Organic food prices vs. Non-organic food prices?

For my Geography class I had o go to a local grocery store and do research on organic vs. nonorganic food, then write a paper on the results.





I found that organic food is more expensive, and that there isn%26#039;t a lot of it in your average grocery store, but I can%26#039;t seem to figure out why. Can anyone help me?



as a formerly certified organoic grower who still makes a living farming fruits and veggies grown organically i can say the mani reason for higher prices and fewer selections are the following





1) there is not a huge demand for certified organic at grocery stores so they do not carry as many products as conventional products, especially with produce





2) Because there has been a national organic program for only 7 years so there are not that many national corporations doing organic yet. It is costly and time consuming to go organic as there is a lot of paperwork to be kept constantly for the USDA organic program. If you process foods you have to create an organic only facility for the organic goods. this is very expensive. You have to be inspected annually at your own expense. So large food corporations tend to be slow when it comes to change and i suspect we will see a lot more offerings in the future as more and more companies figure out and set up organic ventures





3) organic crops yield as good or better as conventionally grown crops. the size of the produce is generally the same if using the same cultivar (I am noticing with organic produce a lot of non hybrid varieties are being used and often nonhybrid crops are smaller (but tastier) than hybrid crops. Plant based pesticides are allowed as are fungicides. And these are as effective (and in many cases more effective) than their chemical counterparts





4) Less than 3% of US crop land is certified organic so you have this huge issue with supply and demand. there simply is not enough organic food grown in the US (or the world) to keep up with the demand, yet.





5) A big reason why it costs more is because a lot of studies have been done that tell middlemen and retailers that people will pay to 200% more for organic products so they charge more because they can get more. So they charge what the market will bear.




It%26#039;s more expensive to grow, because they can%26#039;t use the pesticides, herbicides, and synthetic fertilizers that ensure the high yields of nonorganic farming, processed organic foods can%26#039;t use some of the fillers and cheap flavorings used in nonorganic, and there is a smaller overall supply because a lot of companies don%26#039;t want to deal with these problems, and the average supermarket shopper is still buys almost entirely nonorganic, usually for price reasons, so there%26#039;s not much reason for non-specialty stores to stock a lot of organic foods.




Organic foods - poorer yields because more is destroyed by pests and diseases. Size of crop is less uniform.





Against that people who buy organic are willing to accept defects that the rest of us would want a reduction for.





What I do is wait until the organic reaches the reduced counter as it always does and you can the buy it cheaper than non-organic





John


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