From Jeff Cox

A prominent article in a recent New York Times (April 18, 2008) says that prices for organic food have generally doubled in the past year. What effect will this have on the organic food marketplace?

Well, people on limited budgets who have only so much money for food may think about cutting back on some organic foods and returning to conventional. More well-off folks will still be able to afford most organic foods because it’s not just organics that have increased in price. Conventional foods have, too. One of the chief reasons for the overall increase in food prices is the unwise shift of farmland to corn that will be processed into ethanol as a substitute for gasoline from foreign oil. The reduced amount of food production results in price increases for edible crops across the board.

But in the organic sector, prices are also driven upwards by the sheer demand for organic foodstuffs. As they teach you in Economics 101, when supply of a desired commodity dwindles, prices rise. Supply and demand

Farmers who may have farmed organically in the past to garner the price premiums may cut back on their organic acres because the prices for conventional foodstuffs are so high. Why go through the expense of organic certification and the paperwork involved? Unless, of course, the farmer has a sense that the bottom line, while important, isn’t the only consideration. That organic farming means caretaking the land and safeguarding the health of humans, too.

What is seldom mentioned in all this—certainly not in the Times’ article—are the hidden costs of conventional food. The environmental cost of agricultural runoff into ground water and waterways that causes eutrophication, fish die-offs, and pollution that rips apart the web of riparian life. The health costs to human beings afflicted by the toxins like pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, bovine hormones, and antibiotics used in conventional agriculture. The enormous amounts of carbon-based fossil fuels used to produce chemical fertilizers to grow the genetically-modified corn to make ethanol. The destruction of the soil’s natural buffering against erosion and drought afforded by returning organic matter to the soil. And there’s more. These hidden costs, if totaled and added to the cost of conventional food, would far surpass the cost of organic food.

But consumers aren’t helpless. When local organic farmers bring their seasonal fruits and vegetables to market, these foods are at their best and their cheapest. An investment in a good freezer, or at least a lot of canning jars, means you can buy organic food when it’s ripest, most plentiful, and cheapest and put it up for use in the off season. And organic food is never cheaper than when you grow it yourself.

Then, even in January, you are following the three rules for how to eat:

1) Organic

2) Local

3) Seasonal

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Jeff Cox is author of The Organic Cook’s Bible and The Organic Food Shopper’s Guide and lives in Sonoma County, California.
Image Credit: Vermont Dairy Farm © Ne_fall_foliage | Dreamstime.com
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