I'd been wrestling with thoughts about how art is an act of communication in which the audience participates, but in which the artist has responsibilities as well. If the audience largely doesn't understand the work, the artist has to consider the fault may lie with themselves. But at the same time the audience has to try to approach the work at least somewhat on the artist's terms.

Then I came across this from Cul-De-Sac, a generally bad newspaper comic, which sums up a lot of what I had been thinking and makes me wonder how bad I am myself.

(borrowed without permission)

When the fake olive oil scandal hit last year (and Google suggests that it's more an ongoing concern) the scam seemed a pretty obvious one. Over the last 10 years, thanks to the Food Network and perhaps one celebrity cook in particular, the demand for extra virgin olive oil has tripled in the US while production is still somewhat limited. Normally in that situation you would see very high costs brought on by high demand, but instead olive oil prices tend to be extremely reasonable on grocery store shelves. Most supermarkets even offer a store brand of the stuff. Given that most production is overseas and that extra virgin oil is generally sold for more than other grades, opportunities for fraud are plentiful and motives easily understood.

Which leads me to wonder about organics. Like olive oil, organic dairy foods have spiked in demand in the last 10 years, with nearly every grocery store offering milk, butter, eggs and sometimes yogurt from organic producers. I don't have sales figures but considering the considerable shelf space allowed for organics nowadays it's safe to assume sales are healthy, even with the higher prices that organics command. And as with extra virgin, the prices are higher but not outrageous, almost a regular/premium situation.

So with increased demand you should have increased supply, so where are the organic farms?

I tried to broach the subject during the #FoodD Twitter chat with little luck. I did receive one response from @ezweber (of @zweberfarms) who pointed me to the Organic Valley website, where one can enter a zip code and find nearby organic farmers that sell to OV. From here in the Ozarks, the nearest OV supply farm was in Kansas. After playing around with the site I found one farm in Missouri, and then a lot in Iowa. So it's possible that there are plenty of organic farms in the US, just none around me. That would be a good answer.

But the possibility - ok, probability - of shenanigans is pretty high, somewhere in the long production chain from teat to table. One of the recurring concerns during the #FoodD chat was transparency, and while this is a far cry from what transparency usually refers to (safe, clean food production with a minimum of cruelty) it's still a concern, if only to me.

Bang Bang

I like this version better than Nancy's. Raquel's a stiff hoofer in this, but it's a reminder of a time when a handful of performers were called upon frequently to provide fresh song-and-dance routines. It's surprising the choreography stayed reasonably varied for so many years of variety programs.