Why Organic Food is Worth the Premium Price

By Ronnie Cummins

Fifty-million health conscious and environmentally concerned Americans are now buying certified organic foods, despite the fact that these products cost 25 to 100 percent more than conventional foods.

Organic sales in 2005 will reach US$15 billion - approximately 3 percent of all grocery store purchases in the nation.

While the demand for conventional food is increasing 2-4 percent each year, organics are growing by 20 percent. At current rates of growth, most grocery store items will likely be organic by the year 2025.

Organic consumers believe that higher grocery bills reflecting premium prices paid to organic farmers (up to 100 percent more) are well worth it, since these producers are raising crops and animals the traditional way - without dangerous pesticides, chemical fertilizers, animal drugs, hormones, tainted animal feed, or genetically engineered seeds.

Organic beef and meat sales grew 122 percent last year, in part a reaction to news reports on Mad Cow Disease and industry animal feeding practices.

The bottom line is that the more consumers learn about industrial-style agriculture - the feeding of blood, manure, and slaughterhouse waste to animals, hormone implants and injections, animal feed laced with antibiotics, intensive confinement, rampant filth and disease in slaughterhouses - the more they are losing their appetite for cheap industrial food.

Americans spend, on the average, 11 percent of their household income for food, whereas Europeans, and American organic consumers, spend twice that much. But a closer look at the hidden costs of non-organic farms and food reveal that our "cheap food" is actually not that cheap.

For example the primary sources of water pollution in the U.S. are feedlots and chemical-intensive farms. Americans pay billions of dollars every year in taxes to clean up these polluted surface waters, not to mention billions of dollars for bottled water.

Even more staggering is our annual US$1.5-trillion expenditure on health care, a significant percentage of which results from our exposure to farm-derived environmental toxins and our over-consumption of pesticide tainted, nutritionally deficient, foods.

Taxpayers shell out US$40 billion every year in U.S. Department of Agriculture crop and export subsidies, which primarily benefit large corporate agribusiness.

In contrast, organic farmers basically receive no subsidies at all. In addition conventional farms use 30 percent more fossil fuel energy than organic farms, with much of these energy costs being subsidized by taxpayers. And, as studies show, organic farms are far superior to the nation's chemical-intensive farms in terms of conserving water, reducing soil erosion, maintaining soil fertility, and preserving wildlife and biological resources.

In this sense, paying organic farmers a premium price for their products represents a wise investment in the future.

Premium prices paid to America's organic farmers and ranchers support and preserve small and medium-sized family farms and rural communities. The only small farmers in America today making a decent living are organic farmers, especially those who have managed to cut out the "middleman" by selling directly to local consumers, restaurants, or retailers.

Meanwhile unhealthy, tasteless food is still the norm in our public schools, hospitals, and nursing homes.

As America's organic consumers and farmers lead the way to a healthier and more sustainable food system, we cannot afford to leave low-income families and children behind. We need increases, not cuts, in food stamps, community nutrition programs, and school lunch programs.

And to supply the growing demand for organic food and fiber, we need to transfer billions of dollars in "pork barrel" crop subsidies in the next Farm Bill away from corporate agribusiness, and instead use this money to help family farmers make the necessary but difficult transition to organic farming.

Ronnie Cummins is the national director of the Organic Consumers Association (www.organicconsumers.org)