Organic farmers' big city snow job on Toronto |
The organic farmers in my area are in a snit. Seems they don't want to go to the local farmers' markets anymore. They have a number of reasons but when the hemming and hawing are all done, they're having trouble selling enough stuff to make it worthwhile.
So next summer, they're taking their veggies to Toronto where life for organic farmers is like dying and going to heaven.
The Quinte Organic Farmers Co-operative says it's much easier to truck their stuff to Toronto than it is to sell at the farmers' markets in their own neighbourhood -- Belleville and Cobourg.
They won't come right out and say it -- one executive says only that they were having "volume" problems -- but the implication is people who live in the Belleville and Cobourg area are cheap and not as well educated in environmental concerns as Toronto market goers. In fact, one local newspaper quoted the association's president saying exactly that. Now they're backtracking, saying they really didn't mean it to sound quite like that.
I love the local farmers' markets these people supply but I have to admit I don't buy much from organic farmers and maybe my fellow consumers feel the same way I do: The price is unacceptably high.
But I also think we locals, being closer to our rural roots than Torontonians, know something the city sophisticates don't.
We know an organic carrot looks, tastes and contains vitamins exactly the same as a regular carrot. It grows in the same soil, absorbs the same rainfall and has all the same particulate matter falling on it. In fact, the differences between the two are so minor, many scientists believe there is no significant difference -- just that the price of one is two or three times the price of the other
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