As food prices continue to soar, consumers might find it tough to swallow premium prices for organic products. But you can save money if you’re smart about buying organics.

The history of the demand for organic food starts where you would expect: at a little farm in the country, with a farmer picking his way through his field. That’s nice and quaint, but not business for the masses.

A push to offer more regionally grown organic food in grocery stores is keeping farmers in business and food bills down.

Ireland will be hit for about 1.5 billion euros by the EU under the terms and conditions of the Kyoto protocol. Why? Because our Co2 emissions increased so rapidly under the celtic tiger. That figure may even rise to something more like 4.5 billion, depending on how we perform between now and 2012.

Meanwhile, since the celtic tiger began all those years ago, organic farming has stagnated in Ireland. The amount spent on organic food has kept going up, but actual hectares farmed organically in Ireland has stalled, due mainly to imports. While initially, there may seem to be little connection between organic farming and the Kyoto protocol, read on.

While conventional farming contributes to green house gas emissions, organic farming actually takes the bad stuff (carbon dioxide) from the air and turns it into something beneficial. In fact, in the organic system, as in the organic philosophy, carbon is seen as useful. Growth of plants on an organic holding depends on the ability of the holding to maintain carbon. While conventional farming can deplete soil organic matter, organic farming actually builds it through the use of composted animal manures and cover crops.

It turns out that, over the 23 years of a study by the Rhodale Institute ,theres’ been a 15-28% increase in soil carbon in organic systems, with virtually no increase in non-organic systems.

This study examined conventional, organic manure and organic plant/legume (i.e.manure-free) systems. The research was ‘peer-reviewed’ in the scientific journal, Nature; in other words, it was posited, challenged and defended by lecturers and professors from reputable academic institutions in what is the best academic journal in the area.

According to this massive piece of research, carried out from 1981 up until 2003, organic systems capture and make safe massive amounts of carbon. You can add to this the fact that organic systems actually use up less energy.

The word they use in the literature is ’sequestered’. In other words, carbon is sequestered in organic farm soil. ‘Sequestered’ seems, at first, an overly complex and convoluted word which just means something along the lines of removed from the air, or left behind in the soil, or taken out of action. It actually means ‘to surrender for safekeeping’ and it comes from the word which describes, essentially, a trustee, a sequester. In other words, an organic farm is a kind of safe keeper for carbon.

The carbon savings are massive. (Despite winning a war of Independence in the 1770s, the US still uses imperial measurements.) Organic farms sequester as much as 3,670 pounds of carbon per acre-foot each year.

Think of it in terms of cars. In the US, if they had 10,000 more ‘medium sized’ organic farms, that would equals 14.62 billion less miles driven.

And that’s not even counting the reductions in CO2 emissions represented by the organic systems’ lower energy requirements.

A comparative analysis of the farm system trials’ use of energy ( by Dr. David Pimentel of Cornell University) found that organic farming systems use just 63% of the energy required by conventional farming systems, in the main because of the massive amounts of energy required to synthesize nitrogen fertilizer.

Along with this, organic farming is a better way of holding carbon in a safe ‘format’ than even forests are. Farmers know more than most than ‘experts differ and farming suffers’. Initially, in greenhouse gas research, vast areas of forests were considered the best available option for Co2s. Now, thanks in part to these decades of research by the Rhodale Institute, organic farms are.

In saying this, we are leaving aside all of the other benefits of organic farming. We are simply pointing out yet another reason that state policy in this country should favour organic farming. After all, 1.5 billion euros is 1.5 billion euros.

In any controversy it can be helpful to consider the views of disinterested parties. So, on the subject of agricultural policy and practice, it’s worth noting that an unimpeachably neutral group has joined the ranks of those who prefer organic foods over foods produced with the help of synthetic chemicals. That group is 40 Swiss rats.

A team of Swiss and Austrian scientists recently concluded a 21-year study of organic wheat production. As an “integrative method” for assessing quality, they gave lab animals a choice of biscuits made from organic or conventional wheat. The rats ate significantly more of the former. The authors call this result remarkable, because they found the two wheats to be very similar in chemical composition and baking performance.

By Harold McGee, New York Times

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It probably comes as no surprise, but if you are an average consumer then the cost of your daily diet is more than what you pay at the cash register. Sure the food on your average grocery store shelf comes with a price tag, but it doesn’t tell you all of the other “costs” that went into growing, processing, storing, & getting it to you, all while lining the pockets of large agribusiness companies. The government subsidies–direct and otherwise–that are actually your taxes, plus increased carbon emissions, poor diets, degraded planet, and destroyed cultures all have real costs that don’t get calculated into the price you pay. This is all the result of bad food and farm policy in the 20th century now exacerbated by global politics and a push for ‘cheaper’.

If the farms and the regional food supply [aka Local food] everyone has taken a recent interest in are to survive over the long term, consumers need to realize that food is simply going to cost more. It should. It has cost far too little for far too long. Just compare what we pay with what people in other country’s pay. Our entire food system has been set up so that your average expectation is that food should be cheap. But it is not. And if you add up all of the external costs of that cheap loaf of bread, the price you pay is really much higher than what you take out of your wallet or pocket book.

