(The Epoch Times)—Grocery shoppers in the United States have an abundance of options to choose from, and a wide range of prices accompanying varying selections.
Items labeled as organic typically sell for a premium over non-organic counterparts, but many consumers are unaware of the market forces that factor into the pricing.
Premiums, once as high as 170 percent for some items—such as spinach in 2015—are on the decline and are currently about 20 percent higher than conventionally grown produce, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
While all farms face certain regulatory hurdles at the federal, state, and local levels, organic producers are saddled with more comprehensive rules to abide by.
Organic food production is heavily regulated—forbidding genetically modified organisms as well as approximately 700 chemicals that are used in non-organic agriculture—and certification is required.
To achieve organic certification, farmers spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars annually to comply with record keeping requirements and prepare for regular document and facility inspections.
Non-organic farms do not have such overhead costs and thus have fewer expenses priced into the cost of goods sold.
Throughout the growing seasons, organic farms cost more to operate for a variety of reasons, and subsidies that disproportionately benefit chemically intensive agriculture exacerbate the price discrepancies, according to advocates for the organic industry.
Approximately 2 percent of the money allocated for research by the federal government since 2018 was focused on organic food production, according to data collected by the Organic Trade Association.
“We would really like to see more of a balance for the research money, especially because funds used for organic studies tend to benefit the entire Ag industry,” a spokesperson for the trade group told The Epoch Times.
Past research related to integrated pest management—where beneficial insects are used to manage invasive pests—for example, was initiated by organic producers, but the subsequent findings are now widely used.
One study from the U.S. National Institute of Health found a 95 percent reduction in insecticide use when pests are managed using natural methods.
With the bulk of federal dollars going to study non-organic practices such as how to use pesticides and herbicides banned in organic production, critics of the current system suggest the playing field is tilted toward farmers who use a wide range of chemicals.
It has resulted in significantly lower prices for some non-organic foods, including heavily processed fast foods, compared with organic, natural ingredients.
Advocates are currently lobbying federal lawmakers to boost investment in organic agriculture research.
More Expensive Inputs
Fertilizers used in organic production—including manure, alfalfa meal, and composted material, among other things—are more costly than synthetic versions like urea and ammonium nitrate, with estimates ranging from 20 to 50 percent higher for organic nutrients.
Conventional farms rely on synthetic materials developed since the 1950s with the invention of chemically intensive agriculture.
Organic farmers utilize crop rotation and cover crops to fix nitrogen in the soil, a method that builds soil health, improves water retention, outcompetes weeds, and reduces insect populations.
Spreading natural fertilizers and planting and plowing under clover, winter rye, and other cover crops requires the use of heavy equipment or laborers, depending on the size of the operation, which further adds to the cost of production.
Labor Intensive
Removing weeds is one of the costliest aspects of organic agriculture, as mechanical removal using weed eaters or flamethrowers is the preferred method and requires many hours of labor to eradicate nuisance plants.
“During part of the year, we spend more hours removing weeds than doing anything else,” Juan Guzman, a managing farmhand for organic vineyards in Northern California, told The Epoch Times.
“It’s the most important job because the weeds will steal food from the vines and reduce the yields if we don’t get rid of them.”
Non-organic farmers typically use glyphosate, sold under the brand name Roundup, to manage weeds. The cost of the chemical is offset by the ease of application, which helps lower production costs.
Supply and Demand
Also impacting pricing are the perennial forces of supply and demand, with health-conscious consumers seeking high-quality foods at increasing levels, while production has plateaued in recent years, and organic yields are slightly lower than conventional crops.
A thin market, with fewer producers than in the conventional sector, creates a situation where more dollars are chasing fewer goods, thus leading to higher pricing strategies at retail levels.
Imports of organic produce are increasing to meet the demand, with more than $4 billion of goods imported in 2023, according to the USDA.
However, margins for organic farms are slightly below the national average for non-organic farms, ranging from negative 3 percent to slightly higher than 20 percent, the National Center for Appropriate Technology concluded in a 2019 report.
Consumers Want Healthy, Affordable Food
Demand for organic food is at an all-time high, with approximately $64 billion worth of certified organic food sold in the United States last year, up from about $11 billion in 2000, according to the Agriculture Department’s 2025 situation report.
Families of all backgrounds across the United States are prioritizing healthy living, and a growing movement is popularizing a return to traditional farming methods that avoid synthetic chemicals.
“I don’t want that going into my child’s body,” Megan Armstrong, a resident of Huntsville, Texas, and mother of a 3-year-old, told The Epoch Times.
“It’s worth the extra bucks to keep my child safe.”
Another mother from Texas, Kelsey Facundo, said she prioritizes organic food for her children, while she and her husband oftentimes have to make do with what they can afford.
A homesteading mother said the difference in quality of organic and conventional meats is stark.
Animals raised for organic production are fed certified organic hay and grains, allowed to graze in pastures, and are strictly forbidden from eating genetically modified grains, which is the standard fare for conventional livestock production.
“I started finding local butchers to buy all my meat from,” Shanna Dixon told The Epoch Times.
“It’s worth the price because the taste is on another level, which really goes to show you what they are doing to the meat between the slaughter and the table to change the taste.”
Newly appointed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has long championed organic agriculture as part of his Make America Healthy Again agenda, and many advocates are anxiously watching his actions to see how new policies could impact the industry.
Regarding prospective reviews of the U.S. food supply, he said, “Nothing is going to be off limits,” during introductory remarks to his department on Feb. 18.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
