Organic Foods
Organic Food: Worth it?
Are organic foods worth the price? Or are they just over-hyped?
Organic vs Conventional
Cost Stand-Points
Some reports shown that people who consume organic foods require more incomes than people who mostly consume normal or conventional foods. Brown et al. (2005) shown that people who consume all-organic diet had higher budget shares than people who consume conventional foods diet (approximately 18% of budget shares compared to 12%). This higher budget shares were caused by price premium of purchasing organic food. The higher the price premium, the more budget needed to purchase organic foods.
Why is Organic Food More Pricey?
Process Point of View
Around 1980s, organic farming was not really considered to be an effective method of producing food. Since the change of century (2000s), the research of organic foods have skyrocketed, resulting in more production of organic foods. The production of organic foods require more natural methods, such as not using chemicals that were mostly used on conventional farmings. Despite organic farmings used better methods than conventional farmings, the yields from organic farmings were way less than conventional farmings, nearly one-fifth of the production! With that little yield, the price of organic foods skyrocketed. Biodiversity, natural processes (pollination, "higher-quality" soil usage) caused organic foods to be more expensive (Science Vs (Gimlet Media) (2016)).