How to Make Organic Food More Affordable To All? 16 Tips

How to make organic food more affordable? Purchasing organic food not only promotes the more humane treatment of animals, lowers your family’s exposure to hazardous chemicals, and increases farmer income, but it also aids in environmental protection. I’ve been considering all of these factors a lot recently, especially with Earth Day quickly coming.

As everyone has observed, organic food and goods are more expensive. Only 1% of cropland in the U.S. is organic, so this higher price point is a result of both a restricted supply and more expensive organic growing methods. However, buying organic is more feasible than people realize—at least occasionally.

Why Organic?

Why is the availability of organics so crucial in the first place?

This is why: Organic products should be available and cheap to everyone since they are excellent for the environment and human health.

Studies have linked eating organic to a number of positive health outcomes, which are crucial during a pandemic. The principal component of Bayer-chemical Monsanto’s Roundup, glyphosate, causes cancer. According to recent research by Friends of the Earth, switching to an organic diet reduced levels of this cancer-causing substance by 70% in participants’ bodies in just one week.

Numerous studies have linked the use of conventional meals to health issues and diseases caused by the chemicals employed in the manufacture of traditional foods. For instance, one study discovered that exposure to combinations of fungicide, herbicide, and insecticide might cause DNA damage and increased blood cell death. The onset of Parkinson’s disease and depression have both been linked to pesticide exposure.

The more than 700 chemicals used to make conventional meals are the major justification for avoiding them. Antibiotic usage is prohibited in organic farming, which reduces the emergence of antibiotic resistance.

Numerous research that all discovered lower frequencies of antibiotic-resistant microorganisms on organic animal products than on conventional animal products have corroborated this.

Studies demonstrating the reduction of pollinators including honeybees, native bees, butterflies, and birds have alarmed even home gardeners. Numerous pesticides, including those applied at home and those supplied by nurseries, are fatally poisonous to bees and other pollinators and cause colony collapse disorder, or CCD.

Obstacles for Organics

Organic foods are frequently criticized for being too difficult to get and afford. Let’s examine some of the barriers that prevent some consumers from purchasing organic foods and what may be done to overcome them.

Access to organic food is hampered by geographical limitations. Fresh organic food is just not readily available in some neighborhoods, where the closest grocery shop is several miles away and the convenience store is the most convenient place to buy food.

Fresh goods have a limited shelf life, thus convenience stores often only stock items they are confident will be popular, such as Red Delicious apples, foreign bananas, and maybe some citrus fruit. These are extremely unlikely to emerge because there are no distribution routes and no market for produce at convenience shops.

People cannot afford or do not have access to public transit to travel to stores that provide organic food in so-called “food deserts,” which are places where a convenience store is the only location to buy food.

Organic food is difficult for customers to get because of a lack of storefronts, distribution issues, high demand, and geographic remoteness. Organic food is sold to customers in the United States “through three primary venues: regular grocery shops, natural food stores, and direct-to-consumer channels,” according to the USDA. We must increase public awareness of the accessibility issue if we want to grow these businesses.

Concerns about food accessibility have been addressed through the establishment of several programs and lobbying initiatives. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, for instance, sponsors the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which aims to provide low-income households additional spending power.

Nonprofit organizations like Only Organic are taking accessibility into account in another manner. We address accessibility issues by bringing organic food to your neighborhood. By supporting GRO Organic, a voluntary checkoff program that donates crucial funds to the organic sector to aid in research, education, and marketing, we also contribute to the growth of the organic business.

Our initiatives to increase the sales of organic food and make it available to every home are bearing fruit. Nearly 20,000 natural food outlets and nearly three out of four conventional supermarket stores now carry organic items. More than 80% of American families are said to have reported buying organic, according to the Organic Trade Association, which cites an increase in organic sales.

The organic industry in the United States had a stellar year in 2019, bringing in a record $55.1 billion, an increase of 5% from the year before. As consumer demand has grown, more land and businesses are switching to certified organic cultivation. In the United States, there will be 19,888 certified organic enterprises in 2020–21, up 4% from the previous year, according to the trade newspaper Feedstuffs.

How to make organic food more affordable?

Here are 16 ideas on how to make organic food more affordable

1. Be open-minded about the brands you purchase

Although I have a few favorites, I would go bankrupt if I just bought those brands. You’ll save a ton of money by purchasing any organic milk, meat, veggies, or snacks that are on sale. Additionally, you could discover new favorites that you otherwise wouldn’t have tried.

2. Produce Yourself

Many people find themselves cultivating what they cannot get in their town in order to have access to fresh organic meals. All around the country, gardens are sprouting as a method of ensuring food security, from windowsills to rooftop gardens to garden boxes.

3. Buy things at Trader Joe’s

Although I hate the packaging waste at Trader Joe’s, it’s a terrific location to purchase inexpensive organic food. Bring your own reusable shopping and produce bags to save waste, and whenever feasible, purchase their loose produce rather than pre-packaged.

4. Plan your meals to prevent food waste

Make a few meals, lunches, and snacks in advance, then go shopping with a (flexible) list in hand. Simply omit the parsley if one of the recipes you intended to make called for it but not the others. When the dish will taste fine anyway, there is no reason to spend money on something you would ultimately waste most of.

