Environmentally friendly, people unfriendly?

April 25, 2008 9:13 AM

Is the organic movement (and its related environmentally-friendly pals) putting pressure on low-income consumers?

Examples of what I'm interested in, suffixed with question marks because I Have No Idea:

*Increased demand for organics decreases demand for non-organics, upping the price, bad news for the poor?
*Increased acreage dedicated to organics decreases acreage going to non-organics, reducing supply and upping prices?
*Biofuel production eats up crops that could be going into peoples' mouths? (the blue)

I can only think of things involving food, if there are other basic costs being affected that's great, too.

I'm looking for articles one way or the other, or things like a lot of the acreage was never for normal crops in the first place, so the two aren't in competition, or biofuels only affect corn so processed food is more expensive but not produce, or the industry sells enough non-organics that the increase is negligible. Supporting your claim is great, but even if you don't it could still be a jumping-off point.

Secondary costs/benefits (Less cancer risk so it costs less in the long run) are cool, but I'm mostly interested in the direct paycheck-to-dinner-table costs.

Nothing italicized is a belief of mine or anything researched; they're just in the vein of ideas I'm looking for

posted by soma lkzx to work & money (18 comments total)

Anecdotally, here in North Carolina, a lot of the land being used in the local, organic movement was in tobacco until the buy-out a few years ago.

However, I don't doubt that some of the other impacts you're wondering about are true, particularly when thinking about industrial-scale organic farming versus the smaller scale local farming I'm thinking of.
posted by hydropsyche at 9:24 AM on April 25

*Increased demand for organics decreases demand for non-organics, upping the price, bad news for the poor?

If supply of non-organic food is constant and demand decreases, the price should decrease, not increase.

*Increased acreage dedicated to organics decreases acreage going to non-organics, reducing supply and upping prices?

Presumably the increased acreage dedicated to organic food corresponds to an increase in demand for organic food (which is also presumably a decrease in demand for non-organic food). The real question is about yields per acre: if it takes more area to produce an amount of organic food than non-organic food then, assuming total food demand is constant, when demand for organics goes up, the price of farmland will go up, and so will the price of non-organic food. The conventional wisdom is that organic farming does have lower per acre yields, but this is a matter where opinions differ quite a bit and studies show different results for different crops or even for the same crop. When long-term factors like soil depletion are taken into account, the difference is even less clear.

*Biofuel production eats up crops that could be going into peoples' mouths?

Yes, but the production of biofuels is not regarded as "environmentally-friendly" by most environmentalists at this point.

More generally, I'm not sure it is valuable to make these sorts of simplistic comparisons without considering all the other factors. For example, we need to consider the energy and oil inputs of organic versus non-organic farming, the effects of the use of grains as animal feed, the effects of farm subsidies, and so on. I would think that any differences in food price due to higher demand for farmland for organics would be much smaller than the differences due to the feeding of grain to livestock.
posted by ssg at 9:58 AM on April 25

I'm in the process of reading The Omnivore's Dilemma right now. I've just started the section on the organic food industry, so I can't answer in much detail, but it does address some of these issues, so you might want to take a look at it. Perhaps someone else here who has finished the book can comment in more detail.

biofuels only affect corn so processed food is more expensive but not produce

One of the points Pollan makes in the book is that nearly all meat (including poultry and even quite a bit of farmed seafood, but excluding wild-caught seafood) in the US is raised on corn, so increasing corn prices due to demand for biofuels also increases the price of meat.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 10:06 AM on April 25

Anecdotally, as one of the poor, yes. Since all the buzz around organics in the last few years, my local grocery chain has decided to stock some vegetables, usually the "weirder" ones, organic only - at about twice the price of non-organic. In other words, you have a choice between buying organic carrots and non-organic carrots but if you want leeks or asparagus or rhubarb or fresh spinach, there's only organic now. Two or three years ago, you could buy all those things non-organic at, roughly, half the price. My cynical assumption is that the profit margin is much higher for organic than non-organic. No, this may not be affecting low income people who wouldn't normally buy those things but it's certainly made my low income yet fond of different foods family meals much duller. I know this doesn't directly address your question about production, but you might want to think about these kinds of decisions being made at the retail level as well.
posted by mygothlaundry at 10:18 AM on April 25 [1 favorite]

