Australian households now spend 3 per cent less of their annual household budget on food than they did in the mid-'80s and a substantial percentage less than their 1950s counterparts, but people still complain about the price of food and scoff at organic produce as elitist. Yet according to the organic industry - and writers such as Pollan and Singer - the extra money you pay for organic produce brings the price closer to the real value of producing the food. It is even argued that the price you pay is something of a bargain if weighed against costs to health and the environmental damage caused by much conventional intensive farming. Singer argues that today's cheap prices are being subsidised by future generations.
According to Scott Kinnear, a director with Biological Farmers of Australia, there is "a touchy feely trendy side to organic food and that is all very nice, but what we really have to do is look over the horizon and understand the ethics of what we are eating".
"We should be aware of how food is being grown and if it is sustainable," he says. "We should be paying small farmers more so that it is easier to source products locally rather than have them travelling great distances."
Kinnear is definitely "old-school" organic, as interested in rural social systems and workers' rates and conditions as he is in health - the reason increasing numbers of people join the organic parade. Being old-school, he is suspicious of Woolworths and Coles dipping their toes into the organic market, citing the US experience of big business latching on to organics and making it an industrial process, albeit with fewer chemicals. Big versus small organics is becoming an ethical issue in itself.
Pierce Cody, owner of the Macro Wholefoods chain of organic supermarkets, which will have four branches in Melbourne by the end of the year, straddles the big and little divide. He knows he is looked on with suspicion by many traditionalists but believes "if you keep it small, fewer people will buy organic, fewer acres are returned to their natural state, less good food is produced and the other guys stay in business longer".
There is also a definite whiff of the evangelical in Cody that underpins the rapid expansion: "I've seen a battery chicken farm and it was horrific, like a death camp." He believes putting ethical products within easy reach of people relieves the guilt of choosing convenience over conscience when shopping for dinner, and is good for the planet.
Shopping ethically is also a problem for chefs (and hence their customers), when much ethically sound produce is expensive and its supply less than reliable. Justin North, owner/chef of Sydney's Becasse restaurant, recently published a book (Becasse) that goes into great detail about the producers from whom he sources his food. He says organics are great but too tricky for a restaurant like his. Yet he is also concerned about the way the animals he uses are treated and the way his produce is farmed. His solution? Go meet the farmers.
