Written for Natural & Organic Monthly Roundup (September 2025)
During August I had two surprising encounters with organic producers. The first was at a local food festival, and featured an artisan producer of fermented organic pickles and sauces. His range was fully certified but did not mention Organic in the product title and his certification details were hidden round the back of the label in tiny text. The second was a very enthusiastic baker, who made no mention that he was using only organic flour. In both cases the producer said that they felt that having a prominent organic front-of-pack statement was not going to drive additional sales.
I was gobsmacked, both times. Great products, great provenance, the highest of environmental credentials – and you don’t want to tell anybody about it? What’s going on?
Further discussion revealed that both producers felt that if a product was labelled as organic, potential customers would think it was unnecessarily expensive. As it happened both sets of products were priced fairly for something made by a craft producer so little organic premium was noticeable.
So the problem is the perception of organic being expensive rather than the reality. And this is despite decades of our attempts to show how organic staples such as bread, carrots and potatoes can cost only a few pennies more than their non-organic counterparts. We know that if intensive producers had to pay all the costs associated with the growing of non-organic food, the price differential would narrow or even disappear. But no UK politician appears to have the cojones to take on the cheap-food lobby, despite the hidden costs it generates in terms of poor human health and negative environmental impact.
Maybe we need to take our lead from the city of Copenhagen who switched to fully organic school lunches without increasing the amount of money that parents paid. Only after the switch did they admit to removing red meat from the menu to balance the books. But since the kids were happy eating their new, delicious, plant-rich meals nobody cared.
Let’s see more of that ambition here.