Bread, pasta, rice, fruit, vegetables, cheeses and biscuits: all free from pesticides and preservatives. In short, a healthy organic shop that satisfies consumers but which, according to a widespread misconception, is hard on the wallet.

The spread of organic

Give up? Not at all! Today it is possible to navigate between specialist shops, natural produce markets, and mail-order deliveries of wholegrains and honey produced just as organic standards require. Large-scale retail has also begun to wink at the health-conscious customer, filling supermarkets with wholemeal pasta, soya milk, cane sugar and much more. Even barley, millet, spelt and oats — foods with remarkable nutritional properties — have come back into fashion after having fallen into obscurity.

An ever-growing appetite for organic

And how is the public responding? Setting aside the shopping addicts — buyers who wander around shopping centres loading up on packets and tins, only to put them away at home without even opening them — the desire for clean food is confirmed by recent research from Censis: twenty million Italians say they are willing to add to their basket products from organic farming that are in keeping with the environment and their health, provided the price increase does not exceed 30 per cent.

More expensive, but far healthier and more nutritious

But is there a reason for the higher costs? However much the organic market may grow, it will never be able to match the prices of the conventional one. And rightly so, because producing organic means more care, more labour and consequently higher production costs. Consider that natural fertilisers cost more than synthetic ones; that the harvest, though of better quality, is smaller in quantity; that controlling weeds requires mechanical and physical means that are generally very costly; and that distribution costs have a significant impact, even if there is considerable scope for them to fall given current trends in the spread of organic. Then there is processing, which comes at a higher price: to make spaghetti, penne and the like, spring water is used and drying is carried out at a temperature no higher than 55 degrees, not the hundred degrees used in conventional industry. The same applies to all other food products and beyond.

In short, the verdict is that organic food is more expensive but undoubtedly healthier and more nutritious: it is therefore possible to consume a smaller amount of it, offsetting the original price difference. One final observation: if the damage caused by chemical agriculture to the environment were factored into production costs, as is only right, the cost of organic food would be decidedly lower than that of conventional produce.

Massimo Ilari