Fair trade and organic food

jwest

jwest

jwest

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Joined
7 Sep 2009
Posts
464
Location
Manchester
hey, im working on a little project at the moment and i was wondering what peoples opinions are on this.

im sure in an ideal world we would all be consuming organic and fair trade food, but are you prepared to pay the additional costs to have it?

personally - fair trade, yes i don't mind paying a little more. but organic food, id rather have the extra money.

cheers
 
I would tend to agree. Fair trade if the ethics of where your food comes from bothers you... organic food makes no sense to me, most food will have been grown in an environment that could have been contaminated with chemical / cross pollination from the next farm over anyway. Also there's never been any conclusive proof organic food is any better for you than non organic... If it was all the same price then the choice would be obvious. So until that happens or I win the lottery I will just buy the cheapest option lol.
 
Yes I am prepared to pay more. But fairtrade and organic mean **** all.
I want to know exactly what is used, see the grass fed thread.
Although this does apply to meat more. I want traditional breads, they at we're bread for taste and texture, not how fast they put bulk on and a nn discrete flavour to appease the masses.
Try some properly reared Gloucester old spot pork, compared to supermaket and the taste is night and day different, but I can understand why some dont like it after being used to supermaket meat so much.

I would love to support local farm on veg and I've tried a few times, but it's just not money well spent, unlike meat, I can't freeze it and there selection prices and price isn't the same as the meat services. There are some good green grocers nearby, that I find good qaulity and cheaper, but they aren't local farm produce. And the farm shops are to far away for every day use.

Same with fish/seafood, would love locally caught stuff, but agin it doesn't freeze as well as meat, which makes bulk buying difficult.

Would love too get to the point I was more or less self sufficient, but that won't happen, unless I come into ~20k for some land. In the mean time, I'll get my meat online and grow my chilis.
 
I grow a lot of my own stuff to eat but space is the issue. The government do not free up enough land for allotment use, it should be a high priority because so many fields are wasted and everybody is getting all their stuff from Tesco when we could be growing most of our own stuff. I bought 50KG of seed potatos for 38 quid and they make near half a ton so it can be very good for people to save money also in this financial crysis etc..........
 
dave28 said:
I grow a lot of my own stuff to eat but space is the issue. The government do not free up enough land for allotment use, it should be a high priority because so many fields are wasted and everybody is getting all their stuff from Tesco when we could be growing most of our own stuff. I bought 50KG of seed potatos for 38 quid and they make near half a ton so it can be very good for people to save money also in this financial crysis etc..........
Click to expand...

Been on the waiting list for ~2years.
 
I prefer some Fairtrade stuff - usually coffee and chocolate where the supply chain is particularly notorious, or anything from regions where there is a strong history of exploitation. Otherwise, I sometimes get suspicious in supermarkets particularly when you look at the name of the farm (e.g. on green beans) and you'll see the regular, TTD and Fairtrade versions have all come from the same farm.

Organic I'm not really fussed about, but quite a lot of the time the product is better so there's not a direct comparison. E.g. Sainsburys organic butter is 10p more than normal but it's a lot creamier and last longer in the fridge. Same goes for their organic potatoes and garlic which are different strains to their normal range. We also get Sacla organic pesto because there's no glucose syrup in it, unlike most other pestos which is important because the o/h is diabetic (I think Lidl's one is the only other one). If you look in the ingredients or organic, it's a general trend that there's less crap thrown in.
 
I don't go out of my way to get Fairtrade stuff except if the quality is better. By overpaying the producer distorts the local markets and can push up prices for the other locals so they get screwed over.
 
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