Grow your food close to home

February 2019

Have you noticed how organic food has become so cheap in the super market? Go to any normal grocery market and you’ll find organic milk as cheap as $6 per gallon. Grassfed organic beef for only a couple dollars more then conventional beef.

But where is it coming from? Thsi is a question no one is really talking about and most people don’t know.

Lets start with organic milk. There are now just a few mega dairy's, like 7 or 8 in west texas that are producing more “organic” milk then all 460 small organic dairy's in Wisconsin. Wisconsin is one of the largest dairy states so that is significant. Some of these mega dairy's are milking as many as 20000 cows so it is questionable how organic they really are.

What is happening is that this “organic” milk can be shipped in from Texas at a much cheaper price then what organic farmers where getting a couple years ago in the midwest and northeast. If you are buying any milk other then the Maple Hill Creamery and possibly the Organic Valley Brand, there is a good possibility that the milk came from a Texas mega dairy.

So what about Grassfed Organic beef? Next time you are in the grocery store, check out the labeling. It will say right on it “Product of Australia or Uruguay”. It’s not even being supplied by US farmers. In fact Wegmans takes pride in the fact that it sources its grassfed beef from outside the US.

Now, I’m sure the Australians can grow some decent grassfed beef… but should we be relying on food grown on the other side of the world? Or milk that is produced 1500 miles away? And what happens when the food, for whatever reason, can’t get to us?