I think it may have some effects. The marketing of organics as 'healthier' than regular fresh or frozen vegetables may be skewing people's buying decisions. A while ago in Toronto I read an article about some work the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty was doing to engineer increases to welfare benefits in the form of a "nutritional supplement" (work I generally approve of, BTW) and one of the people who received the supplement was quoted as saying it would allow him to buy organic vegetables instead of regular. This struck me as a poor choice for someone on a limited income; while organic veggies may taste better I think it's highly debatable that they are more nutritious than regular, especially if you end up eating fewer total veggies due to the extra cost.
posted by sevenyearlurk at 10:47 AM on April 25

I agree that you have your supply and demand issues backwards in the first point: increased food prices are driven by increased, not decreased food crop demands.

The issue of the efficiency of land use for organic farming will be answered differently depending on who is doing the analysis. Opponents are going to say crop yields for organics are flatly lower so organic use diminishes the absolute food supply (although I'm not aware of anyone actually arguing it is currently exerting an appreciable impact on conventional food prices, just that decreased yields would be a problem if organic farming became too widespread). On the other hand, proponents will argue that organic farming, by improving the long term viability of the agricultural land, decreasing (primarily petro-) chemical inputs, and increasing biodiversity, actually increases the absolute yield potential of agricultural land. Anti example here, pro example here, stuff about the food quality issue here, lots of general agriculture discussion from a generally conventionally liberal perspective here.

I don't think there's much question that increased ethanol and other biofuel mandates have created competition for food crops and contributed to current increase in food prices. I agree with others that conflating this with the organic farming issue is questionable. And you can definitely still find people who will argue the overall benefit of biofuels; a former employer of mine (with whom I no longer have any connection), ILSR, might be a likely place to look for ethanol advocacy in the face of the food price issue, though I don't see that they've gotten into it recently. But they've been stalwart proponents of ethanol, and I expect to see response from them in the face of the recent, food-price-driven backlash against ethanol. Whether you agree with them or not I can vouch that they are an independent think tank, not some kind of corn lobby front.
posted by nanojath at 11:17 AM on April 25

Perhaps, perhaps not: though later in the book he becomes a bit breathless about how bad factory farming is, Thomas Pawlick has some interesting nutrition stats about factory-farm veggies in The End of Food that suggest today's vegetables aren't nearly as good for us as they used to be. Of course, whether that means organic vegetables are any better nutritionally is hard to say, since some of the issues Pawlick raises (seed variety, for example) isn't necessarily solved simply by using organic practices. But if it allows that man to buy local produce that hasn't been preserved to within an inch of its life, then it's quite possible it IS worth buying over normal vegetables, even with the price increase.
posted by chrominance at 11:20 AM on April 25

I'm not sure it is valuable to make these sorts of simplistic comparisons without considering all the other factors.

Yep, that's exactly why I'm asking.

mygothlaundry: The retail angle is a great point! Lack of a cheaper alternative could even leave economic territory and leech into health/dietary issues.

And as for the animal-feed deal, looks like I'm going to have to break open my Omnivore's Dilemma again.
posted by soma lkzx at 11:28 AM on April 25

Also: yeah, that was pretty terrible supply-demand error on my part.
posted by soma lkzx at 11:32 AM on April 25

Can you tell us more about why you're looking for this story? I'd encourage you to at least balance out the story with examples illustrating that this is not some zero-sum game where organics are the bad guy. You could find examples showing that organics don't have to cost more (they can cost less since the cost of inputs is lower) and examples of people working to make sure everyone has access to healthy, organic food (rather than giving the impression that being pro-organic means being people unfriendly). Organic vs. non-organic is also a distinction that matters more primarily within the very weird world of industrial farming, but a lot of people are working to get outside that altogether.

