Organic Food and the Market Prices

Since agriculture has become a commercial activity, the number of intermediaries between a farmer and a consumer has multiplied.

Demographics, urban concentration and the establishment of food stores — from the smallest corner grocer to the very big suburban store — has forced producers (breeders) to find themselves in an awkward position between the intermediary and the client-buyer.

The selling price of a product (fruit, vegetable, milk, honey, etc., processed product …) offered in the store assumes that the seller buys the product from the farmer then resells it by making a profit. So we are dealing with the sacrosanct “margin”.

The problem is that today, the price of the profit margin of the seller is much more important than the price that this same intermediary (marchant) paid to the farmer at the start.
Because the marchant’s interest is to sell, he can not propose a too high price to his customers.
But as he still wants the best margin, he negotiates with a farmer to buy his products at a lower price!

The ideal is that the farmer can also be the direct seller; so that everyone finds a fair price, the agricultor who works hard to feed the world and the customer-eater.

We just saw it: a peasant has often no other choice than to accept to sell his production at a very low price to the intermediaries, if he wants to sell something. This is nonsense.

The farmer needs machines, tools, when he settles, when he develops or to change or modernize over the years. He has often taken out a loan at his bank and has trouble repaying it. His taxes once deducted, he often only has a leaf of salad in which to cry ...

This is not acceptable because the job of feeding men is the most important in the world. It is essential to defend small and medium local producers!

Concerning natural and organic agricultors, they should be recognised for their real value. They deeply like what they do, they treat soils and animals in a good way, with soft and sustainable approach in order to get quality food, and they take care of the environment too!

From the customers’s point of view, some organic products are still very expansive … What is the reality?

Actually, there are many situations:

- local fresh organic (or natural) vegetables or fruits, directly bought to the farmer are affordable. (Without talking of your own free gardening that can produce the basis for family and friends.);

- natural food stores, with only organic products: either local or regional fresh products, or “fresh” products coming sometimes from others countries too (considering that those last ones are not enough efficient for your health nor for the planet because of their long travel).

- classical big retailers with many organic products, veg, fruits, transformed food… proposing a sheld with organic which often have a green label. But we know now that big suppliers began to sell their own products (any type of food) at a big scale.

The quantity is an important notion: if you transform a food at a big level, you want to rentabilize your process… And what about the real quality of the ingredients, even if it said that these are “organic”? Because to make benefits, no doubt that — even in an “organic” way — the goal is to get basis ingredients at the lower costs … We are still here in an infernal circle in which the small farmer is always the fall guy! Whereas he should be the first to be thanked for the valued food he brings, considering that he has also to invest permanently in tools, promotion, to pay taxes, and even sometimes a high cost to pay an organic label when he obtained his certification.

And we know that these special food, produced and sold by famous retailers, often still contain too much added sugar or salt … The geant suppliers or retailers — that only see here a new business opportunity — want to join the organic market in order to make margin and that’s all, without caring about the planet or just because it brings us a “green” image. They just want profit. They see that people ask more and more for natural food and then they invest in this process.

The danger is that they crush prices as they do on their other non-organic agri-food products and that it distorts the market, with the result that real organic networks, organic small cooperatives and organic stores, created a long time ago and legitimate, are threatened on their ground by unfair competition. In addition, these so-called organic products that are already sold in conventional supermarkets are not so effective for health. The second danger is that we see an “intensive” organic farming develop with inevitably lower quality. Because nothing beats the small local producers!

Indeed, “big” can be dangerous because they fall into the same tricks that are found in agribusiness and intensive agriculture on a large scale.

The same retailers will say “but we must feed billions of people on earth”. Yes. But if you have hundreds or even thousands of small farms around cities and all over the country, no matter what country, you can afford to feed people locally, with very good organic foods, the least processed possible.
It is better to have small and medium-sized areas of land with different crops and farmers who take care of their environment, rather than huge holdings with a single crop, even if it is called organic.

To sell directly at the farm, on local markets or via a local store is nice for a farmer. And to be stronger, facing big chains, more and more agricultors create local networks or cooperative, and organize themselves the sell of their production. Even online.

Nowadays, people want to know exactly what they are eating, but they also want to know what the price is and where their money is going, hoping that a fair share goes to the farmer.

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