Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[barbaracamie]

Certified organic products are generally more expensive than their conventional counterparts (for which prices have been declining) for a number of reasons:

Organic food supply is limited as compared to demand;
Production costs for organic foods are typically higher because of greater labour inputs per unit of output and because greater diversity of enterprises means economies of scale cannot be achieved;
Post-harvest handling of relatively small quantities of organic foods results in higher costs because of the mandatory segregation of organic and conventional produce, especially for processing and transportation;
Marketing and the distribution chain for organic products is relatively inefficient and costs are higher because of relatively small volumes.

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Barbara Camie
Agriculture Organic Food Specialist
Managment Group
http://www.flu-information.be/tamiflu-information.html