I grew up on a farm where my parents and farmers used mostly natural anti-parasitic products and never gave anything chemical to their animals. It was almost a sin to buy processed and packaged food in my household. In this country, even the organic certification is not as strict as it is in developed countries, but it often means better quality and less poison in general, so buying organic is imperative for me. I can tell almost immediatly from my body's reactions and issues if I've had too many animal-derived proteins and fats (organic or not), as well as the bitter after taste of non-organic berries, for example. The problem is really how unaffordable the prices of fruits and vegetables (especially good quality ones) are in this country.
I am of modest means yet I choose to buy organic because it is the moral thing to do and it supports personal health. It is wrong to contribute to the suffering of others through chemical exposure. Luckily, I have great access to organic food.
Some people often consider on pricing & other issues: Meats, vegetables and fruits have, generally speaking, very tight margins and offer low or modest wages to those employed in the businesses. And grocery store markups have tremendous impacts on the food prices that the consumers actually see. This is because the groceries typically take their food product costs and create sales prices based on a percentage of their product costs rather than as a fixed amount. For example, suppose a grocer buys conventional tomatoes from a distributor at $1.00 per lb. The grocer will then sell the tomatoes at a price based on a markup percentage. Using a 50% markup, the grocer sells these tomatoes at ($1.00/lb.) * (100% + 50%) = $1.50/lb. So the grocer takes in $0.50/lb. for the sale of these conventional tomatoes to cover the costs of selling them and for providing a profit to the store. Now, if the grocer buys some organic tomatoes for, say, $1.40/lb., that same grocer will likely sell those organic tomatoes for ($1.40/lb.) * (100% + 50%) = ($1.40 + $0.70) = $2.10/lb. So the grocer takes in $0.70/lb. to sell those organic tomatoes. But the price difference to the consumer between organic tomatoes and conventional tomatoes is ($2.10/lb. - $1.50/lb.) = $0.60/lb. even though the grocer's COST difference for the two tomato types was only ($1.40/lb. - $1.00/lb.) = $0.40/lb.
Processed foods often have a lot of wiggle room in costs and pricing. For example, suppose one starts with conventional wheat purchased at $6.00/bushel and a bushel of wheat weighs 60 lbs. (Current conventional wheat prices are less than $5.00/bushel.) That wheat then costs $0.10/lb. Suppose you process that wheat and sell it as crackers for $4.00/lb. in the store. The bulk of the cracker ingredients comes from the wheat, and even if you use 1.5 lbs. of wheat to create 1.00 lb. of crackers, you only have $0.15 invested in the wheat for the crackers, leaving $3.85 to cover other ingredient costs, labor, packaging, and retail costs. In that example, only [($0.15/lb.)/($4.00/lb.)] = 3.75% of the retail price goes toward paying the farmer for the dominant food ingredient, namely for the wheat. Let's compare that to the tomato examples:
For conventional tomatoes, the tomato supplier gets ($1.00/lb.)/($1.50/lb.) = 66.7% of the retail price.
For organic tomatoes, the tomato supplier gets ($1.40/lb.)/($2.10/lb.) = 66.7% of the retail price.
Further complicating this is that grocery stores generally buy from distributors, not from the farmers themselves. So the farm share of revenues is generally far below these percentages.
Processed foods also have LONG shelf lives whereas fruits, vegetables and animal products do NOT have long shelf lives. The shelf lives and costs to dispose of "old" foods greatly influence the grocer strategies and overall costs.
I buy organic whenever it is available. I would rather spend more for my food than expose myself to pesticide residues or support their destructive effects on farm workers and environment. Not everyone can afford to do this, though, so we need to work hard to make organics lower in price.
For you more information:: https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/130/5/e1406
For organic products to buy: ORGANIC PRODUCTS
