Organic Food Movement

Organic farms seem to be the "in" right now. They are popular and people are buying organic - Keebaugh et al say that since 1990 people have bought up to 25% more organic foods. This is great news because organic farms use less fertilizer, pesticides and harmful additives creating products with less "things" in them and more actual food. These two articles looked at why these trends are prevelant and who is buying. The Keebaugh article didn't seem to be looking very effectively at maternal vs. paternal trends due to there being a majority of the participants aged 18-25 (~700/900) and in currently enrolled in some sort of graduate school or college. It did however raise interesting questions of whether or not men or women thought more about what they bought and why? Is it socially influenced that women were thinking more maternally about food purchases and therefor bought organic more? Do people really associate organic with positive and with healthier?

The other article looked at similar consumer attitudes towards organic food purchases except it used 16 in-depth interviews to determine how people purchased. I really liked the little quotes they put in that people said in their interviews because they raised really reasonable, relatable questions and points. Like the one that talked about how of course they knew why organic cost more because their brother-in-law was a farmer and had to put in much more manual labor instead of pesticide/fertilizer use.

This stuck out to me because it brought forth the questions of how can we get all people to see that a ton of work goes into food? Kingsolver looks at this as well when she talks about how very few kids and even adults in our day and age have any idea how they get their food and where it comes from. People don't know that our food travels on average 1500 miles to get to our table and all of that costs oil on top of the fuel you use getting it home and the fuel needed to create the product. How can we as a society educate people so that they know and care more about where their food comes from? Will education lead to people making better purchases that value farmers? Is a agriculture basics class in school more valid than a math class? How do we get people to care?