First published: September 2007.

SPURRED ON by mounting fears about the health implications of conventionally-farmed food and of the unknown effects of genetic engineering, organic food is undergoing a boom in popularity.

Recently, however, questions have been raised about the green credentials of the organic food industry and its applicability to developing countries.

What is not in question is organic food’s freedom from contamination by agricultural biocides and the focus of organic farmers on caring for their land.

No matter where you go, you now find organic food. Eatem Organic Foods, Salamanca Place, Hobart Tasmania.

The organics industry is well aware that they have to safeguard their market from pretenders and charlattans. In Australia, this is done through certification schemes that assess individual farmers on the agricultural processes they use. The organic certification labels of NASAA (National Association for Sustainable Agriculture Australia), BioFarm (Biological Farmers) and the Organic Herb Growers Association, plus the certification logo applied by the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service to organics going to the export market, provide consumers with the assurance that the products they buy are truly organic.

Certification, says the industry, is necessary to maintain credibility among the public. But certification can be costly, especially for small growers, and there are reports of smaller farmers opting out of certification because of this.

Some of those selling at the many urban farmer’s markets around the country are not certified organic, though they may claim that their produce is organically grown. This makes it a case of buyer beware and leaves it up to the trust established between regular sellers and buyers as to the veracity of orgainc claims. In some cases, farmers’ markets and their regular clientelle provide the marketplace for smaller growers who have left the certification system. The management of some markets, however, such as the Manly Organic Market (www.vibrantmarkets.com.au), stipulate that organic produce offered for sale must be certified. In 2005, the market itself was granted organic certification with NASAA.

Applying lifecycle analysis

The worms in the organic woodwork start to appear when the industry is assessed through the lifecycle analysis used by advocates of ecologically sustainable development. Lifecycle analysis takes into account the energy, resources and water consumed in food production and transportation, the sourcing of raw materials, the disposal of wastes and the distance the food travels from farmer to shop – known by the unmetricated term of ‘food miles’.

In lifecycle analysis, the conventional agribusiness food supply comes off far worse than the organic food market. Yet the analysis challenges the organics industry on a claim made on its behalf: that buying organic food products is more virtuous because of the industry’s green credentials.

An industry as global as agribusiness

I started to ask questions about the organic industry’s green credentials when I looked at the label on a packet of organic pasta. Produced in Italy, it read. Italy? But don’t we grow the durum wheat from which pasta is made in Australia? Italy implies a lot of food miles, and food miles implies a lot of greenhouse gas emissions. I wondered why organic wheat cannot be sourced within Australia and made into pasta here.

That raised another question – would it be better to buy Australian-made non-organic pasta rather than the organic but well-travelled product from Italy, with its embodied food miles? Food miles, of course, is only one factor in the estimation of the environmental costs of a food system when analysed through lifecycle analysis.

Farmers markets have become sources of organic food, though not all of it is certified organic. Photo: Hawkesbury farmer at market in Richmond.

Wanting to explore the idea of lifecycle analysis a little more, and curious about the quantity of imported organic food, I took a walk though a number of well-patronised organic food stores. There I found a mix of Australian product and imported but little evidence that the shops demonstrated a preferance for local produce. In this respect, there is little difference to supermarkets.

There is another dimension to food miles. In a country the size of Australia, would not the concept apply to product produced interstate or in other regions? I was led to that question after finding a container of yogurt from South Australia on sale in a Sydney organic store. Paris Creek yogurt is a good product, but there are a lot of food miles between South Australia and Sydney.

Some foods cannot be produced within reasonable transport distance of markets, of course, and – unless you happen to be one of those advocating a 100 percent local diet by eating only in-season foods produced in close proximity to where you live, it is reasonable to import these. Coffee, tropical fruit products and teas are some products whose production is circumscribed by geography.

As I visited more of the shops it dawned on me that the organic food business was as global as conventional agribusiness, of which it now forms a part. The argument goes that Australian organic producers have to export in order to sell their crop. Yet, some in the organic industry say that there is a shortfall in Australian organic produce and that this accounts for the presence of much imported organic product. Certainly, there are gaps in the Australian-made organic market, such as that for canned, organic beans (the product commonly offered comes from Italy).

One retailer spoke of the difficulty of buying local product. She said that products have to be brought in to cater for demand. True that may be, it still brings the organic retail industry into conflict with the increasing awareness of the costs of long-distance transportation of food and with the growing number of local food afinionados.

Organic food, wasteful food?

There was something else that nagged at me. As I walked through the stores, stopping occasionally to examine intriguing-looking products, I recalled a discussion in the media last year about how Sydney was running out of landfill space and how the city’s waste might have to be taken to the Hunter Valley, 200km north, for dumping in disused coal mines.

What nagged was the organic food that surrounded me would contribute just as much packaging waste to the city’s waste stream as would conventional food products from the supermarkets. Many food products, it must be noted, have to be packaged in plastic for reasons of preservation, because they are liquid and for transport.

