Is the luck of the organic about to run out? So said a recent headline in The Grocer magazine, and he got me thinking. Could food retailers really question the future of organic offerings? And why can that be? Is the cost-of-living crisis putting premium-priced organic products out of reach for even the wealthiest consumers? That's certainly the case, but it turns out it's not even half of it, writes Matt Ridley.

It's true that the value of organic sales has plummeted 3,8% in the last year as shoppers have turned to lower-priced non-organic options. Compared to food price inflation of more than 9% over the same period, that's a considerable drop.

But other factors may also be fueling concerns for food retailers. For them, the number one issue at all times is the reputation and integrity of their brand among customers, whose loyalty and trust they value above all else. In relation to organic products, that is a big problem, because most of the organic products that are sold in British supermarkets are private label lines. According to Kantar research recently quoted in The Grocer, supermarket own-brand ranges account for 51,7% of organic value sales.

Therefore, for the retailer, any risk to the reputation of the organic brand is also considered a risk to the label under which it is sold.

And in the past few months alone, those risks have been piling up.

The outbreak of war in Ukraine has once again highlighted the precarious balance between global food supply and demand, raising immediate concerns about food security and food price inflation. This, in turn, has caused many to question the wisdom of agricultural policies that promote low-yielding farming systems, such as organic. A June 2021 meta-analysis of studies found that, on average, organic crop yields are 29-44% lower than non-organic. So with organic farming, around a third less food is produced in the same area of ​​cultivation.

This is why, following the Russian invasion, Emmanuel Macron said the EU should fundamentally review its Farm to Fork Strategy, which aims to increase the share of organic farmland to 25% by 2030. The French president acknowledged that the policy would reduce EU food. production by 13% and that it was “based on a pre-war world of Ukraine”.

Here in Britain, the Soil Association has called on the Government to exceed the EU's farm-to-fork target for organic farming, while a 2021 report from the Food Farming and Countryside Commission advised a full transition to its brand. of 'agroecology' (agriculture without artificial foods). pesticides or fertilizers = basically organic) by 2030.

With food prices soaring, now may not be a good time to switch to more land-intensive organic farming. Credit: FAO.

Beyond the wake-up call of the Ukraine situation, a succession of recent events has highlighted the sheer folly of these suggestions.

The first is the central role of organic agriculture in fueling Sri Lanka's devastating economic collapse and recent civil unrest.

In April 2021, Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa announced a ban on importing most pesticides and all synthetic fertilizers to make them completely organic. Within months, the volume of tea exports had halved, cutting into foreign exchange earnings. Rice yields plummeted, leading to an unprecedented requirement to import rice. With the government unable to pay its debt, the currency collapsed.

Yields of special crops such as cinnamon and cardamom collapsed. Staple foods became infested with pests causing widespread famine. As Ted Nordhaus of the Breakthrough Institute put it in March: “The farrago of magical thinking, technocratic arrogance, ideological deception, selfishness, and sheer short-sightedness that produced the crisis in Sri Lanka implicates both the country's political leaders and advocates. of -so-called sustainable agriculture.”

Sri Lanka's ability to import much-needed supplies is affected as much as the country's ability to grow without fertilizer. Credit: Central Bank of Sri Lanka.

Organic advocates have quickly distanced themselves from the Sri Lankan experience as the crisis has deepened. “We would never advocate for a nation like this to go organic overnight,” protested the Soil Association. But the reality, as science writer Cameron English recently observed, is that this is a foolish attempt at saving face.

“It takes 10 years or 100 years; no matter. The problem is not the transition period. We know that organic agriculture alone cannot produce the amount of food we need to feed the world. The research has been done, the evidence is available. All this was known long before the events in Sri Lanka unfolded. The country's agricultural scientists knew about it and were ignored."

A heavy blow then (and barely mentioned in the BBC's reporting on the Sri Lanka crisis) to claims that organic farming can feed the world more sustainably.

Another issue that must concern the retail giants is the extent to which they can genuinely trust the provenance of organic products. This was underscored recently when a US farmer . was accused of fraudulently embezzling $46 million by passing off chemically treated corn and soybeans as organically grown.

The inescapable fact here is that there is no laboratory test available to differentiate between organic and non-organic products, and a lot of reliance must be placed on it. And when UK government pesticide residue surveys routinely report detectable levels of pesticides in organic produce, for example, samples of organic potatoes, bell peppers, mushrooms and an organic raspberry apple soft oat bar were reported to contain residues of pesticides in the most recent survey. Profile fraud cases like this inevitably raise questions.

But in addition to considerations of price, sustainability, and integrity, the relative safety of organic food should be a major and growing source of concern for food retailers.

Scientific evidence indicates that the food safety risks of eating organic foods are considerably greater than those of eating non-organic foods. This is primarily because organic crop production relies on animal feces for fertilizer, an obvious vector for potentially lethal fecal-to-oral foodborne pathogens, but also because organic crops may be more prone to harmful mycotoxins due to inadequate control of crop pests. and diseases

In his 2019 book The Myths About Nutrition Science, food and nutrition advisor David Lightsey cites an analysis of food safety recall data from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. eight times more likely to be recalled than conventional foods for safety reasons.'

Comparison between organic food product sales growth and organic food product recalls. Credit: Mesbahuddin Chowdhury et. Alabama.

As if to prove the point, a trawl through recent US food safety incidents reveals recalls of organic strawberries (May 2022: Hepatitis A concerns), organic smoothies (June 2022: norovirus) and organic blueberries (July 2022: lead contamination). More recently, products containing organic tara flour (an organic ingredient imported from Peru and apparently used without any food safety assessment) have been linked to more than 470 people becoming ill with fever, vomiting, diarrhea, and high liver enzyme levels. : at least 25 people. have had to have their gallbladder removed as a result.

But the aforementioned organic blueberry recall may provide a clue to where the organic sector seems to be losing its way, fueled by unrealistic and unattainable global growth ambitions. The berries in question, recalled due to dangerously high levels of lead contamination, were freeze-dried organic blueberries imported into the United States from Lithuania.

Similarly, when the Ukraine crisis erupted, there were reports of a Black Sea “absolute stranglehold” on organic grains, with an estimated 50 percent of UK organic wheat and 75 percent of organic maize originating in the UK. the ports of the Black Sea.

Ukraine's grain exports have collapsed due to the war. Credit: State Customs Service of Ukraine.

When organic marketing resolutely conjures up images of the family farm, fresh, artisanal, and local, this is sure to set off alarm bells even among the most ardent supporters of the organic movement.

Small-scale, locally produced and catering to a specialist 'lifestyle' market, organic has its place. But the more its proponents claim that organic farming holds all the answers to global food security, healthier diets and climate change, and the more scientific evidence emerges to the contrary, the more harm they will inflict on themselves.

Meanwhile, the conflict in Ukraine is prompting many to think again about yield-enhancing technologies such as GM crops.

As 159 Nobel laureates led by Sir Richard Roberts pointed out in an open letter on GMOs to Greenpeace, the United Nations and governments around the world: “There has never been a single confirmed case of a negative human or animal health outcome. from its consumption. Its environmental impacts have been repeatedly shown to be less harmful to the environment and a boon to global biodiversity.”

It's time to listen to science.