Organic prices comparable

By Laura Clark

Published: August 13, 2008

If farmers markets have taken on a bourgeois feel with their $6 goat cheese rounds and $15-a-pound shiitake mushrooms, consumers may be surprised to learn that basic fruits and vegetables, even those organically and sustainably grown, compare in price to supermarkets.

“We’ve been growing naturally for 28 years,” said Dorothy Nelke of Nelson County’s Nelke Farm. “Our take on organics is that it’s never going to be sustainable unless it’s available to everybody.”

Tomatoes, locally ripe and abundant now, average about $2.09 a pound at the farmers markets in Lynchburg, Lexington and Nellysford. Head to the Madison Heights Wal-Mart or Lovingston Food Lion, and you’ll pay an average of $2.23 a pound for tomatoes ranging from beefsteak to vine-ripened. Neither Wal-Mart nor the Food Lions offer local or certified-organic produce, though the Lovingston store is in the process of opening an organic section.

The USDA, besides recommending people eat three to five vegetables and two to four fruits per day in its ubiquitous pyramid, keeps tabs on the rising price of food. According to the USDA, fresh fruit prices are up 3.1 percent and fresh vegetables are up 8.4 percent from June 2007.

Searching for the best deal, the Nelson County Times compared prices of green bell peppers, green beans and blackberries in addition to tomatoes sold at the farmers’ markets and the grocery stores. The findings: Green bell peppers cost on average 50 cents less at the markets. Green beans are about 60 cents more at the market. And domestic blackberries are almost twice as expensive in the grocery store.

The factors influencing food prices can vary as much as the prices. Farmers consider labor intensiveness, as well as inputs like compost or fertilizer. They also consider availability of individual items.

For instance, the more cantaloupes that hit the market in the coming weeks, the more prices will drop. And when the market opens, farmers check out each other’s prices for like items. And then they check out the grocery store is charging.

Nelke, who sells one day a week at the Charlottesville market, heads to Food Lion when she starts picking a specific vegetable.

“I say, ‘Would I pay a dollar and a half for one pepper?’ And if the answer is no, I wouldn’t charge you a dollar and a half,” she said.

Nelke works to keep inputs low at her farm. For instance, she produces all of her own fertilizer for crops, with her pigs, chickens, compost and cover crops. Her single-biggest costs are seeds. She spends about $1,200 on seeds each year. From that she gets about 15,000 plants, selling at the market what she won’t plant on the farm. The 20-by-48-foot greenhouse that makes such starts possible can go through 10 gallons of fuel a day in the cold early spring. Because the Nelke Farm makes its own biodiesel from used vegetable oil mixed with fossil fuel, the greenhouse heats for $4 a day versus the $36 a day it would cost with conventional heating methods such as wood or gas.

Nelke takes an overall approach to the make the farm profitable, finding a balance between more productive crops and less productive crops. For instance, Nelke doesn’t plant space hogs like corn. And new potatoes are more cost-effective than mature potatoes.

A small farm, of course, has more control as a business than nationwide chains in deciding what to charge for fruits and vegetables. Personal beliefs influence the price as well. The mother of two grown sons, Nelke remembers how much it took to feed her family. You have to make enough to support what you do, she said, while at the same time understanding a consumer’s budget goes only so far.

“I think eating healthy is something that has to be available to everybody,” she said.

Weather is probably the only factor that influences both grocery and farmers’ prices. The cost of fuel is minimal for an operation like Nelke’s, which doesn’t travel far and uses minimal fossil fuel for the biodiesel and water pump. For a grocery chain hauling tons of food across the nation, the fuel costs add up.

But the rising price of fuel is not alone in causing the jumps, said Food Lion representative Karen Peterson.

“For example, the cost of corn, utilities, maintenance, product shortages, bad weather and the increased demand for items such as milk and dairy products all impact prices,” she said. “The current price increases are worldwide and an industrywide issue.”

Peterson said Food Lion tries to keep all costs down by working to improve fuel efficiency on the transportation side and save energy in individual stores.

An independent public policy group, Farm Foundation, recently commissioned economists to study what was driving food prices. The researchers pointed to three broad factors: global change in production of and consumption of key commodities; the depreciation of the dollar; and growth in the production of biofuels. These factors have less impact on the price of a tomato versus the price of milk, but nonetheless affect a grocery store’s prices compared to farmers markets.

Beyond comparing price, there are some values that cannot be quantified to help consumers make shopping decisions. Does a market tomato taste better than a grocery tomato? Is there a difference in nutritional content based on how and where vegetables are grown? What is the impact on the local economy, or the environmental byproducts of different food production or distribution?

These questions await answers. In the meantime, when it comes to shopping at the farmers market or Food Lion, the price disparity of seasonal fruits and vegetables may be less of a deciding factor.