A new study finds that rapidly converting 30% of California agriculture to organic practices would dramatically increase food prices and shrink farm profits for the specialty market.
The California Farm Bureau commissioned the study to examine the European Union’s goal of converting 30% of agriculture to organic by 2030, which the Newsom administration has been closely eyeing.
The researchers narrowed their focus to tomatoes, a crop grown for processing into products like pizza sauce, ketchup and paste. California produces 95% of the nation’s processed tomatoes, which adds up to $1.2 billion in annual farm gate sales—though the drought has taken a devastating toll on these growers.
Farmers currently set aside just 5% of their land for organic out of the 228,000 acres dedicated to tomatoes statewide. The study found that artificially boosting that to 30% would cause substantial disruptions, dropping the organic price by nearly 30% while driving up the price for conventional tomatoes by 11%. Many farmers would struggle to keep their operations afloat under such a scenario, particularly when existing regulatory costs recently soared at least 265% in just a six-year span—and continue to rise. It would also affect downstream industries in processing, transportation and manufacturing along with input suppliers and farmworkers.
