Organic IS cheaper
Why buying expensive, environmentally conscious food may actually save you money.
If you are like me, saving money means buying LOTS of packages of ramon noodles, and bowls of microwavable Mac and Cheese. Simply thinking about a trip down the few isles reserved for organic foods at your local grocery store will most certainly create gigantic holes in your already bruised and battered wallet. If you are busy multitasking with family and work, who has time to think about growing and cultivate anything that involves dirt to grow your own produce?
I read a recent memoir by one of my favorite fiction writers, NY times bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver. On top of being a very successful author Barbara is also an ecologist and evolutionary biologist, whose recent memoir, Animal Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, has permanently changed my thinking about what and how I eat. Barbara makes an excellent case for considering the hidden costs of agriculture. I’ll let her speak for herself.
“Here’s an exercise: add up the portion of agricultural fuel use that is paid for with our taxes ($22 billion), direct Farm Bill subsidies for corn and wheat ($3 billion), treatment of food-related illness ($10 billion), agricultural chemical cleanup costs ($17 billion), collateral costs of pesticide use ($8 billion), and costs of nutrients lost to erosion ($20 billion). At minimum, that’s a national subsidy of at least $80 billion, about $725 per household each year. That plus the sticker price buys our “inexpensive” conventional food.” (P. 117)
You get FAR less than what WE pay for.
Source: Animal Vegetable, Miracle: A year of Food Life -Barbara Kingsolver. 2007
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AngelaKI am a credit Counselor for CESI. I love to help people reach their full potential and being able to manage finances is definitely a necessary step on the path to personal success. My special interests are the emotional and pyschological aspects of our relationship with money and learning about and helping others communicate with family members about finances.
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