Organic Food Doesn't Have To Be Expensive

I know truth is always relative to perspective. But I always cringe whenever I hear someone say that organic food is not affordable for everyone. Or worse, when it is said that organic food is only for the rich. This simply is not true. First, we don't have to look much further than the last 9,000 years of agricultural history to realize that for most of human existence, organic agriculture has fed the world. Rich and poor alike. Second, regardless of economic status, we all have bodies that need healthy food. This isn't a luxury. So why do so many people think that organic food is economically prohibitive? To understand the truth, we must look beyond comparing the price of chemically grown apples vs. organic in the supermarket. For example, it's not just what we get, but how we get it. We need to look at what I call TOE, or Total Cost of Eating!

These last few weeks, we have all been working on the CSA season start-up. (Click here to see our seasonal CSA plans and pricing) As we go about our business, there is a constant stream of information in the background about this country's economic woes. People losing their jobs, their houses. Indeed this constant drone can affect our mood, and our outlook on almost everything. So as I was posting our new 2009 pricing schedules on the Carmel Valley Cooperative website, I wondered how our CSA stacks up economically to buying organic vegetables at the local supermarket. Time to go shopping and see!

So I put an old CSA box into my car, and drove down to the local supermarket. Well, actually I passed two smaller supermarkets and went to the larger Safeway at the mouth of the valley. They have the largest organic selection, and it is important to my experiment to be able to find as much organic produce to compare as possible. I did not make the hike over the hill to Whole Foods, because Whole foods isn't somewhere you go when you are trying to be economical! In fact, while I laud Whole Foods for doing so much to promote the benefits of organic produce, I also feel it unintentionally re enforces this popular belief that organic food must be expensive.

I brought the CSA box so that I could eyeball quantity and pick out a selection of organic vegetables that filled up the box. I also printed out the organic produce list on the website, and tried to choose produce from the winter list, so that I got an "apples to apples" comparison (pun intended). This is important, because if I picked out of season vegetables, it could artificially inflate the supermarket cost. I wanted to know really, is the CSA box a good deal!

I filled up my box, all the while eliciting stares from other shoppers at I took photos of my brown CSA box filled with organic produce in the middle of the shopping isles. Actually, no one seemed to care :) I selected two red onions, two yellow onions, a small bag of Yukon potatoes (the CSA expects some potatoes this year), a couple of lemons, four oranges, a cauliflower, a stock of celery, one head of lettuce, a bunch of chard, a bunch of kale, and a bunch (three stalks) of broccoli. We are fortunate to have a supermarket with such a selection of organic produce. Organic choices for some of the items on the Winter list could not be found, however. For example, I could not find organic chard, kale, or broccoli if you can believe it.

The total was $30.50 A good selection of organic vegetables filling the CSA box. Enough to eat pretty healthy for a week. Not that bad actually.

Now let's compare that with a local CSA. Today was the first CSA delivery of the season. After distributing boxes to our members. It also included quite a supply of healthy local organic vegetables, This weeks box had one bunch of arugula, one bunch of beets with beet chard, a head of romaine lettuce, a head of red leaf lettuce, 4 yellow onions, one large bunch of cilantro, a good sized cabbage, a cauliflower, a bunch of large leeks (four), five garlics, and a whopping two and one-half pounds of broccoli. Plenty of vegetables for my family of four for the week.

The total for the Carmel Valley Cooperative CSA box: $17.00 if you subscribe for the entire season by February 15th at the special early bird prices. Wow, what a savings.

My conclusion from this experiment is that TOE for healthy organic food can be affordable. The organic vegetables at the supermarket were in my opinion indeed reasonable both in selection and total cost. BUT, buying similar vegetables through our local CSA actually SAVED 44% or $13.50 to boot!

It has been my experience that in addition to this savings, if you eat regularly foods prepared from fresh organic vegetables like this, you can cut out or completely eliminate packaged and processed foods. This simple change of preparing food from high quality basic ingredients vs. depending on processed foods is one of the biggest economical changes I have made. I eat much better, and for much less than I used to. Much less. The difference is actually quite astounding.

What's more, processed foods are not only expensive, but the packaging generates boat loads of waste. My garbage volume went down as well, so I eat healthy foods, grown with sustainable organic farming methods, and I produce less waste for the land fill. The CSA boxes are reused, so no plastic bags either. It's a no-brainer, really. In fact, even the organic produce at the supermarket is sometimes wrapped in plastic. The photo on the right is a plastic wrapper that the organic celery came in from my shopping experiment. My own personal pet peeve are those insidious little stickers they put on oranges and apples etc. Why? it is so annoying to try peeling those things off with your fingernails before throwing the rinds in the compost.

Finally, now that we know it is economical to not only eat organic, let us not forget one last benefit of the CSA, the vegetables are entirely LOCAL. Funny, as I was driving home the other day, I heard a radio broadcast talking about the benefits of organic vs. local. On one hand, the article said organic produce may use less chemicals, but the cost of transportation can offset the environmental benefits. Well, they forgot about the fact that eating the chemically grown food isn't healthy either, but that aside, they did have a point about transportation. Buying produce that has travelled thousands of miles contributes to global warming, and our dependence on foreign oil. You can read the article and hear the Environminute broadcast at http://www.environminute.com/webtext/090129.htm check it out. Very interesting.

Choosing a local CSA, you are choosing to reduce transportation costs, AND eat organic, healthy, and sustainable food! What are you waiting for?! If you live on the Monterey Peninsula in California, Click here and sign up right now! If you live outside of the Monterey Peninsula, then go to Local Harvest (http://www.localharvest.org/) and find a CSA near you. Your taste buds, your body, your planet, AND your wallet will thank you.