Another excerpt from "Animal Vegetable Miracle," Barbara Kingsolver's 2007 book.

"Eaters must understand," Wendell Berry writes, "that eating takes place inescapably in the world, that it is inescapably an agricultural act, and that how we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used." Eaters must, he claims, but it sure looks like people don't. If they did, how would we frame the sentence suggested by today's food-buying habits, directed toward today's farmers? "Let them eat dirt" is hardly overstating it. The urban U.S. middle class appears more specifically concerned about exploited Asian factory workers. [Page 208]

For most of my life, I was guilty as she charges, and I'd still have to cop to being an accomplice. Even though I'm just completing my second year in a cooperative community garden and my third season of home veggie gardening, which is substantial evidence of awakening consciousness, I still want my food cheap. (A couple Saturdays ago, I spent two great hours at the Boston Local Food Festival and then stopped at Costco on the way home. Oh, the duality.)

It's hard to imagine how these two consumer approaches are going to reconcile. In some ways, our family has already declared our willingness to pay more for healthful food (organic dairy, for example). But we spend as much of our grocery dollar at Costco as anywhere else, expressly because it emphasizes price above all.

FWIW, we did get our organic milk at Costco on Saturday, so they're not mutually exclusive. But after having a sparkling conversation with the family farmer representing Organic Valley products at the festival, I am thinking afresh about how my consumer choices determine how the world is used. This morning I scrutinized the Costco container for the source of its contents, but it was moot (just a little cow joke, there) on the subject.