(I never posted this when it was relevant last summer. Consider it a warning as warmer weather beckons.)
Friends, I am a chump thrice-over. Despite my long-standing and well-founded skepticism towards local food, organic farming, and the whole manure-clod-laden clump of related feel-good food philosophies, I signed us up for a weekly portion in a local CSA. After six weeks of boxes, I have moved from a position of skepticism to one of active hostility.
We joined with a friend who wanted to split a weekly half-share to make the cost and amount of food reasonable. My first error: I misunderstood what the monthly outlay would be. A half-share in this thing runs about $35 a week, so our share of half of that means that we're shelling out $70 a month or so, twice what I'd originally understood. That's a full fifth of our monthly food budget, making the whole thing a rather extravagant luxury.
And what do I get for my hard-earned spondulix? Here's last week's haul: two zucchini, two crookneck squash, a pattypan squash, a cucumber, two or three small beets, a tomato, about twenty okra pods, and a small sachet of purslane (a succulent microgreen). With the exception of the purslane, everything here could easily be picked up at a supermarket for less than $10. It would also be pre-washed and healthy-looking.
To top it off, the taste of this organically grown produce is indistinguishable from any other produce I have ever eaten. Perhaps an extra dash of moral superiority for buying organic would make it more flavorful, but I'm fresh out.
I'd go on, but Freakonomics summed up a lot of the real arguments against this kind of wasteful nonsense:
The Inefficiency of Local Food
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