I suspect a few people reading this may have seen a new series about farming which started on BBC2 today, which is about making a successful business from a smallholding.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to write about what this means, and why so many good, organic farmers find it such a struggle to prosper, but since I realise that fame is a fickle thing, I’d like to take this opportunity to encourage you to do one thing:

Buy organic, local food, and pay more for it.

Why? I’ll come on to that in later blog posts, but basically – albeit somewhat melodramatically – because everything you care about depends on it.

Let’s try another key message, too, since you’re here:

Avoid buying food in supermarkets, instead use local shops or a food co-op.

But that’s hard, right? We have jobs and a lives and the whole point of getting civilised is so that we don’t have to run around hunting for food. I couldn’t agree more. Let’s try to keep life simple, and fun, and easy.

One simple and easy way to buy local, organic, seasonal food is to encourage your favourite local shop to stock it, and label it clearly. But some people are slow to change, so another way is to buy through a food co-op.

A food coop is when groups of people like you get together to buy well-produced food in bulk, thereby getting economies of scale (less transport, less packaging, less handling), and allowing you to bypass the organic premium which some shops add on. You can find your nearest at www.foodcoops.org

As I said, I’m going to write more about this in the next few weeks, so please keep watching the programme, and coming back here to see what’s new. And since we’re striving for easy, you can even just put your email in the form below and it will come straight to your inbox, or you can subscribe to the RSS feed instead.