Brown Eggs

are local eggs, and local eggs are fresh. Or so goes the jingle burned into the synapses of young New Englanders of a certain age. It comes to my mind in the wake of Badthings' rather more pessimistic take on Grocery Store Wars than the original here. Badthings is certainly far more engaged in issues of sustainable agriculture, organic farming and related issues than is the Cod, and having watched the film with dialog (saw first in lab of speakerless computers) it comes up short. Initially did not sniff around here to see just who was supporting this stunt. It is facile, and simplistic, maybe facile even by the standards  for a cartoons featuring  talking vegetables. And yet, it seems as if things like this have the potential to make a bigger difference than the difference between dying one way or another. There are large swaths of the country where buying organic or sustainable meat and produce  with any consistency  is currently  about as viable as finding halal meat.  I'd argue that GSW, even if  it is propaganda from a sinister Big Org. Trust, has at least the potential to encourage Star Wars fans more than a few gallons of gas  from the nearest org. oriented market, and without access to a spectrum of righteous local farmers, to begin to consider where their food comes from. I think in general "awareness" is a lame PR euphemism for "inaction," but here, precisely because the problem is lack of awareness, or nonage (Holler, Immanuel!) sowing the seeds of doubt in the minds of Winn-Dixie shoppers  is worth doing. In the last day or two, I  have had occasion to mention GSW  and related issues to folks with whom I've never had occasion to discuss such things. That might not be one of Martha's Good Things, but it is something.

Comments

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To be perfectly clear, even Horizon's organic factory farms are A Good Thing. A travesty of meaningfully sustainable ag., but still: all that feed for all those Cows has to be grown "organically". That really is something. What I was objecting to was the self-congratulatory complacency that is so prevalent in this rhetoric, and so useful for marketing.

This is just a plot to alienate your readers.

[Fesser]

"This is just a plot to alienate your readers."

Nah. See above. Obscure baseball player used to illustrate totally irrelevant foodstuff that is described unhelpfully? I have not been derailed.