Reply #3: I try to buy local first, whether organic or not. [View All]

[Gormy Cuss]

In order,
we grow it, or
buy it at the weekly, year-round farmers' market, or
buy from Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, and Safeway/traditional supermarkets in that order.

We spend less than 1% of our food budget at traditional supermarkets. Because we sometimes pay a little more for products at the farmers' market and we try to stick to organics at TJ's and WFs, our food bill is probably about 20% higher than it could be. It would be a lot higher without our year round home grown fruits and vegetables.

We started out with this food buying strategy based on taste and quality but with a little tweaking it became more of a statement against agribusiness. When I buy eggs they cost $6.00 a dozen, but I'm supporting a local farm in the process. We use less than 4 dozen eggs in a year so the difference in budget costs is pretty small. If we used a lot of eggs it would be harder to justify that price. We can afford to pay more for food than many families and it's important to us to support local and small farms and businesses.