I sat down with Peg Lockman, the owner of Nature’s Pantry in Rockton, Illinois. Initially, I had only planned on conducting a pretty quick interview, but Peg knows her stuff so well, that eventually it turned in to more of a lengthy conversation. Her store has been open for about ten years. Before she opened her own store she worked with several co-op organic groups for about thirty years, and if you pick her brain you’ll see she hasn’t forgotten anything she’s learned in that time. I can honestly say that out of all of the organic, and actually conventional as well, grocery stores I have ever been to this is by far the most selective.

Peg considers her business a community service. She doesn’t worry too much about profits, and she has no plans to expand because she believes that grocery stores should be small, intimate places. Everything she sells is fresh, super fresh. She tries to use the closest farmers she can, whenever possible. She carries products from places like Kinnikinnick Farms in Caledonia, Illinois, or Wrightway Farms in Beloit, Wisconsin. She gets milk from Crystal Ball Farm in Wisconsin. Here is the best part though, she doesn’t look at a sheet of paper to remind her of where these things comes from. She knows. She has a very close working relationship with the farms, and the farmers she buys from. She doesn’t pay too much attention to certificates, or claims, because she personally checks out the farms. Before something will go on the shelf at her store it has to pass through her. She brings on something that probably resembles the Spanish Inquisition. She believes the way things should be, at least when it comes to what you eat, is to get as close as you can to the source of your food, that way you really know what you are eating. To quote her, “Organic should be about staying local.”

Nowadays, with conventional market places, we are so far removed from where our food comes from we probably can’t even guess the country it was grown in, or if it’s even what it’s supposed to be. According to Sue Shuman, a Staff Writer for the Washington Post (In an article about Chinese grown garlic), “We don’t know what kind it is, how fresh it is or where it’s grown. But there’s a good chance it comes from China, which produces 75 percent of the world’s supply [of garlic] – and whose food exports have come under scrutiny after recent discoveries of tainted pet food ingredients, toothpaste and more.”

One of the biggest obstacles to buying organic is the price. Like the above garlic example, here in the United States workers are given benefits and paid a competitive wage. In China, they aren’t. This drives the price to nearly double. However, a big plus for buying locally grown, organic is safety. Here in the United States, we have regulations that govern food, and help to keep it safe for consumption. In China, they don’t have quite the regulatory body we do. In fact, they can make any claim they like as far as calling it “natural”, or “organic”, because no on regulates those claims there. At Nature’s Pantry Peg regulates those claims.

There are some exceptions to buying locally. The Swiss Cheese at Nature’s Pantry actually comes from Switzerland. The American version resembles Velveeta more than it does real cheese. The Italian Tomatoes, yes, they come from Italy. Also, in order to give her customers some variety she does import some products from Europe because they don’t use hormones in their livestock. Since animal rights are also a big concern to her, and the majority of the organic crowd, she also makes sure the animals foods come from are treated humanely. According to her, “If you couldn’t be a cow in India, be one in Switzerland.” Something else to mention when it comes to international foods is that she always buys from countries that practice fair trade, and she always buys organic.

She avoids buying from companies that didn’t start out organic, because “they follow the letter of the law, not the spirit,” she says. She also worries that even the organic stuff made by the big companies are processed using the same equipment non-organic things are. For those of you not too familiar with this phrase, memorize it, CROSS CONTAMINATION. It’s kind of like separating peas and potatoes on a plate. The pea juice will get on the potatoes, and guess what? The potatoes taste like peas. “Big companies use shortcuts that cut down quality,” she says. She researches her distributors almost to the point of doing a credit check.

The only exception to the organic rule in her store are the gluten free products. If you’ve read some of my other articles, you know my wife is gluten sensitive. So this one hits home for me. Apparently, little to my knowledge, genetically modified soy is often used in gluten free products. My wife avoids soy because all of it grown in the United States is genetically modified. We had no idea we were eating it. I would like to think we are educated about these things since we do actually read the labels. We do buy organic. We do buy local produce, even if it hits us a little harder in the wallet. And there it is, right in front of us, we were eating genetically modified soy. I plan on doing a more in depth article on GM (Genetically Modified, not the automaker), very, very soon.

Peg left me with these pieces of parting wisdom:

“Don’t Expect what you buy in a grocery store to be worth anything.”

“Learn to cook, not from a can, not from a box.”

“Asking for convenient organic, is asking to have organic as bad as conventional. If you ask for extremely cheap organic you should stick to conventional.”

“Growth [of the organic movement] will force quality down. Cheap denies a farmer his salary.”

“Stop the ‘bigness’. Local food is so much better.”

Helpful Links:

The Washington Post article "Cause for Concern"

More Information on Genetically Modified Foods

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