When I was a kid growing up near the beaches in California surfing was a big deal and still is.  We loved to get in the water and feel the power of the waves and revel in riding walls of water that frequently humbled us.  It was great fun.  At the same time there were folks with fancy, expensive surf boards attached to their cars who would scope out waves and then move on never getting wet.  These folks were posers and were not much respected.  They just did not get it.  Surfers were cool because they surfed not because they were part of surfing culture.

My wife and I visited a large chain grocery store yesterday.  We needed some salad fixings and hoped we could find something organic.  What we found was an organic lettuce section heavily populated with plastic boxes of nearly perfect lettuce.  While I am sure that the hard plastic boxes protected the lettuce on its long trip across the country, I could not help but think of these vegetable boxes in the same way we used to view the poser “surfers.”  The companies as well as grocery store simply did not get it.

We ended up buying some less than perfect leafage from a dark corner of the store labeled “local.”  This might not have been organic and still had a little dirt on it, but it was certainly authentic, alive, and it made us feel more connected with the process of farming.  Not an absolute substitution for shopping at a farmer’s market and directly interacting with the farmer, but the closest we could get. 

So get in the water when you can.  It is much better than sitting on the beach.  And cut waste in agriculture by purchasing unpackaged produce from local farmers.