Why support organic and local, and where to get it in Cape Town

Organic Cape Town

Everyone's talk­ing organic and local. Eating organic is obvi­ously a lot bet­ter for you, given the lack of chem­ic­als used in grow­ing the food. But is it always the best choice for the planet? And where do you go to find it?

Organic pro­duce is import­ant. We have spent a great deal of the 20^th cen­tury adding syn­thetic chem­cials to our food sup­ply and the organic move­ment is a return to the kind of farm­ing that was 'con­ven­tional' before all this tam­per­ing with our food began ...

In a nut­shell, organic means: farm­ing that replen­ishes the fer­til­ity of the soil, without the use of chem­ical pesti­cides, herb­i­cides and insect­icides; live­stock are reared without the routine use of anti­bi­ot­ics and growth hor­mones, and organic pro­duce may not be genet­ic­ally modified.

Organic Cape Town

It is a highly reg­u­lated industry over­seas (in South Africa not as much so), and one way to know for sure that what you buy is organic, is to look for cer­ti­fic­a­tion. Processed organic food usu­ally con­tains only organic ingredi­ents, or if non-organic ingredi­ents are present, they are only a cer­tain per­cent­age of the food (95% in the US and Australia, accord­ing to Wiki).

Organic food is a health­ier option to food grown with the use of chem­ic­als. However, when we start import­ing organic products then the cost to the planet sud­denly becomes a lot higher.

Food miles are the dis­tance your food travels from plough to plate, in other words, from the farm to your plate. Effectively, the fur­ther your food travels, the more CO2 emis­sions, the higher the cost to the planet. So, import­ing organic sugar from USA or avo­ca­dos from Spain is cost­ing the earth a lot more than avos pro­duced on a farm in KwaZulu Natal. Better still, if they're grown by a farmer local to you, they're cost­ing the earth even less.

Organic Cape Town

There is obvi­ously a huge push then, to eat local — the closer to your home, the bet­ter. However, before we throw the bathwa­ter out with the baby, there is another factor to con­sider. The the­ory that local is auto­mat­ic­ally bet­ter than impor­ted organic pro­duce doesn't always hold water.

Locally pro­duced beans that are grown using a lot of fer­til­isers and tract­ors are any­thing but carbon-friendly. By com­par­ison, beans grown in Kenya, for instance, are pro­duced in a highly environmentally-friendly way (noth­ing is mech­an­ised), they use low-tech irrig­a­tion sys­tems, and, most import­antly, they provide employ­ment to many in the devel­op­ing world. Weigh that up against the air miles used to get them to the supermarket.

So, it isn't as simple as buy­ing local over organic every time!

For me, first prize is local and organic, and prefer­ably with min­imal pack­aging, if any. The idea is to buy loc­ally pro­duced food, or any goods and ser­vices actu­ally, as close to your home as possible.

So where can you buy organic?

Box deliv­ery schemes

Organic Cape Town

A good place to start, if you want to sup­port both organic and local food, is organic box deliv­ery schemes. There are now a num­ber of these in Cape Town, and you are rather spoilt for choice. Shop around until you find one that suits you and your pocket.

The Ethical co-op has an excel­lent online facil­ity and deliv­ers to your door, Ganics, which now has a sis­ter shop in Obz called Quensch, Wild Trading store in Woodstock that also has a Saturday morn­ing mar­ket and on Fridays serves a lunch of local, organic and sea­sonal fare at their trad­ing store, whilst you stock up on goodies.

Harvest of Hope offers a vari­ety of veget­ables grown in the town­ships enabling the poor to help them­selves, Organic zone in Muizenberg offer two stand­ard box sizes (which some­times makes the decision a lot easier), Zetler Pharmacy in the city bowl, and Christiana's whole food.

Markets
Capetonians are thor­oughly spoilt when it comes to mar­kets where you can buy organic and local products from the source themselves.

Organic Cape Town

The Rondebosch organic Market and the Neighbourgoods Market – both on a Saturday morn­ing are both excel­lent. The Neighbourgoods Market is an exper­i­ence on its own and is a great source of organic and loc­ally pro­duced foods. The Porter Estate Produce Market, also on a Saturday, at the Chrysalis Academy behind Tokai forest pic­nic area, is a feast of food and won­der­fully child-friendly, and the new Earthfair Market in Tokai, near Builders Warehouse, not only trades on Saturday morn­ings, but also on Wednesday even­ings from 14h00 until 20h00, and encour­ages pat­rons to bring their own packaging.

This already long list doesn't men­tion staples like Imhoff farm which has a mar­ket on the first Saturday of every month, the Obz night mar­ket every Thursday from 4pm, the Nitida Farmers' Market in Durbanville, the Joy Market, a com­munity mar­ket in the city bowl, and Mielie's organic mar­ket at Montebello every Friday from 9am.

Then there are the equally excel­lent mar­kets a little fur­ther afield — the Stellenbosch Organic Farmers' mar­ket, the Franschhoek Farmers' Market, the two slow food mar­kets — one at Willowbridge, and the Stellenbsoch Fresh Goods Market now moved to Oude Libertas, and the Camphill vil­lage mar­ket on the 1^st Sunday of every month.

Restaurants

Organic Cape Town

There are very few res­taur­ants call­ing them­selves organic. It is still a tricky prom­ise to make – to be com­pletely organic – as sup­pli­ers are like hens’ teeth and sup­ply is incon­sist­ent. More and more res­taur­ants now prom­ise to use local fresh pro­duce as much as pos­sible in a bid to meet the demand made by those want­ing to eat in a more earth-friendly way. But chal­lenge their claims, and make sure they really are doing so.

Only Sage Organic Cafe in the city bowl and kwaLapa at Montebello in Newlands actu­ally call them­selves organic. Sage Organic Cafe, in Gardens, uses organic wherever pos­sible and menu orders are SLOW FOOD made with love! New kid on the block, kwaLapa at Montebello, has an amaz­ing menu of organic and local fare and is set in amongst the trees in a won­der­fully relax­ing set­ting. Bird’s Boutique Café in Bree Street is a trendy eat­ery that serves organic on the menu, baked-by-hand good­ies, and also has an organic box deliv­ery scheme. They’ll also do cater­ing too, if you’re pre­pared to enter­tain a wacky hand­writ­ten quote and fairly steep prices, but then it is organic and homemade.

La Cuccina in Hout Bay use organic ingredi­ents wherever pos­sible, the Picnic Basket in Fish Hoek sells organic veget­ables and fruit and uses these in their menu, Green Beans Café in Westlake makes a to-die-for wheat-free car­rot cake with organic car­rot and spelt flour, and Woolworths' in-store café has organic sugar on the table and offers organic cof­fee and other organic good­ies on the menu.

Other great res­taur­ants include: Ashtons @ Greenways in Upper Claremont where break­fasts are hard to beat, The Greenhouse, at Cellars-Hohenort Hotel in Constantia, and The Quaffery in Wynberg, which serves 100% organic coffee.

Shops
Some of the shops where you can buy fresh organic pro­duce in Cape Town include: Creeds in Tokai, Farmstall in the City at Starke Ayres Garden Centre at Liesbeek Parkway, Millstone Farmstall and cafe at Oude Molen Eco Village in Pinelands (a great child-friendly venue), Organic Living in Constantia Village, Organics Alive and Wellbeing Natural medi­cine in Muizenberg, and Organic Zone in Lakeside.

Editors Note:
Our spe­cial thanks to Wanda of the award-winning Urban Sprout web­site for shar­ing this inform­a­tion with us.
For addi­tional info and a great "green" read please visit: http://www.urbansprout.co.za/