More than Peace of Mind

For an environmentally conscious few, Friday is not just the start of the weekend; it is free-trade Friday—that special day of the week when organic bananas are available in Harvard dining halls. Branded with an “organic” label, such bananas reassure the Birkenstock wearer that he has hugged his equivalent of a tree that day. Pressed for specifics on the banana’s virtues, said eater will give some mealy-mouthed response (maybe it’s the taste?). Despite the apparent frivolity of organic food, however, there are concrete health and environmental advantages that one would be foolish to ignore.

For most people organic food remains a luxury item. It comes down to a question of budgeting: Buying organic may be desirable, even cooler, but it is hardly necessary. Sure we would all prefer Burberry and Audi, but Gap and Kia are more affordable and just as functional.

Organic food stretches the purse strings because it is grown with naturally derived fertilizers and pesticides, which are pricier than their chemically derived counterparts. This decision then translates into higher labor costs when spreading the bulkier fertilizer (i.e. manure) which in turn translates into a seemingly outrageous price at Whole Foods.

Yet prices can be beguiling; they do not always reflect the true costs of production. Significant economic costs are excluded from the price tag at the grocery store.

Currently, 447 million kilograms of chemical pesticides are used in U.S. agriculture every year. Sure, they rid crops of pesky insects and fungi, but most of them are carcinogenic. Although conventional farms must abide by EPA guidelines for safe levels of pesticide residue on crops, this does not protect the thousands of farm workers who suffer severe illnesses from having to spray the toxins. At current levels of pesticide residue, none of us will be suing Harvard University Dining Services for feeding us conventionally grown tomatoes at the salad bar. But long-term consequences are largely unknown and a cause for concern because of time lags between exposure and a disease’s development. For example, DDT was once a widely used insecticide, then certified as “harmless,” but has now been linked to an increased likelihood of premature birth and cancer.

A 2003 study at the University of Washington found that children on primarily organic diets had pesticide levels six to nine times lower than those on conventional diets. Whether this difference translates into concrete health benefits is still unclear. But, on the nutritional front, studies have shown that certain organic foods outmatch their conventional cousins in cancer-fighting antioxidant and vitamin C content.

Skeptics who ridicule fears over pesticide exposure are mum on the question of environmental degradation. Pesticides sprayed over sprawling corn fields in the Midwest do not magically disappear. Neither do nitrates from chemical fertilizers. They linger in the soil, and then seep into the water supply. Costs of treating water for just these byproducts are estimated at $300 million annually. And it is the consumer, not the farmer, who picks up the tab through higher water bills.

But water is only half the story. Conventional farmers can neglect nutrient availability by saturating depleted soils with chemical fertilizers. Dependence on chemical fertilizers imperils long-term food production because the soil’s natural nutrients gradually disappear. It’s like giving someone a respirator instead of clean natural air. Organic farming avoids this because “the organic farmer has more of an incentive to focus on soil nutrients [through crop rotation],” according to Michael Duffy, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University.

Defenders of non-organic food are quick to point out that advances in chemical fertilizers and pesticides are responsible for our country’s bounteous food supply. Yet a 33-fold increase in pesticide use since 1945 has not yielded a commensurate increase in food production. Rather, chemical advances have lowered present costs for farmers and saddled society with a burdensome environmental debt. Much of U.S. agriculture could be done organically at the same levels of output. Organic corn and soybean yields per acre in Iowa, according to Duffy, are even greater than conventional ones.

Environmentalism is arguably a luxury for Western nations. But it would be foolish (dare I say, inefficient) to ignore the real costs of conventional agricultural production. Organic farming will undoubtedly continue to have higher input costs, but it does not unduly burden society. Someone, in the end, has to pay.

This is not to say—following classical economic thought on externalities—that conventional farmers should be taxed and organic farmers subsidized. That (and current subsides for conventional farmers) is the subject of another discussion. Rather, people, beginning with students at Harvard, should reconsider the hidden economic consequences of their dinner choices. Maybe then, even the prospective investment banker and economics concentrator can become a fan of the organic banana.

William E. Johnston ’08, a Crimson editorial editor, is a social studies concentrator in Adams House.