Some Ado About Not Much

The title to this post being a warning that you may not find the subject matter very interesting.

Anyway, a while back I wrote a review of the book 'The Rebel Sell', co-authored by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter. While generally favourable I did have a few criticisms, including this one of the author's contention that, "the desire for organic is a straightforward bit of yuppie competitive consumption,"

"The primary weakness of the consumption example (to me) is that, clearly not all 'counter-cultural' purchases are made in pursuit of distinction or status. Lots of people buy organic produce, not to feel morally superior or just to be different, but because they're willing to pay more to avoid the negative externalities caused by pesticides. If everyone started buying organic food and it started being sold by Kraft or whoever, most of the current organic food advocates would see this as a good thing - not as a sign that organic was no longer cool and that it was time to buy something else."

So when Andrew Potter, who has a blog, wrote a post the other day on this particular topic, I was curious to read it.

It doesn't start off very promisingly, with the following passage being somewhat puzzling:

"But when I've argued with journalists, interviewers and other critics, the one point they reluctantly accept is that organic produce is very expensive, and they need some way of either justifying it or mitigating it, in a way that is not so obviously offensive to the working classes. To my mind, the most obvious answer would be to propose organic food subsidies for the poor. No one has ever suggested this to me, for an obvious reason: If we start subsidizing organic food for the poor, organic produce will lose its capacity to create an invidious contrast with the masses. That is, it will no longer serve as a marker of status."

As anyone who knows me is aware, I like cheese. As anyone who has bought cheese knows, it is expensive. Even buying big blocks of mild cheddar, you can meet your caloric intake a lot cheaper with most other foods.

So imagine this passage:

"But when I've argued with journalists, interviewers and other critics, the one point they reluctantly accept is that cheese is very expensive, and they need some way of either justifying it or mitigating it, in a way that is not so obviously offensive to the working classes. To my mind, the most obvious answer would be to propose cheese subsidies for the poor. No one has ever suggested this to me, for an obvious reason: If we start subsidizing cheese for the poor, cheese will lose its capacity to create an invidious contrast with the masses. That is, it will no longer serve as a marker of status."

Now, you might say, that's totally different, if you like cheese, you have to buy cheese, but organic food is just like normal food only more expensive - but then we're begging the question aren't we.

More substantively, Potter returns to his main point, that organic purchases are purely status driven, by quoting a NY Times editorial:

"Even a couple of years ago, the thought of Wal-Mart selling organic food would have seemed unimaginable. The only question is whether it would have seemed unimaginably good or unimaginably bad. That question has now been thrust upon us by Wal-Mart's recent decision to start offering organic food at just 10 percent over the cost of conventional food.

There is no chance that Wal-Mart will be buying from small, local organic farmers. Instead, its market influence will speed up the rate at which organic farming comes to resemble conventional farming in scale, mechanization, processing and transportation. For many people, this is the very antithesis of what organic should be.

People who think seriously about food have come to realize that "local" is at least as important a word as "organic."

Potter takes this as conclusive proof that organic purchases are status driven, concluding his post with,

"Right. Which is just another way of saying that, for people who think seriously about consumerism, 'status' is as important a word as 'justice'."

But let's think about this, the NY Times piece introduces two new pieces of evidence to the question under consideration.

On the one hand, an editorialist for the NY Times doesn't want to buy organic food from Wal-Mart. On the other hand, the people who make product selection decisions for Wal-Mart, one of the world's most successful retailers, think that enough people will buy organic produce from them that it makes sense to stock organic food.

Who is right? I guess we will see, but my money's on Wal-Mart. At any rate it hardly seems like a definitive answer to the question.

But let's say, for the sake of argument, that nobody will buy organic produce at Wal-Mart and the product launch will fail miserably (somewhat putting the lie to my assertion in my review that most organic buyers would be just as happy to buy Kraft Organic food at a low price as they are to buy organic food from some obscure label at a high price.

Potter assumes that people are either lying or mistaken about their motivation for buying organic produce because when Wal-Mart starts selling organic produce made by giant agri-business operations, organic food buyers now stipulate that buying local produce is important as well. In other words, he assumes they are lying in Case A because he assumes they are lying in Case B.

Under some circumstances, this can be a reasonable inference. For example, say I claimed that the reason I eat a lot of cheese is because I think calcium is an important part of the diet. And then when it was found (hypothetically) that you can't absorb calcium from cheese I stated that I eat a lot of cheese because it has a lot of Vitamin D - that would be pretty fishy.

On the other hand suppose that I stated that I watch hockey on CBC with the sound off because I find Jim Hughson annoying. Then, when they replaced Jim Hughson with Bob Cole, I changed my reason for watching hockey with the sound down to the fact that I found Bob Cole incoherent and incompetent. Nobody who watches hockey on CBC could doubt that this is a pretty plausible change in rationale.

So the question is, really, is how plausible is it that those who eat organic food because (to take just one reason) they are against pesticide use, also prefer to get their food from small scale local farms rather than giant agri-business companies? It seems pretty plausible to me, so the fact some people might not want to buy organic produce from giant agri-business firms provides very little evidence on the question of whether people eat organic food simply for the status it provides or for other reasons.

Getting back to reality, it seems quite obvious to me, just by doing a mental inventory of all the people I've known, that there is a mix of motivations for buying organic produce. In my experience there is certainly some element of status seeking in some cases, but this is small in comparison to those who prefer to buy from smaller local companies, and those concerned about agri-business farming methods in general, and those concerned about pesticide use. The majority I've known makes the decision based on taste, buying organic produce when the improved taste is enough to offset the increased price, and not buying when it doesn't.

Take this article for example, someone writes in complaining about the high cost of organic food. The columnist writes back explaining the lamentable fact that organic food is highly priced relative to non-organic food for a number of reasons. Do you suspect that the columnist is in reality only eating organic food because it's high price prevents people like the reader who wrote the question from being able to afford it?

I am puzzled why Potter remains so convinced that organic produce is pure status seeking, maybe he just happens to know a bunch of really shallow people? I mean, I certainly agree that many purchases involve status considerations, to varying degrees with different products (wine, is a particularly statusy example) and that there is a (small) element of this in organic food purchases. I just don't see the need to oversell this element, to the point of denying the existence of other motivations.

Potter starts his post by saying, "Of all the responses to the various arguments in The Rebel Sell, the most hysterical was the reaction to the short - and frankly, quite mild - comments we made regarding organic produce."

He then assumes that the motivation for the hysterical response is that, "There are a lot of people who have a vested interest in redescribing their status goods as virtuous." As far as I can tell, it has yet to occur to him that the reason for the 'hysterical' response is simply that he is wrong on this particular point and the intensity of people's reaction is proportional to their certainty on that point.

But hey, I'm just saying that because [insert assumption about my motivation here].