Basic problem: "Organic" food production costs are not that much higher than "inorganic" (?) food.[1] Maybe 10-20%. But the retail markups average 85%. As organic farming has become larger and more efficient, Whole Foods' competitors have cut prices, killing Whole Foods' margins.
Whole Foods relies on high-margin items. The checkout areas are stuffed with homeopathic remedies, which are overpriced water. Now that's a markup.
From a personal friend who is an organic farmer: (a) organic food is hard to do in large fields, since the plants can easily catch anything, and the farmer looses the entire crop.It happens much more than non organic. So the farmer must use very small portions of fields, each with different type of plant, and thus minimise the risk. So no economy of scale (b) you can't use the same plants again and again on the same field, and the cycle of changing plants each time requires to build, dismantle and rebuild another infrastructure each time (c) can't keep in refrigerators long time, so what is not sold quickly, is lost
It is. But there's also the "how large is the rotation?"
There's the typical cash crop rotation: corn to soy. This has the advantage of cash crop and cash crop. These are both well known and the differences in weather over the course of a growing season are minimized - if its a drought year, you've got the appropriate hybrid. If its a wet year, you've got the appropriate hybrid. Very predictable.
When one goes to the idealistic organic the cycle could be: corn, beans, reddish, onion, melon, sunflower, broccoli, carrots, tomatoes. Rather extreme, but an example. Also note that onions and garlic can be mixed, as can peans and beans... but that is the idea.
This works nicely for the home garden plots but when trying to rotate with hundreds of acres of fields its a bit more challenging. Instead of two or three means of harvest its nine different types of plants - tomato harvest is completely unlike corn harvest. Furthermore, it means that the farmer is a bit more at the mercy of the weather (great year for corn, but you've planted radishes because you just had corn two years ago and would need some pesticides or go to a GMO variety of corn... and that's not organic anymore) and the markets (there's no demand for the things that are in the next three seasons in the harvest - do you skip forward four?).
The link does not load for me but I doubt those numbers. Where I live (Austria) organic farming is significantly more expensive primarily because it requires more human labor. I suspect that depends on how tou regulate organic vs non organic food however.
I suspect the American interpretation of "organic" is much less strict than the European one. Also, there would probably be much less regulation and control of the production process because free market.
I would be interested in some examples of the labour discrepancy. When I think of the difference attributable to organic farming it is mainly around lower crop yields.
I would be curious to hear a bit more about this. From my recollection, just about every single piece of vegetable matter in any given Viennese Billa would come from outside Austria (potatoes being the exception). Is there US style industrial agriculture in Austria (I'm afraid I never ventured out of Wien and surrounding Niederosterreich area)?
That depends on the season though, in summer almost everything seems to come from austrian farms.
we don't have us style industrial agriculture in austria. our fields are tiny compared to the US (avg farm size is 40 acres; and we really don't have those superfarms [2000+ acres] that seem to be common in the US). same goes for livestock, a farmer doesn't have anywhere near the same number of say kettle on his/her farm.
I don't really know a great deal about farming in Austria, but as the other poster pointed out, there isn't really industrial agriculture US style that I am aware of.
However, a couple of examples:
- Austria has a pretty decent wine industry, with vineyard clusters in numerous locations around the country; south east Styria, Krems/Wachau, Burgenland, just south of Vienna.
- In Styria, there's plenty of pumpkin growing, which are mostly used to make pumpkin oil, which is an outstanding salad dressing.
- Also in Styria, there is a pretty big apple growing industry around Gleisdorf/Weiz to the east of Graz.
- There are some reasonably big cropping operations in the east of the country in Burgenland where the landscape is more rolling hills than high alps.
Whole Foods relies on high-margin items. The checkout areas are stuffed with homeopathic remedies, which are overpriced water. Now that's a markup.
[1] https://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/download.php?id=419