Any parent who has set foot in a grocery store knows that organic food is hot, especially in products marketed to children. We all want the best for our little ones, don’t we?

The Wall Street Journal reports that Kraft—the makers of such definitively inorganic products like Oreos and Velveeta—had sales fall in the second quarter by 5.9 percent, but that its organic revenue grew by 2.9 percent. The Austin American-Statesman tells us that Whole Foods, a grocery store chain that already boasts a healthy aura, plans to expand its organic offerings even more. In Chicago, two urban farms that give job training to former convicts and the homeless have gotten USDA organic certification. Even the White House, as you likely know by now, even has its own organic vegetable garden.

But something’s rotten in the state of…well, the state of government-labeled organics.

As the Washington Post reports, the USDA is conducting an investigation of its National Organics Program. Last month, the Post reported on suspect enforcements of organic standards (for instance, a USDA program manager overruled her staff after extensive lobbying from formula makers, allowing the majority of “organic formula” to contain additives that violate federal standards).

After all this hullabaloo, you may be wondering whether buying organic is even worth it—especially when a new study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition says that organic food is not any more nutritious than conventional food.

In addition to nutritional benefits, lobbying and questionable labeling, the consumer has another thing to consider when looking at the USDA organic tag: the small-scale farmers who were priced out of officially calling themselves organic.

Do you remember when the National Organic Program was introduced in 2002? Some farmers who already were organic balked at paying to be certified, which can cost anywhere from $750 to over $2,000 per year depending on the farm’s gross sales, according to the National Sustainable Agricultural Information Service. Naturally, the group reports, organic certification fees are expected to rise.

So, should you buy organic? Buy local? Grow you own food?

I spoke with Eric Wagoner, a father and farmer who has run Boann’s Banks, a Certified Naturally Grown farm in northeast Georgia, since 2002. He also organizes Athens Locally Grown, a collection of around 100 area farmers and gardeners that supplies custom orders to members, and created Farm Notebook, an online organizer for market and CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Farms.

His farm is purposefully not USDA-certified; read on to learn why.

Babygooroo: I saw at your Web site that you operate as an organic farm (and are Certified Naturally Grown), but that you are not USDA-certified organic. Can you tell me about that choice?

Eric Wagoner: CNG has the same (and in same cases stricter) standards as the USDA certification, but the fees are much less and the inspections are done by other CNG farmers instead of people with a financial incentive. It also does away with some of the loopholes that industrial organic farms use to get certification that smaller farms can’t.

The most important thing, of course, is to get to know your farmer. I joined CNG at the beginning, when the USDA program was going into effect, and the CNG logo at my market stand was a great way to draw customers in and get them engaged.

B: The organic label is being investigated now…Are you surprised? And do you think the label is a necessary benefit to organic farmer or not?

EW: I think the absurdities behind the USDA program can be demonstrated with a single product: the Batter Blaster. Have you seen this? It’s certified organic pancake batter, packaged in a metal aerosol spray can like Cheez Whiz. You can get it at the grocery store, and it shows how something that goes against pretty much every value behind organics can get the USDA stamp of approval.

Horizon is another example of a big company cheating to get the label. (Note: Wagoner is referring to complaints filed to the USDA that Horizon was giving little or no pasture time to their dairy cattle, leading to their products being pulled from supermarkets; more recently, the company has raised ire with a new “all natural” food line with questionable ingredients ….) There are many people who no longer trust them and actively refuse to buy anything from Horizon. But at the store, there they are with their USDA stamp, getting a slice of the pie.

I think the idea of a standard is a good thing, but it has to be a hard line, not able to be bent at the whim of multinational companies, and the penalty for abusing it should be severe. But even then, it should be a minimum standard, for those who can’t buy directly from a farmer that they know and trust.

B: What do you think about the recent study concerning the nutrition of organic foods?

EW: The study was in many respects a straw man. No one (that I know of) was saying that an organic carrot had more nutrients than a conventional carrot, but that’s all the study looked at. It didn’t look at the effects of additives (fertilizer, herbicide, insecticide and fungicide residues, for example), or if vegetables picked at their peak of ripeness and sold immediately thereafter have more nutrients than those picked before ripeness and shipped long distances and stored for a time before sale.

I think it stands to reason that a veggie picked when ripe will be more nutritious (and of course tastier) than one picked while immature, and the only way to get that is to buy local.

And if one doesn’t want to eat all those residues that may be present, then one needs to buy organic. And if you can do both, that has to be the very best option of all.