My opinion is that "environmentalism vs. social justice" is a tired, old story. Rehashing stories that pit the causes against one other just exacerbates existing problems. And that story doesn't help anyone. It would help, if no one knew it, but most people working in the environmental field do seem to know now (or else they'll be retiring in the next 10 years). Many more people are aware that more bridging and unifying needs to happen, or would like to work in a more inclusive way, but don't quite know how. What would be helpful are success stories, of groups working to do both (one example, now defunct, another example though this news story doesn't do justice to Bayer Farm). Finding and spreading the word about successful strategies is a lot harder to do.
posted by salvia at 11:36 AM on April 25

Ah, I should have previewed, to see your 11:28 comment, soma lkzx!
posted by salvia at 11:37 AM on April 25

I think NPR did a piece on this yesterday?: New Soil Association report shows GM crops do not yield more - sometimes less would seem to be germane.
posted by unmake at 11:56 AM on April 25

salvia: The reason behind the question is that in a few weeks I'm the host for a monthly locavore dinner party, and we needed a topic of discussion. I figured something other than the normal "we're such good organics-buyers" back-patting would be interesting, the question's only framed as "THE EVILS OF ORGANICS!" to help find more challenging issues.
posted by soma lkzx at 12:30 PM on April 25

If this is an ethical question, then it bears mentioning that organic agriculture isn't just about whether food "tastes good" -- although this has certainly helped promote organic veggies and dairy to the masses.

You get down to the question of whether people should shop solely for their own interests, or should sacrifice for the interests of society. And when you consider that "their own interests" also means their children's interests, it becomes more nuanced than just "poor people have to be selfish".

What is selfish? What is "poor"? And is the "selfish" thing here affected by whether the purchaser is considering long-term effects, for themselves or their children? And are these (for the sake of discussion, glibly lumped-together) "poor" people likely to even believe, really, that these long-term effects, predicted by proponents of organic agriculture, are real?
posted by amtho at 1:58 PM on April 25

One other aspect to this story that you might consider is that for a lot of low-income consumers in urban areas, the problem isn't that organics are driving up the costs of fresh produce, it's that they have virtually no access to fresh produce of any kind in their neighborhoods to begin with.

Also, don't make the assumption that low income consumers have no demand for organics. In fact, there's a lot of demand in many of these communities. Here in Chicago, the Whole Foods stores closest to low income neighborhoods get tons of business from those neighborhoods.

Also, you might be interested to read about another initiative here in Chicago, to bring high quality fresh, organic produce to the Austin neighborhood (served by no major grocery chains) on the west side by using a private-public partnership to open a new market.

Somewhat out of date interview with the organizer LaDonna Redmond here; a little more info here.
posted by j-dawg at 2:14 PM on April 25

salvia: The reason behind the question is that in a few weeks I'm the host for a monthly locavore dinner party, and we needed a topic of discussion. I figured something other than the normal "we're such good organics-buyers" back-patting would be interesting, the question's only framed as "THE EVILS OF ORGANICS!" to help find more challenging issues.

Ha ha, thanks for the clarification.
posted by salvia at 3:59 PM on April 25

about the supply and demand... i think your original point is correct if you look at things long term. If demand for organic produce rises, and conventional falls, then the short term result is lower prices for conventional. However, as farmers start to switch over to growing organic (not something that happens overnight) then there will be reduced supply of conventional, which could increase the cost. (Of course, only to a point, since it doesn't make sense to pay more for conventional. So, I don't see any doomsday scenario here.)
posted by kamelhoecker at 4:44 PM on April 25

I would add (to the supply/demand discussion) that while a short time fall in demand for a constant supply of a given foodstuff should lower the price of that foodstuff as a commodity, this is not necessarily going to translate to a lower price at retail. Many retailers will capture the savings from the lower cost and keep their previous retail prices -- especially in view of the fact that their costs may well go up again in the medium term. Retail pricing decisions often don't respond to slight fluctuations in costs when those costs are falling -- but when a retailer's costs rise, you can count on a more direct cost/price relationship.

It is important to remember that straight-up, undadulterated supply/demand theories of price are most applicable for commodity goods in 'the market', not prices in 'the supermarket'.
posted by onshi at 6:17 PM on April 25