Does organic food have a perceived class problem?

Written by Matt Chittock for Wicked Leeks on the 20th November 2024. 

It’s no magic bullet, but organic farming is a proven way to work towards the environmental targets that government after government has claimed they’re committed to. It could also contribute to bringing down the £284bn health and productivity costs to UK taxpayers, as found in the recent The False Economy of Big Food report by the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission (FFCC)

So what’s preventing the UK from moving forward? Lack of availability, lower average yields, expense (more of which later) and the corporate monopoly of our food systems are all impediments to an en masse acceptance of organic as the ‘norm’.

But there’s another particularly English issue that feeds them all: organic food’s perceived class problem.

Here’s a quick thought experiment. Imagine that tomorrow Keir Starmer announced modest subsidies for organic farmers. Perhaps there’d be a photo opportunity outside Number 10, featuring a podium of organic produce and their proud, organic growers. 

Across most of Europe this would be a fairly neutral news story. But in England, the dailies would have a field day – accusing Starmer of promoting ‘posh produce’ at the expense of ordinary food. In the opinion columns that followed, journalists and farming union representatives would argue that organic is the preserve of the elites. That it’s backed by the likes of King Charles III and Lady Carole Bamford and eaten by out-of-touch celebrities at upmarket restaurants like Raymond Blanc’s luxury organic Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons. 

People who work in the trenches of the organic movement know this is laughably far from the truth. England’s organic market is made up of many more small, idealistic producers than aristocratic dilettantes, and underpinned by committed, ‘conscious’ shoppers with modest budgets.

So why is there this disconnect? How is eating organic seen as elitist in England while across Europe, good quality, pesticide-free food is very much a part of the presiding, normalised culture?

Talking to Live Frankly, Shane Holland, executive chair of Slow Food in the UK, explains that “Pre-1945 all food was organic. This was what we all ate and it was perfectly normal. But, ‘big food’ has done a really good job of telling us that the food that they’re producing is for everyone and organic food is for the elite.”

It’s also true that in the 1950s, we spent about half of our income on food, in the UK. Today we spend between eight to 15 per cent on it – necessitated by rising house prices, rent, energy, fuel and everyday living costs. Organic’s clearly a knotty subject – where cost, status and sustainability are tied up together. And starting to understand it means stepping back to the past.

Food as status symbol

Cultural food historian Rebecca Earle, explains there’s been a connection between social status and diet since the start of recorded history.

“There’s never been a utopian past where food was egalitarian because societies have been hierarchical for millennia and food is one of the ways that you mark that hierarchy,” she says.

In England’s colonial past, status was conferred by ‘exotic’ goods that came from ‘far away’, like spices from India or bananas from the Caribbean. And as its empire expanded, and global transport became cheaper, English merchants became infamous for hoovering up delicacies from other cultures (coffee, chocolate, tea, anyone?).

By the late nineteenth century, empire had established the building blocks of today’s food system. One where feeding the population relies on cheap foreign imports rather than home-grown food. This hasn’t just divorced shoppers from the actual work that goes into growing food (which is done halfway across the world by people we don’t know). It’s also starved our homegrown food culture.

Organic consultant Simon Wright has also seen how a casual question about an Italian delegate’s favourite pasta turned an industry dinner into a war zone when different people passionately argued for their local speciality.

“[In Europe] you get regional variations in a way you rarely get in the UK and everyone argues for the one they grew up with,” he says. “On the whole, we have quite a homogenised food culture in this country, and I think that’s one of the reasons that people just don’t get worked up about food in the way that other nations do.” 

The rise of cheap imports has also flipped traditional foodie status symbols upside down in England. Instead of far-flung items (which are now cheap and ubiquitous) status shifts to what’s rarer: food grown in this country without chemical fertilisers or pesticides.

You can see the effects in how we eat out too. Those eateries that celebrate the local, small-scale and organic are perceived as more ‘niche’, expensive or specialist – revealing the chasm between what was once utterly normalised and what has become ‘aspirational’.

“When we had our organic pub in London [The Duke of Cambridge] we were cheaper than every pub around,” says organic restaurateur Geetie Singh-Watson. “But people couldn’t acknowledge it – because they saw the word ‘organic and assumed we were expensive. And that’s because of the way that the media spins it and the supermarkets behave with their pricing.”

Lack of government support

Of course, more English people would be delighted to eat organic if they could afford to do so. Research from the Organic Market Centre shows that financial concerns are a significant barrier for shoppers, with 64 per cent feeling organic products are too expensive.

However, this price premium for organic is also a political choice. 

Across Europe, governments are able to connect the dots between sustainable production, food security, public health and a strong food culture dedicated to quality. This means they’re willing to use support and subsidies to bring the cost of organic down. 

For example, the EU has a clear commitment to farm 25 per cent of land organically by 2030. Germany wants to go even further, setting their own target at 30 per cent. 

In comparison, just three per cent of land in the UK is farmed organically, and the government doesn’t seem in a hurry to increase it. Instead, in the UK, demand for organic is driven purely by market forces.

“In other countries the organic market is government-led, managed and controlled. It’s so normal in Europe, but here we’ve created this profound separation,” says Singh-Watson.

“[In the UK] there’s certainly nothing like the level of government support that organic enjoys in countries like France, Germany, Italy or Scandinavia,” agrees Wright, who maintains that UK governments have had a hands-off approach to organic, with an attitude of “Well, you’re doing OK in the supermarkets, so you don’t need any extra funding.”

In Europe support isn’t just financial. Wright says that in Denmark organic food is served both in schools and government offices. “They have government support at a local and national level – which completely normalises organic food,” he says. “Growing up it’s just another part of life for people.”

The real cost of food

Today, any talk about cost has to acknowledge that shoppers have been battered by the cost-of-living crisis. The proportion of income we spend on food is low compared to other countries. And yet huge swathes of the population are priced out of even the cheapest diet. 

But there’s another important question around cost: what are the real costs of our current food system?

“I think it’s the environment that’s picking up the ultimate cost,” says Earle. “Our entire food system is premised on an environmentally damaging system, but the consumers in the shops aren’t paying the cost when they buy that product. And that’s part of the problem. There are people who say that the only way we’re ever going to feed people is by continuing this intensive, environmentally damaging form of agriculture, but we know that’s not sustainable.”

There have been attempts to make conventional food’s environmental cost visible. The German discount supermarket chain, Penny, ran a week-long True Cost campaign – changing prices on nine staple foods to reflect their ‘true cost’ to the environment. These environmental follow-up costs were much lower on average for organic products, making some of them cheaper overall, for customers.

Talking about the introduction of ‘true cost labelling’, Stefan Magel, Executive Board Member Retail Germany of the REWE Group and COO PENNY said, “We have to make the consequential costs of our consumption visible. Only then can consumers decide for themselves when shopping. There is no doubt that we, as a company operating in a highly competitive market, are part of the problem. I do believe, however, that by taking this step, we can become part of the solution.”

Fixing a broken food system

The truth is that our current food system is deeply broken – and organic has to be part of the solution. Relying on market mechanisms has meant that it’s become synonymous with status. But that’s just a construct (cemented in a very short space of time).

If the government got behind organic to reduce RRPs, local authorities put it on the menu, and supermarkets made it more available, maybe more people would see it was for them. And then it wouldn’t be seen as the preserve of higher-earners: but common – in every sense of the word. 

“The evidence shows that no matter how much money you have, you still want to eat well,” says Singh-Watson. “But we’ve created a society that doesn’t allow for that because of (among other things) our employment practices and the high cost of housing. So we build a narrative around how elitist organic is instead.”