Choosing local food is different than making a choice between a Ferrari and a Hyundai. With a Ferrari the high price tag is a result of artisanship, performance and perceived value. Yet a Hyundai will also get you from point A to Point B, just not as fast or in as much style. So if the basis for our discussion is purely transportation [or calories if we're talking food], then maybe a cheap loaf of bread is all you need. If we’re talking about getting their fast, then of course the Ferrari is the obvious choice. But if we’re making a broader, philosophical choice [what's better for me and the world around me], then we’re making an entirely different choice. It is not just a choice of calorie source or excitement, but of other values as well.

Locally produced food also comes with added values. When one chooses–or considers choosing–local food it as if you’re now throwing something unconventional into the mix. It is like saying, OK now you can choose either a Hyundai, a Ferrari, or a Segway. It is an entirely different thought process and value system that causes someone to purchase local food or use a Segway. You can get calories anywhere; you can get cheap food at any big box store; heck, you can even probably get luxury foods around the corner. But with local foods you can only get them locally. That added value of locally grown has benefits that can’t be provided by the cheaper global versions.

The cost of local food is real and here to stay [most likely]. The real question is whether consumers, your average consumers, are willing to pay more now [and keep their money circulating in the local community] or pay less and see their money fly away. Remember the next time you buy food from a local farmer you’re also buying open space, scenic vistas, clean air and water, and the chance to eat good, healthy, real food. Sure, the price you pay for local food may be higher, but it is a price based on costs that are real and upfront. Then again, so is the food. Yum!

It is rare to hear environmentalists much less politicians talk about the real environmental problem. Instead we hear about mitigate this or mitigate that and little about the fact there are too many people on this planet for the resources the good mother earth gave us. All one needs to do is look to the first two laws of thermodynamics to see that we’re on a path of inevitable destruction. The first states that matter can neither be created or destroyed. The second law states that energy–the stuff that comes from matter and energy–gradually deteriorates over time. That is it gets transformed from usable to unusable forms.

We’re on a path of rapid deterioration where not only are we using up resources that have available energy–trees, oil, clean air, clean water–but we’re binding them up into unusable forms. At some point we’ll pull up to the proverbial pump and there’ll be nothing in the tank.

Right now we’re seeing the skyrocketing of global food prices that are exacerbated by reactionary food policy in desperate countries. Food prices increase because of countries clamping down on distribution forced by importers clamping down. This results in shortages, and the law of supply and demand kicks and prices rise forcing people to essentially go without or riot.

The point of this is not to dissect food policy for individual countries or place blame in any one spot. It can’t be. Our current situation is a global problem, not a local one. But it can be solved with local solutions. As our ability to plunder nature for the things our capitalist society needs is reduced, we’re forced–for better or worse–into a situation of reexamining self-sufficiency. Instead of lawns we should plant gardens; instead of cars, we should ride bikes; instead of driving an hour to nearest WalMart, we need to shop local; and if we fight to protect our own backyards not from some foreign invader but from our own shortsightedness, we will hopefully create a backyard that’ll be around in 100 years.

But the simple fact remains that there are too many people and at some point we’ll just run out of resources if things continue. We’re already seeing it today. What happens when the population doubles by the year 2050? What happens to all the creatures of the world that also depend on clean air and clean water and safe haven for survival? They have no choice. Rising global food prices are just the tip of the iceberg. We can only conserve ourself so far before there’s nothing left to conserve. We need to use less, a lot less, and encourage negative population growth. Hoping we can tweak a broken capitalistic society that is so dependent on the human and increasing human population is just a recipe for a global environmental disaster waiting to happen. The storm clouds are gathering. And while we can only blame ourselves the current problems, we are also the solution. So, go forth and plant tomatoes, compost those rotten veggies. Free some energy. Your lawnmower will thank you later. So will humanity.

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There are several reasons the Mittleider Method of gardening is sometimes called “the best of organic”.
I. Rather than teaching the use of pesticides or herbicides, we use cultural practices to eliminate the need for them. For example:
1) We eliminate all weeds – from the beds, the aisles, and even the garden periphery.
2) We never water the aisles, but keep just the root zone of the plants moist.
3) We keep leaves off the ground, and prune plants to maintain good air circulation.
4) We grow healthy plants fast, so they have good resistance to bugs and disease.
5) We don’t use materials that could introduce bugs, weed seeds, or disease into the garden.
II. We never guess about the nutrition we give our plants.
1) Compost & manure often lack some of the essential nutrients plants need.
2) The gardener never knows what elements are missing from compost & manure.
3) We use a balanced mix of USDA-approved natural mineral nutrients.
4) We feed plants regularly – in small measured amounts – to match their needs.
III. We harvest our crops at peak maturity, and never leave old plants in the garden to attract bugs and disease.