The organic stores’ saving grace was that most of them sold fruit and vegetables unpackaged and some provided customers with paper rather than plastic bags to carry away their purchases in. A number, especially the food co-opeatives, store cereals and pulses in large containers and leave the customer to fill the paper bags they provide or the containers they bring with them.

Yet, the number of products packaged in plastic in the organic stores was substantial, seemingly offering little alternative to the supermarket. Some of those plastics were marked as recyclable, however without the number-in-the-triangle materials identification symbol, they would not be accepted for recycling. Whatismore, local governments differ in what they will accept. A claim as to recyclability of materials can be quite different to the actuality of what packaging is actually recycled.

The certification label indicates a farm in transition from conventional to organic production.

The question of access

Organic food stores, farmer’s markets and food co-operatives might be growing in number but they are inaccessible to most people. Fortunately, there is an alternative and it does not involve driving avnywhere – the food comes to the buyer. This is the organic home delivery service. Small scale businesses, they vary in size from one person operations to larger enterprises and bring organic food to the door through a weekly delivery service.

If organic products are to become more widely available they will have to be stocked by more supermarkets and in a greater range of product lines. A visit to a Coles supermarket in Sydney revealed a range of organic products though they form only a small portion of total stock. A shopper, however, told me that the number of organic products stocked by the supermarket has grown. This demonstrates how organics have been accepted by the public.

The importance of the organics industry getting its product onto supermarket shelves was highlighted when Australian Community Foods website developer, John Brisbin, explained that supermarkets will remain the dominant source of food in Australian cities.

“I think supermarkets serve a very useful purpose in today’s world”, said John.

“Don’t get me wrong, I loathe the places, from the fluoro lights and Beatles remixes to the appalling offgassing of pesticides, cleaning chemicals and perfumes. And that’s before we even get to the disturbingly plasticised food itself.

“The alternative food supply chain – food coops, farmer’s markets, home delivery services and the like – take extra time and effort to deal with. In a sense, supermakets are ideally placed for the harried wage slaves that much of our society has become. I’d be the last to suggest that someone give up time with their children so they can spend more attention to detail in their shopping”.

High costs remains a barrier

There is another factor limiting the growth of the organic market – the higher cost of organic food.

The industry points out that the cost of organics reflects the higher labour costs associated with replacing chemical inputs with manual methods and by adopting techniques that maintain the quality and stability of agricultural soils. This is true, yet for many affordability remains the issue. The ability to pay the extra cost of organic food from a limited income is a deterrent to greater market penetration, a fact explained to me by a community worker. Her opinion was that cost will remain a barrier to the uptake of organics by lower socio-economic groups, the very people who would perhaps benefit most from it.

Some time ago, I asked an advocate of organic food who bought the stuff. His answer: “Mainly, people who can’t afford it”.

No solution for developing country farmers?

Access and lifecycle analysis might present real challenges to the organic industry in Australia, but the concerns of would-be organic farmers in developing countries are different.

Conventional agriculture substitutes labour with pesticides, herbicides, genetically modified (GM) crops and farm mechanisation. This makes it as attractive to developing country farmers as to those in the industrialised world. It is not due to the evil machinations of chemical companies, GM plant breeders and their spin merchants, as some Western environmentalists and organics advocates claim, but because it takes fewer people and less of the farmer’s time to grow conventionally managed crops than those farmed with organic or traditional methods. It does, however, require access to capital, credit, reliable irrigation and transport to market, needs that the many marginalised of farmers can ill-afford.

There is another barrier faced by developing country farmers. To export and sell their organically-grown produce in countries like Australia requires organic certification. Yet the cost of obtaining that certification can be a barrier, especially for small farmers. But not for all, however. Visit an organic food shop in any Australian capital and you will find organically certified teas and coffees imported under the ‘fair trade’ arrangement that guarantees reasonable returns to developing country growers and processors.

Also working against organic agriculture in developing countries is the perception that organics is a Western ideological issue that is being foisted onto farmers. An African delegate to the 2001 European Conference on Organic Production summed it up: “Organic production is typically the invention of the rich in Western Europe. They are now projecting their loss of nature and biodiversity onto developing countries”.

Challenges worldwide

Organic food is penetrating food markets thanks to fears over the health effects of conventional foods and genetic engineering. At the same time, producers of coffees and teas in countries such as PNG, Sri Lanka, East Timor and some South American states are taking advantage of the growing market in the West for their organic export crops.

Pressure from environmentalists over the issue of packaging waste is unlikely to slow the industry but it could become an irritant at the time when the clean, green credentials of organic food is being touted to a public ready to accept it.

Wordwide, the industry is in growth. If it can continue to fend off criticism by the purveyors of conventionally-produced foods, and if it can address the presently-minor challenge from Australia’s growing number of farmer’s markets, the industry should continue to grow.