To buy local, or not?

Before I moved to Boston, I worked at my local farmer's market in Virginia. I became pretty spoiled with such easy access to fresh, local, organic, seasonal produce with an unofficial employee discount to boot! I also developed an understanding for the importance of being an informed shopper. Here it is not so cheap to buy local and organic so I have to make due with what is available to me. When I buy produce I always buy seasonally (If I want something out of season, I look for its frozen counterpart), then I shoot for local produce, and finally organic. Sometimes there are things I just can't get locally, and then I skip to organic...but I'll buy non-organic if the price is right. I also try to shop as locally *as possible*. For example, there are no orange groves in New England, so if I want oranges I buy Florida oranges, not California oranges. Is there some sort of threshold where far is far? Should I just buy the darn things as long as they are grown in the US? Maybe. But grew up in Florida, and I also insist that Florida oranges just taste better. :o)

I do most of my shopping at Trader Joe's which is known for making an admirable effort to supply local and organic produce at affordable prices. This week I was surprised to find 11 oz containers of Blueberries for $2.99 at my local TJ's. Thoughts inspired by this simple sign: That's cheap, even for in season blueberries. How are they getting blueberries in February? The season, in the US anyway, is June-September. Are they even going to taste good? Is that why they're so cheap? Maybe there's some crazy New England variety of Blueberry that is ready for harvest in the winter...nope. Shipped in from Chile. Wow, TJ's bad show. Wait. Am I a produce snob? No. I'm trying to be environmentally friendly with my food, and support my local economy. But don't those farmers need money too? Am I going to potentially let this food go to waste for some mildly hoity-toity principle? Is it really hoity-toity? My friends in Virginia work really hard at their craft and are greatly under-appreciated...it went on like this as I wheeled my cart around the entire store.

In the end I went home without the berries. In the meantime, I 'll be having my taste of summer in the form of a cobbler made of some nectarines in my freezer from last summer. It was a good year for stone fruit.

What about you? Do you buy local, organic, seasonal, or any combination thereof? Do you buy based purely on price? Or do you just buy what you want? Are you like me, and have a ranking system? (Which, I realize makes me a little eccentric.) Would you have bought the blueberries?