Organic Labels as a Costly Signal
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| via Wikimedia Commons |
Tomatoes are crucial to Indian food. But they’re usually employed as bit players in the company of onions, garlic, ginger, and spices to produce the amorphous thing known as curry. The only moments from my childhood that I can remember eating a tomato in its essential form were when my mother sliced one into sandwiches that were the sole exception to an otherwise unbroken parade of lunch-time gastronomic delights.
Six or seven other tomatoes from the summer’s first harvest sat ripe and fat on the white counter next to my housemate. They were a wholly different species from both their undersized sub-continental cousins destined for puree, and from the pale specimens that stare morosely at shoppers from the average American supermarket shelf. We cut thick slabs of burgundy tomato flesh and rich, pure flavors coasted across my tongue.
I’m not a farmer, so I can’t give you a comprehensive answer to the question of how a vegetable attains this sublime excellence. But I can tell you about the farm that produced those tomatoes. It is sixty acres in area, small by the gargantuan standards of California’s Salinas Valley and the endless cornfields of the American Midwest, but quite large in comparison to most farms in the developing world. It is owned by a husband and wife, who employ twenty odd workers, many of whom are high school or college students toiling in New England’s gentle summer sunshine. The husband is a hard taskmaster, and, importantly, very good at the business side of running a farm.
The land lies in the Upper Valley of the Connecticut River, and the soil is lush and well-watered. Each year’s bounteous haul includes spinach, asparagus, arugula, beetroot, strawberries, herbs, peas, potatoes, summer squash, zucchini, onions, green beans, melons, potatoes, pumpkins, winter squash, broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts. It is all delicious.
The Upper Valley is dotted by such small farms, and their products do brisk business in an area full of politically liberal people who want their food to be locally grown, sustainably produced, and organic. The last qualification is especially important, and signs at the local farmers’ markets loudly announce the fact that the food is grown without the aid of chemically synthesized fertilizers, pesticides, and antibiotics.
Despite its popularity, this particular farm is not, in fact, organic. Many consumers may be unaware of this fact. But the vegetables are produced with evident care and still command a premium.
People choose to pay higher prices for organic food for several reasons. Chief among these is the notion that eating organic is better for your health. A recent Stanford meta-analysis found that there is, till date, very little evidence for this proposition. On average, organic foods were no more nutritious than their conventional counterparts, and carried the same health risks. People eating organic foods did show lower exposure to pesticides (although the other group’s exposure was also well within safe limits).
The results are preliminary, and subject to a host of qualifications. The 237 studies analyzed employed a variety of testing methods within a relatively short time period, and there is great variation in organic practices themselves. My view is that organic foods may have some health benefits at the margin, but these are likely to be vanishingly small in comparison to the gains from a whole host of other lifestyle changes: eating a mostly vegetarian diet, exercising regularly, and sleeping more. After all, an organic bacon cheeseburger is still a bacon cheeseburger.
And while many partisans of organic food believe that growing crops without pesticides and fertilizers is good for the environment, the truth is grainy and complex. Many organic pesticides are exceedingly toxic to human (and animal and plant) health, even if they are not chemically synthesized.
Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution, made the devastating point that there isn't enough nitrogen in the ground to grow enough food to feed the world’s population. Lower yields and higher losses to pests mean that more land would need to be switched to agricultural uses. More organic agriculture, at the limit, entails less land for the gazelle to graze and the tiger to stalk. Again, eating less meat is a more cost-effective method of environmental stewardship than growing food organically (though I realize that these steps are not mutually exclusive).
Many believe that the Green Revolution, which introduced hybrid varieties grown with fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation, made India self-sufficient in food crops and rescued it from terrible famines. It seems foolish to turn our back on science and return agriculture to a mythic era untarnished by modern technology or geographic specialization. Indeed, the lessons of the Green Revolution should be applied across the developing world.
But organic fruit and vegetables, in my experience, simply taste better. It’s often hard to judge the taste of a fruit, vegetable, or meat by its appearance, smell, and touch alone. The label “organic” serves as a costly signal of quality that is hard to acquire without tending carefully to the produce. Consumers, uncertain of whether they are actually getting a better product when they pay a higher price, use the organic tag to simplify their decision-making.
Yet, as my friend’s farm in the Upper Valley shows, “high-quality” and “organic” need not be synonymous. But that farm is embedded in a deep web of local relationships that ensure demand for its premium product. Customers know what they are getting and are happy to pay higher prices for it. To create a fertile middle ground between modern agricultural techniques, environmental stewardship, and demand for tasty food, we need to create a simple, cheap mechanism of communicating the signal of quality in a food market that is, and will become, more global than ever before.