Sitting down to a tasty dinner? Do you know where that chicken came from? Or those carrots or string beans? Your local grocery store is not the right answer. Most of the food we purchase travels extensive lengths before landing in our hometown - about 1,500 miles in most cases. This reliance on food that is shipped in from anonymous sources is part of an unhealthy trend towards unconscious eating (or unaware consumption, if you will).

There is a growing group of farmers who are working to counteract America's lazy eating and Joel Salatin, owner of

Polyface Farm in Virginia is the renegade of the bunch. Salatin raises grass-fed beef, chickens, pigs, turkeys, and rabbits and sells them only to customers who can reach the farm in under half a day's drive. He is absolutely dedicated to maintaining a short food chain, selling meat and eggs that are beyond organic - for more reasons than one.

Yes, eating locally reduces the massive amounts of fossil fuels that are used transporting food around the country, but it doesn't stop there. As Salatin explains in Holy Cows and Hog Heaven: The Food Buyer's Guide to Farm Friendly Food, there is only one way to ensure the safety and quality of the food that we purchase: by interacting directly with the grower/seller. "Don't you find it odd that people will put more work into choosing their mechanic or house contractor than they will into choosing the person who grows their food?" he questions.

Salatin and his customers call his products "clean food" and will travel to buy it though the prices are notably (and justifiably according to Salatin) higher. When someone asks him why his food is more expensive than supermarket fare they are given this answer:

"I explain that, with our food, all of the costs are figured into the price. Society is not bearing the cost of water pollution, of antibiotic resistance, of food-borne illnesses, of crop subsidies, of subsidized oil and water-of all the hidden costs to the environment and the taxpayer that make cheap food seem cheap. No thinking person will tell you they don't care about all that. I tell them the choice is simple: You can buy honestly priced food or you can buy irresponsibly priced food."

You can read more about the pitfalls of the traditional organic food movement in this week's New Yorker and in Michael Pollan's new book The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.

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[via Mother Jones - excerpt from Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals]

Image: Mother Jones