I kept thinking of people I know who can hardly even stand to hear that word, because of how organic is personified for them. “I’m always afraid I’m going to get the Mr. Natural lecture,” one friend confessed to me. “You know, from the slow-moving person with ugly hair, doing back-and-leg stretches while they talk to you . . .” I laughed because, earnest though I am about food, I know this guy too: dreadlocked, Birkenstocked, standing at the checkout with his bottle of Intestinal-Joy Brand wheatgrass juice, edging closer to peer in my cart, reeking faintly of garlic and a keenness to save me from some food-karma error. - Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

It’s a sad but true fact that many people still think buying organic vegetables is “lefty”, but it’s wrong to make this a partisan issue. I refuse to surrender locally-grown, healthy food just because I’m a Republican. Conservatives are supposed to be in favor of small business, so why shouldn’t we support local farms? Conservatives are supposed to respect tradition, and what is more traditional than small farmers growing vegetables from the seeds they saved from their own crops the previous year? What is more traditional than cattle that actually eat grass and move around?

Food writer Clark Wolf said at the California Artisan Cheese Festival a couple of weeks ago, “You go into a store and it says ‘conventionally raised’ and ‘organically raised’. Folks, for thirteen-thousand years, ‘conventionally raised’ was organic.” I understand that many times we Conservatives have watched as those on the left chased health and environment trends with wild abandon and shaken our heads in annoyance or confusion. But this isn’t something new, real food is not just a fad, and making the choice to support it is exercising your rights to choose for yourself instead of just taking what the big agriculture lobbyists want to feed you. It might even do something to insulate local economies from the national economy, and it might provide alternative resources if the system ever falls apart.

I suggest that we stop using the term “traditionally raised” for foods that are anything but, and replace (the increasingly meaningless) term “organic” with “traditional”.