The Commercial Case for Organic Food
I have just seen a very good documentary on the contrast between organic food and agribusiness food in the United States. It is called Fresh. It came out in 2009. I saw it on Amazon. I am an Amazon Prime member, so I watched it for free. Here is a trailer.
I have been aware of the basic story of organic foods for 50 years. I have also not eaten a lot of them, and I am in good health. But I may be an exception. The problem is that, until recently, organic foods were not available in supermarkets and even local farmers' markets. This has begun to change, which is for the better.
The movie does not cover in detail this obvious problem: outside of the growing season, you cannot easily buy fresh organic vegetables. Supermarkets have fresh vegetables, but they are imported from Mexico or from somewhere in the world where the season favors vegetables. These will be the product of conventional agricultural technologies. So, unless you find ways of freezing vegetables in season, you wind up eating standard vegetables in the winter.
Nevertheless, my main staple is eggs, and we buy the eggs from a lady who produces them locally. The eggs taste better, and I think they are probably more nutritious. They don't cost much more than what the mid-priced eggs cost at the supermarket. I'm very glad we can buy from her. We've been doing this for about four years. Our main meet source is deer. We have an unregulated, non-FDA-approved supplier who sells it, de-boned and packaged, for $1.50 a pound. It's organic. Sorry, Bambi.
The movie interviews some of the nation's experts in organic foods, including Joel Salatin. He makes a very good case for the commercial viability of his approach to agriculture. He is successful economically. He is a great speaker. His videos are all over the Web. Salatin has free-range chickens. They eat the bugs in the droppings of free-range cattle. He moves the cattle from area to area on his farm, and then he moves in the chickens. The land gets restored by the droppings. It does not get polluted, because the cattle are not in a fixed area. They keep moving. They do not get sick. So, he pays little to the local vet. Salatin makes money selling eggs, chickens, and cattle. The land keeps improving. Output keeps rising.
Here is his position: feed grass to herbivores, not meat scraps and corn. Don't keep them in tight feeding pens, where diseases get them.
Another man, a former professional basketball player, has 3 acres in the middle of the city in Wisconsin. This is mind-boggling.
A longer video is here.
The organic foods movement is now commercially viable. Its adherents argue that costs are lower, because pesticide costs are zero and fertilizer costs are zero. Compost is the solution. My wife finds this to be the case. Composting attracts worms. She drills finger-size holes in the bottoms of her plastic compost containers, and the worms come up to feast. She gets the castings. Into the compost containers go coffee grounds, vegetable scraps, and shredded paper.
Price competition has driven down the nutritional value of the foods we eat. Price competition is good, given the same level of quality. But when you pay with reduced quality, price competition is a negative. Other things do not remain equal.
If people stopped eating packaged foods, where the big mark-ups are, and started eating marginally more expensive organic products, their overall food budgets would not rise. Their health might be better. The land would be in better shape.
It's more labor intensive, but the quality is better. It's like phone trees vs. talking to a live person -- even one in India. The live person saves me trouble, usually. Phone trees drive me nuts.