Spending Your Organic Food Dollars Wisely

Who could have missed the cow with the dollar bills hanging out of his mouth on the cover of the business section last weekend? Cute? Yes. But the message was a serious downer. It turns out the economy is making us all second-guess every purchase we make -- including what we eat. Nielsen Company, a market research firm, reported that organic food sales rose only 4 percent in the four week period ending October 4th, compared to 20 percent a year in recent years. What's keeping shoppers from purchasing organic food? Cost. No question. And who can blame them? But let's understand why and what we can do about it. Organic food usually will cost at least 50 percent more than conventionally grown food and sometimes much more than that. There are several reasons, some of them pretty surprising.

First, organic food is more expensive to produce. Without cheap fertilizers and pesticides, farmers have to do a lot more manual labor, and people are much more expensive than petrochemicals. Additionally, organic farming operations aren't big enough to achieve economies of scale.

Secondly, demand has outstripped supply -- there simply are not enough people growing and producing organic ingredients. And if you recall from your economics class, when supply is greater than demand, prices are higher.

And finally, there is the cost of farm subsidies. Every year the U.S. government pays many conventional farmers -- including many giant mid-western agricultural corporations -- billions of dollars in subsidies. One effect of these subsidies is that the price of many products in your supermarket, especially meat, is lower than it would be without these subsidies. So when you look at the cost of, say, a pot roast, you'll need to add in the tax dollars you paid April 15 to get a clue about the real price of that piece of conventionally raised meat.

But I won't let you give up on the health of your family. You do not need to give up on organic -- just curtail your organic spending and focus on the area where you get the biggest bang for your buck. Stick with these strategies and you will soon see your organic dollar stretching farther while you keep your family healthier.

--- Buy Smart: The Environmental Working Group found that you can reduce your pesticide intake by 90 percent if you ate only organic versions of the following produce: peaches, apples, sweet bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, pears, imported grapes, spinach, lettuce, and potatoes.

--- Shop Around: Pricing for organic foods is sometimes...well, let's just call it whimsical. So may different retail outlets are selling organic products these days that there are bargains available if you just take the time to look for them.

--- Buy Local: Many supermarkets feature locally grown vegetables, fruits, and meat in season and there are more and more farmers' markets every year. Foods in season tend to be cheaper, because they're abundant then (it's that supply and demand thing again).

--- Join a Co-op: In many cities, there are full-service natural foods supermarkets that also function as co-ops. That means when you join you get an automatic discount on everything you buy (sometimes on specific days of the week).

--- Grow Your Own: Is there a corner in your yard, or some section of your apartment balcony, that gets sun most of the day? Well, farm it! Seriously, you'd be amazed at how much you can grow in a tiny space. In a box roughly two feet square, you can grow enough mixed salad greens to keep you going for months!

Check out many more tips in my new book, Green Goes with Everything: Simple Steps to a Healthier Life and a Cleaner Planet

Comments

[LisaatEWG]

Thank you, Sloan, for highlighting our Dirty Dozen list to help consumers prioritize their organic purchases when on a tight budget. Readers can download our wallet guide with the Dirty Dozen and Cleanest 12 at http://www.foodnews.org/, and we blog about farm subsidies (a relevant piece of all this) at Mulch: http://www.mulchblog.com/.

[JuniorNorman]

Get rid of corn subsidiies. That will cause corn syrup to go up in price making organic products look cheaper. Outlaw growth horemones for animals.
LEGALIZE HEMP
Organic Super Chickens Just feed the chickens cracked hemp seed and let them peck the green leaves for chlorophyl and vitamins. Hemp seed has complete protein unlike soy. Chickens wont eat soybeans they make them sick..... Chickens grow twice as fast eating hemp seeds....
Organic Super Eggs?
Just feed the chickens cracked hemp seed and let them peck the green leaves for chlorophyl and vitamins.. The EFA's in the hemp seeds go into the eggs making them super eggs!

[GoGreenWorld]

Also please see http://www.greenlineindex.com for a directory of green services..

[Tags]

There's a great movie coming out about the sustainable-organic vs. corporate battle called "Food Fight."

Go see it and tell friends to go see it at a nearby theater if you can.

[NoSillyName]

If many people are cashing in on the Farmer's Market trend, how can we be sure they are not using chemicals on their vegetable patches?

Call me cynical, but these sellers don't have "Certified Organic" goods.

[WgS]

Great piece. We are an extremely poor family with no health care and the rule at our house is that we can't afford not to buy organic. While there may be other food choices available that cost less up front, the long term costs to our health, the lack of nutrients and food value in the foods and the hidden costs to the local economy ends up being a far greater threat to our personal economy. By buying organic, we get more value from one well planned mean a day than we ever got with the convenient and pesticide laden products available for mass consumption. An apple a day, produced and served with care, surely does avoid many an ill.

[ScreenName05]

Sorry, but I live in one of the greenest counties in America. We have three coops and several natural food stores. They are so expensive no one can afford to shop there on a regular basis. Whats more, this county is famous for its organic grass fed beef. It is locally grown, locally butchered and locally sold, for twice what the same cut of meat costs at the local Costco. I have yet to figure how something produced locally for less cost can end up being priced twice what something shipped from 2,000 miles away costs, and this county is rumored to be 2 weeks away from everywhere. I would like to eat local and I would like to eat organic. This should be the easiest place in the country to do so. There are more people living off the grid here than anywhere in the U.S. Doesn't seem to matter, when they drive their vegetable laden trucks into town they expect prices two and three times what the supermarkets charge. P.S. I live in Humboldt County, CA. We have started growing our own vegetables, and we are thinking of buying a wind turbine. Nobody knows how long this depression will last.

[super]

"I have yet to figure how something produced locally for less cost can end up being priced twice what something shipped from 2,000 miles away costs." - Interstates are subsidized by the federal government, as are the wars needed to keep gasoline prices manageable.

From the main blog: "people are much more expensive than petrochemi­cals." - only when people are overpaid (sorry; politically incorrect) and petrochemicals are subsidized by externalizing the associated environmental costs.