Shopping List

I finally got a chance to go a do some grocery shopping this week and compare the prices of the organic products to that of their non-organic counterparts. I had some interesting findings, but first, I'll show you what those findings were. This particular shopping trip was to the Target off of County Rd. B. in Roseville, MN.

My Organic Shopping List: Adjusted Prices are in parentheses. Total amount spent on organic food in red if different than listed price.

Regular Green Peppers: $.99/pepper
Organic Green Peppers: $2.29/pepper

Regular Carrots: $.89/lb
Organic Carrots: $1.09/lb

Bananas: $.49/lb ($.88) - I bought regular bananas instead of organic.
Organic Bananas: $.89/lb

Tomatoes: $2.99/lb
Organic Tomatoes: $4.99/12oz ($6.67/lb)

Beef: $3.29/lb(sale)
Grass Fed Beef: $4.49/lb (sale)

Chicken: 5.99/14oz
Free Range Chicken: 4.49/14oz (sale)

Milk: 1.74/.5 gal
Organic Milk: 3.19/.5 gal

So how much more expensive is organic than regular groceries? In total, on these organic items, I spent $20.54. In comparison, if I had bought the regular items I would have spent $15.89. Buying organic then, was a 29% increase over the cost of non-organic items. I'll try to put that in perspective a bit. Normally, I spend about $75, every time I go to the grocery story (on average). If I were trying to buy everything from my grocery list organic, I would end up spending about 96.75 (based on a 29% price increase).

However, that's not the whole story either. If you look closely at some of the price comparisons per item, you'll notice that some are more significant than others. Tomatoes and green peppers had the highest increase in price over my entire list. On the other hand, I found that it really wasn't too much more expensive to buy carrots or bananas organic. These items respectively cost $.20 and $.40 more per lb. Even if you bought large quantities of them, it's unlikely you would notice a huge hike in your grocery bill since both items are available for less than $1.25/lb.

I was also able to find some meat on sale for cheaper than what I would have expected. The Free Range Chicken was actually cheaper on sale than the the regular chicken and the grass fed beef wasn't exorbitantly more expensive than the regular beef. Though I doubt this is always the case, what it does prove is that you can find good deals on these items if you look hard enough.

Of course when making these purchases we have to weigh the costs of the environmental impact as well. It may not be too long before humanity realizes the impact of many industrial farming practices. However, it's equally hard to tell a poor person living from paycheck-to-paycheck that they should spend 29% more on groceries. The questions then are twofold. They are "Can we afford to buy organic food?" and "Can we afford not too?"