Why invest in organic foods
This is a point of contention that I get from most people and understandably so. Comparing the cost of organic to non organic foods can make some people reach for conventional or worse highly processed foods. There are many reasons why organic foods cost more and you may not be familiar with them. Some of them may surprise you and some of them may really open your eyes to what is on your plate.
First of all, conventional farming uses chemicals to treat their crops so they grow faster. Some companies pretreat their seeds with roundup! These chemicals reduce the amount of weeds in the crop, and pests that can eat at the crop. Sewage sludge and chemical fertilizers are used in conventional farming to treat crops.
Organic farms use fertilizers and compost to fertilize the soil. This is more labor intensive. Since organic farmers don’t use chemicals to treat their crops they face a higher chance of crop loss. Conventional farming uses chemicals to prevent that which means there aren’t as many losses.
Crop rotation is also used among organic farmers to reduce the amount of weeds that pop up; so it reduces the frequency in which the land can be used. Conventional farming can use every acre available because of the kinds of chemicals they use to grow the crops.
Organic foods grows more slowly. We all know that livestock are pumped full of hormones and shots to make them grow faster. Well the same thing goes for conventional farming. All those chemicals make them grow faster. Organic farmers grow less per year leading to the higher cost.
Government subsidiaries account for a majority of why conventional crops are cheaper. A subsidiary is a cash payment or tax reduction given to a company from the government to remove some type of burden from a company in the interest of the public. Conventional farm subsidies were about 7.5 billion last year while organic and local foods only got 15 million! If organic farmers could get larger subsidies then they may be able to produce more at a cheaper cost.
With the increasing obesity epidemic in America I find it shocking that we only provided organic farmers with small subsidies. Some of the most subsidized foods are corn, soybeans, wheat, grain sorghum, barley, oats, and rice. As people are finding out these foods along with chemicals from conventional farming can cause weight gain, disrupt hormone function, produce insulin resistance, can actually increase hunger, and cause inflammation in the body. Knowing all this can be alarming even scary but I hope it opens your eyes to what’s on your plate.
So now you know organics aren’t trying to be pretentious or a load of crap. They cost more for many good and logical reasons. I leave people with this analogy, your body is like a luxury car. You put premium gas in a luxury car or it wont run; why would you put cheap food in your body? It’s the only one you have, you cant trade it in for another one!