The WaPo’s Tamar Haspel writes,
The USDA’s certified-organic program — from its inception a marketing program, not an environmental initiative — has given organic farmers a way to make a living (and farmers do have to make a living) by connecting with like-minded consumers willing to pay a premium for a product that is grown in a way that is often labor-intensive and lower-yielding, and produces some bona fide environmental benefits.
The fact that organic food costs more indicates to me that organic farming is environmentally damaging and not sustainable. If organic food costs more, that is because it uses more resources, as the phrase “labor-intensive and lower-yielding” indicates.
Of course, the market may be mis-pricing resources. For example, suppose that non-organic farming causes more water pollution that is not reflected in its cost. If so, then proper pricing might tilt the balance more in favor of organic farming. But I do not see people making such a case. Instead, journalists, agricultural scientists, and environmentalists seem to me to want to over-ride market information without thinking about whether or not resources are correctly priced.
There is basic illogic embedded in the phrase “farmers do have to make a living.” Work is a cost, not a benefit. Nobody is saying that we should return to the way light bulbs were made 100 years ago because “glass blowers do have to make a living.” Nobody is saying that telephony should operate the way it did 50 years ago because “telephone operators do have to make a living.”
If you really want to increase jobs in agriculture, you could go back to doing farming the way we did 100 years ago. Getting rid of all of the farm equipment and plant breeds that have been developed over the past century would do the trick.
Haspel’s piece struck me as neither better or worse than most environmental analysis. It is the norm for such analysis to be grounded in economic ignorance.