Organic or Conventional?

Steve B. sent me this article from the LA Times that jives completely with my views about farms and their produce, whether organically or conventionally grown. Some excerpts:

Whether something is grown organically might be one of the factors you use when you're considering what to buy, but it is by no means the only one: For me, seasonality, locality and -- above all, flavor -- trump it.

And it certainly is not a surefire solution to all of life's (or even agriculture's) ills. You can be a bad farmer growing organically, and you can be a good farmer and still use chemical pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers.

The article concludes:

But most important, I've tasted the fruit that comes from them. Because if there's one thing I've learned in more than 20 years of covering farming, it's that you can't fake flavor. You can fudge on almost everything else, but really delicious fruits and vegetables come only from talented, careful farmers doing their very best work.

And that's true regardless of the label that's attached.

Read the whole thing.