“Organic” has certainly become a cultural buzzword in the last decade. Grocery stores have pulled industrialized produce off their shelves and restocked them with organic this-and-that in order to please their suddenly ethically conscious customers. Organic has become the be-all end-all stamp of sustainable agriculture and an instant guilt reliever for shoppers. But what exactly does it mean to be organic? And does the word get too much credit?

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) defines organic as “a labeling term that indicates that the food or other agricultural product has been produced through approved methods that integrate cultural, biological and mechanical practices that foster cycling of resources, promote ecological balance and conserve biodiversity. Synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, irradiation and genetic engineering may not be used.”

Like any national program with incentives for businesses, people cheat the system. Though disqualified people find a way, as they do in any system, to label their products as organic, the USDA’s current organic certification system is still the best way to indicate a farm’s sustainability on a national level. The system is not perfect — but it’s not the problem.

We are the real problem.

When the average shopper browses supermarket aisles, the organic label makes things easy — if it has it, the product is good. If it doesn’t, the product is bad. Unfortunately, we don’t take enough time to consider the enormous gray area before reaching for a piece of USDA-certified organic produce.

If you want the absolute freshest produce possible, the best place to grow it is undeniably your own backyard. This produce — which you could cultivate without pesticides, hormones or artificial radiation — would not be organic, however. Because unless you’re willing to fork over around $1,000 for a USDA worker to romp through your garden every year, your produce is technically not organic.

Now imagine that you want to start selling some of your produce at a local market. Your product, call it a tomato, now sits next to a basket of similar tomatoes flown up from California. Though your tomato was picked that morning, and it never endured boxed transport or the transfers associated with the trip, customers quickly reach for the Californian option because it has a big shiny sticker on it.

Movies like “Food, Inc.” and “Super Size Me,” as well as the horror stories associated with industrialized agriculture, have spurred the development of a committed organic counter-culture — a culture in which organic is always the best, and if it isn’t organic, we assume the worst.

This mentality groups both ends of the spectrum under the same label. There are, on one hand, the factory farms that pump their produce full of hormones and pesticides. On the other are individual farmers who sustainably harvest their own small plot of land, but for one reason or another aren’t willing to jump through the USDA’s certification hoops. Both of these groups, in the eyes of our organic-obsessed counter-culture, fit the same criteria: not organic.

So am I advocating a new labeling program? The Willamette Farm and Food Coalition (WFFC) is one step ahead of me.

Eugene’s Capella Market will roll out the WFFC’s brand new four-sticker program in the coming weeks. Products will be labeled with anywhere from zero to four stickers, which indicate how local the product is — if it was grown in the same county, state, geographic region or country. With this new system, customers can prioritize locality the same way they do an organic label with just a quick glance at the product.

Now let’s bring your tomatoes to Capella Market. Suddenly, shoppers need to stop and look because both products satisfy their shiny sticker complex. Perhaps in this moment’s pause, they might recognize that your tomato came from right down the road and that your farm is so small and unindustrialized that you didn’t pay a USDA employee to prove it.

The Willamette Farm and Food Coalition’s new program is a brilliant attempt to redirect consumer obsession with organic toward other important factors when assessing produce quality, such as locality — distance traveled is almost always inversely proportional to freshness.

Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with organic — organic is fantastic. But the next time you pace down an aisle and your hand shoots for the USDA-certified organic sticker, take a look at the tomatoes in the basket next to it, and realize that they could have been grown in your backyard (even if the WFFC isn’t there to tell you so).