I would walk 100 miles (or would I)

WoW! I didn't realize it had been two weeks since my last post until I sat down to write today's. Sorry about the time lag, but things have been a little crazy lately around the ol' homestead. On the gardening front, everything is growing well in my garden, Melissa's I'm not so sure about. The plants looked a little sad the last time I checked on them. We may end up with a smaller garden than what we had anticipated. I finally planted the datils (they are very slow to sprout), and something dug them up. I have sprouted more, so I'm just waiting to see if they survive. The buttercup squash, watermelon, and tomatoes are all doing very well.
I'm not too sure about the worm poop fertilizer from terracycle, however. It certainly hasn't hurt the crops, but I haven't seen any extraordinary growth, either, so I'm not sure how effective it is as a fertilizer. I would be curious to know if anyone else has had success with it.
I know last time I promised a review of Plenty, the book by the originators of the 100 Mile Diet, and I will get to it shortly. Coincidentally, this past Sunday, NPR had an interview with Alisa Smith and J.B. McKinnon, authors of the book. You can access the transcript of the interview or listen to it here. I finished the book shortly after my last posting (I just couldn't put it down), and Melissa and I got all jazzed up about trying out the 100 Mile Diet. The book is an excellent read and I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in the local food "movement". The concepts presented in the book are very poignant and need to be heard. The basic concept to take away from the book is that we as a society have lost touch with where our food comes from and the efforts that go into producing the food we eat.
I do have to say that I take issue with some assumptions that are made in the book and on the 100 Mile Diet website. I especially take issue with the tag line on the website and in advertisements for the book that "Local is the new organic." This essentially reduces the idea of eating, growing, and producing food organically to the status of a fad that has passed. It also implies that food that is local cannot also be organic and vice versa. This, in fact, is my main issue with the book. There seem to be implicit assumptions, not just in this book but in other environmental literature such as Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, that 1) all local farms are organic farms and 2) all local farms are small farms.
Neither of these assumptions are true. If all local farms were organic farms, the price of organic food would be considerably less because of the large supply that would be available. Since organic farming is more expensive than conventional farming due to the fact that it is more labor-intensive than conventional farming, it may often not be cost effective for small, local farmers to grow organically.
Secondly, all local farms can't be small farms. Someone has to live near large, non-organic farms. The local farms to these people would be large monoculture farms. This may seems rather nit-picky, but it is an important distinction. If your local farm only produces non-organic genetically modified crops, is it really worthwhile to try to eat locally?
Which brings up the question, is it better to eat locally or organically? Unfortunately, it is dinner time (organic, but not local - yet) so that will have to wait until another post (I've got to give you some reason to come back!). If anyone has any thoughts on this, I would love to hear from them.