Food producers and grocers are joining forces in the Organic Trade Association (OTA) to encourage consumers to eat organic produce and animal products. The Go Organic for Earth Day event is now in its fourth year. These warm-hearted corporations are encouraging us, the American people, to be healthier by eating organic. Who can argue with that? Good health is good, right? Reading the press release made me hungry for one of the organic apples that I recently purchased at my friendly neighborhood food co-op, Syracuse Real Foods, so I set down my laptop and got one.
Later, I explored the OTA as I munched on my apple. Lots of reasons why organic is better for your health: recipes, contests, and a newsletter and other free stuff. So far, so good. I read that "Children are developing organs to last a lifetime," says Dr. Alan Greene, MD, Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics (and an Oprah favorite). "They're smaller. They have faster metabolisms and because their diets are less varied than an adult's, children are more vulnerable to developmental damage and health problems associated with exposure to concentrations of chemicals and pesticides in the non-organic food supply. By reducing exposure to toxic substances, organic products can help us raise healthy strong children and protect our most treasured resources for the future." Aw! Isn’t that nice?
Then I saw the list of companies participating in the Organic Trade Association and I began to suspect that this warm and fuzzy concern for our health might be just another hypocritical public relations campaign.
For example, over 3,500 grocery stores are participating in this Go Organic event… that’s twenty-nine chains, by the way. I reflected that if these companies were so concerned with America’s health, they should simply lower the prices of organic food to enable everyone to afford it. Most purchasers of organic products are price-insensitive; that is to say, they will purchase the product without regard to its price. Many of our least healthy Americans, however, are in the working class and often don’t have health insurance either. These people are price sensitive; that is to say, they purchase less expensive foods because their budget for food is smaller. They cannot easily afford organic produce or meat. Aren’t their children’s metabolisms important too?
Article comments
1 - Bob Kane
I think the author of this over simplifies things. For grocery stores to lower the price of organic it would ultimately negatively impact the organic farmers. When Wal-Mart asked Organic Valley to lower their prices so Wal-Mart can offer cheap organic food, Organic Valley declined and pulled out of Wal-mart.
There is a reason organic products cost more, they are more labor intensive and there are no government subsidies.
A way to save more money on organic is to cook more and buy fresh produce when it's in season.
Everybody is bashing big organic...well we need to start somewhere. Our food system is screwed up, of course local organic produced by small farmers and manufacturers is ideal, but be grateful for larger organic that makes these products more accessible and affordable to more people for the time being. There is a place for big and small organic.
Thanks for the link to the Go Organic! for Earth Day website, very cool. I requested some coupons (a way to save money buying organic) and took the test and got all the answers correct except one!
2 - foodwise
General Mills is represented on the OTA Board and therefore its subsidiary companies as well. General Mills is not owned by Philip Morris...it WAS Kraft that was owned by Altria, the parent company, but they recently spun Kraft off as an independent company.
The issue is not that organic should be cheaper.....conventional food should be more expensive...we in the US spend very little income on food compared to other developed countries....it is the subsidies on corn and soy especially that skew pricing in the food supply...organic is generally not subsidized. See Michael Pollan's recent article on the farm bill in the NY Times...
As more and more consumers choose organic, we will change the Dean Foods of the world as more dairy farmers convert to organic.....let's stop bashing organic for not being perfect and focus on the real threats to our health....vote with your pocketbook for better food.
3 - gette
Let's assume company X manufactures two products, widget A and widget B. Widget A is more labor-intensive and therefore more expensive to produce. Thus, its price is relatively high. Widget B is very inexpensive to produce due to government subsidies and production efficiencies.
Company X is perfectly capable of raising the price on Widget B to subsidize the cost of producing Widget A... if it wants to, particularly if Company X hires nutritional experts to profess deep and abiding concern for the health of the growing organs of our future.
Companies subsidize more expensive products in this fashion all the time.
Additionally, if the average organic buyer was more price sensitive, then food manufacturers would lower the price in order to induce purchase. As I mentioned in my article, the average organic buyer is not concerned with price, but with health, taste, and food safety.
For example, I completely avoid sticker shock at the produce counter by purchasing at my neighborhood coop, a store which only carries organic produce, not conventional. The price difference is therefore (mostly) invisible. As a management professor at a Big East school with no children who was raised in a middle class family, I can afford to be insensitive to price. On the other hand, a working class family raising "our most treasured resources for the future" cannot make a similar choice.
4 - gette
Excellent analysis of upcoming farm bill from a public health perspective.
best,
georgette