Why I Don’t Want to Love Trader Joe

Gas is $90 a barrel. Chess Grand Master and Russian presidential candidate Gary Kasparov says on Bill Maher's show that Putin has incentive to stir things up in the Middle East to keep oil prices high. High oil prices keep Putin’s repressive regime in power. Oil may be the root of all evil. In the Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan reports that the average meal travels about 1500 miles to get to the store. The eat local movement points out that eating local uses way less fuel and puts more money in the farmer’s pocket helping to keep them in business and keep a local economy going. So, shopping at Trader Joe’s beautiful new Bellingham store yesterday, I had to ask myself some serious questions. Did I really want rice from Thailand? Did I want green beans from Mexico? Did I want to save money buying food virtually all of which came from somewhere else, usually a far distant somewhere else. Sure, Trader Joe’s has lots of “organic” stuff but, as Michael Pollan and others have pointed out, corporate agriculture has hijacked the organic brand and made it almost meaningless. And what is Trader Joe’s organic commitment? The Bellingham Food Co-op also sells beans from Mexico and packaged food from all over the place and corporate organic stuff but they do have a true commitment to organic and, when they can, provide produce from local farmers. CSA’s (Community Supported Agriculture) offer a direct link from farmer to consumer during the harvest season. We even have an organic farm nearby where you can drop by and pick up produce from the cooler and leave your money in a basket. Just grabbed two bunches of beets and a head of lettuce, as a matter of fact. Ideally, I’d like to grow most of my own food and trade with others for what I can’t grow. This dream is probably several years in the future. But I hope it comes to fruition about the same time that gas shortages put a permanent crimp in Costco’s and Trader Joe’s marketing plan and causes Putin to go under. Costco and Trader Joe have taken full advantage of cheap oil and interstate highways. Kudos. But, I think they will fade away some day in the not so distant future.  I don’t want to get too reliant on them. We'll drop by once in awhile and get some stuff, but the majority of the time we’ll shop where we can buy mostly local (and pay a little more) while we work on making a garden of our own productive.