5. Make Use of Delivery Services

Although we advocate shopping locally, delivery services assist individuals who lack access to local organic food. A produce delivery service might be a fantastic choice if you’re dissatisfied with the local selection, pricing, or availability of organic in your neighborhood. Every day, new services appear.

6. Avoid “stocking up.”

Purchasing a lot of something while it’s on sale is more likely to result in food waste than cost savings, which may seem paradoxical. Keep your freezer and pantry supplies minimal so you can quickly see what you have and what you actually need to acquire.

7. Adopt a CSA

Community-supported agriculture, or CSA, is quickly becoming a practical and affordable option to purchase organic goods.

In order to plant precisely what their community wants and to secure a sale at harvest, many farmers take part in two different forms of CSA programs. Offering a box of seasonal food for CSA members to pick up is the more conventional approach.

A more recent approach comprises a pre-selected discounted buying card with a set amount of money to spend on seasonal food at a big discount. With this system, consumers may purchase exactly what they want in advance, choose it, and invest in the farmer in advance of the growing season.

You may have economical access to a variety of organic goods with only one CSA share. As an alternative, you can divide a share with a buddy to further reduce the cost of your investment. In either case, it’s a fantastic concept and essential to the survival of small farmers all around the United States.

8. Make meals with beans

Dry beans are cheap and provide a powerful economic punch. Every week, I prepare a batch that I use for soup (1-2 meals), salad (one meal), quesadillas (one meal), and vegetable dip (3-4 snacks). This is a fantastic, inexpensive method to obtain protein.

9. Community Gardens

Community gardens initially debuted in the United States in the 1890s, and in these uncertain times, they are once again growing in popularity across the country. On a parcel of land they share, the community grows fresh produce.

Use the American Community Garden Association website to find out whether your neighborhood has an organic garden initiative and to become involved in the joy of planting, growing, and harvesting. If you can’t find one, use this resource to develop a community garden.

10. Utilize a lot of frozen vegetables

Even at Whole Foods, a large bag of organic broccoli florets, cauliflower, green beans, peas, and other vegetables often costs approximately $2.

11. Food pantries and banks

Because organic fruit, like all products, has a relatively short shelf life, farmers who are unable to sell their harvest frequently turn to food banks to help meet the needs of their local communities and prevent the harvest from going bad on the vine. Farmers and customers that require assistance gain from this.

Food banks and pantries provide free, local food that has been provided by farmers, neighbors, community gardens, grocery shops, and retailers to thousands of communities around the U.S. These soup kitchens, also prepare meals for individuals without the resources to cook a nutritious meal, are frequently related to the food banks and pantries.

12. Frequently go shopping

Divide the trip over 2-3 trips and schedule fewer days per trip than you would if you made a big shopping trip every week. You’ll squander less, use your resources more effectively, and you could even discover that you have enough food in the refrigerator, freezer, and pantry to last longer than you anticipate.

13. Join or Create a Buying Club

There could be buying clubs in your neighborhood. For instance, local food coops and Costco are sometimes referred to as buying clubs. We advise starting a club with your neighbors to buy goods in bulk and save money. This is something a bit unusual.

Americans may save an average of 89 percent on food expenses by purchasing their organic goods in bulk, according to research by the Portland State University Food Industry Leadership Center for the Bulk is Green Council. Purchasing food in bulk would also prevent hundreds of millions of pounds of garbage from ending up in landfills.

14. Make plans based on what is on sale

If green beans are on sale for $1.50/lb but asparagus is $4/lb and I was planning to roast asparagus for supper, I would choose the green beans. If there are no good deals, I go on to the frozen section.

15. Kitchen Hubs

Specifically from local and regional producers, a food hub is a “company or organization that actively handles the aggregation, distribution, and marketing of course-identified food items to increase their capacity to serve wholesale, retail, and institutional demand.” Learn more about your neighborhood’s food center and the reasons it doesn’t provide your neighborhood with organic food.

16. Meat can be used as an “accent” component

You don’t have to give up meat if your family likes it. However, switching from using meat as the main course to using it as a “side dish” can not only help you save money but also improve your health.

For instance, top a corn and potato chowder with two crispy bacon pieces, serve a spaghetti dish loaded with vegetables with a few sausage slices on top, and create a chili with a third of a pound of ground beef and loads of beans rather than largely meat.

Final thought

When choosing which foods to buy organic, Only Organic emphasizes that eating during the local harvest season might be less expensive than purchasing food that needs to be sent from another location. We also provide advice on how to preserve organic crops to save money. Read our blog post on purchasing organic on a budget if you’re seeking for additional strategies to stick to a budget.

Knowing where to find and how to cultivate organic food can help assure healthy alternatives for both you and the environment since every dollar spent on organic at the grocery store, farmers’ market, or directly from an organic farmer is a significant vote for our country’s food future.

Although buying organic often looks more costly at the register, by avoiding the toxins in conventional food, you’re investing in a healthy food future for all of us. In order to make organic food more inexpensive and widely available, we hope you would utilize and spread this knowledge.

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