sevin. I must have looked horrified, because she got quite defensive about it, saying something like, “The American consumer is not ready for wormy apples and bruised zucchini.” (As if anything could actually STOP zucchini, but that’s another subject for another day.) I simply opened my fridge and dumped my produce drawer onto my counter, and then dumped my fruit bowl alongside it, asking her to find any worms or bruises. Some of it was from my own organic garden, but most of it was from New Leaf Community Market in Santa Cruz, CA. It was without question absolutely gorgeous produce. I think that the stigma of organic produce as “wormy and bruised” has been replaced, though, in recent years with the idea that buying organic produce is a gourmet, high-end, latte-sipping liberal thing to do, something for the effete and overpa
