Proud to be organic? Think organic is the best solution on offer for a more sustainable and equitable food and farming system? Well, let’s start sounding like we mean it says Organic Realfoods’ Charles Redfern in this passionately argued guest blog for Natural Newsdesk. 

With organic September around the corner, organic players will put a positive spin on the surge in sales with a growth of 7.3% to £3.7billion in 2024 – “double what it was 10 years ago”.  Deduct the 40% inflation in that period and it’s still up.  Compare it to the size of totally grocery sales, it looks puny. The soft drinks market alone, a broadly un-necessary consumption category, is worth £20 billion. If organic was just a “market” this wouldn’t matter but, if we’re saying that organic is about redefining how we farm and how we look after the land, then there’s a long way to go.

Here’s a few thoughts for what we need to do next.  

First, however unlikely a prospect, we need a levy system. The Organic Trade Board (latterly UKL Organic) which had to close this year failed to get enough traction, after years of hard graft from those involved, on the simple maths of Prisoner’s Dilemma – my personal versus the communal interest. Levy 1% of all organic sales and put it in a fighting pot and we would have some money to speak up for organic and it would be fairly financed.  

Second, it’s not fair that we pay to prove we are good and then those who are bad get away scot-free. And it’s worse than that, as anyone who has read anything about true cost accounting knows, bad food costs double: it’s paid for twice – once at our till, once in the taxes we pay out. Most of that extra cost is health costs but a big chunk is environmental cost. So, as I’m doing a unicorn wish list, I would say we need the levy paid for by the state and the tax system to give organic a decent chance right across the system from farm to plate, as people like to say.  Governments should pay for good outcomes.

Third – know your enemy.  I’ve come across organic people who actively think we are all part of one food industry. This could not be further from the truth.  Organic got killed by the “it won’t feed the world” mantra. This from people who don’t want to feed the world and whose food system doesn’t feed the world anyway – never has and never will. It’s one of those manipulative power slogans, like “take back control”, lapped up by so many people.It’s almost impossible to rebut because rebuttal isn’t pithy, it takes a whole lot of yawningly boring trumpeting of facts and, especially, constructing and sifting through context. Who pushed this slogan and many other calumnies and lies about organic? People in the food and agriculture industry. And that these enemies are super powerful, have loads of money and are protecting the vested interest organic is upsetting. They buy politicians, they buy media, and they buy public opinion.   

Fourth – don’t blame the farmers.  The very nature of capitalism centres on price, product and market. All these agricultural analyses that compare yields or theoretically re-allocate land or make assumptions about wildlife, carbon and all the rest of it seem to forget the starting point: it’s a market. In the UK the amount of land given to sugar beet alone is the same as all the land dedicated to growing vegetables. 56% of our calories, and more for children, are UPFs – that’s why we’re planting sugar.  But it’s more than that. I’m not sure I want to promote Clarkson’s Farm, but it does show the reality of farming as business.  It’s a difficult one because getting farmers to go organic is like asking your neighbour to go and pick up all the litter on the road or in the local park – why should they!?

Fifth a blended invocation for all those people who used to support and big up organic and now don’t dare say the O word – combine these three sayings “you better decide which side you’re on” /“a banker is someone who lends you an umbrella when it’s sunny and asks for it back when it’s raining”/“be careful what you wish for.  All those reports and studies, all those articles or blog pieces about what’s needed for a healthy food system and sustainable agriculture and, above all, every single paean in empty praise of the term “regenerative” by refusing to back organic, you’re not building bridges and you’re certainly not backing something better or discovering something new, you’re simply adding to the confusion and playing into the hands of the enemy. So, this Organic September, say it loud; I’m proud to be organic.  Buy organic, support organic, speak up for it.  

Charles Redfern is the founder of Organico Realfoods and Fish4Ever.