July 22, 2007 11:00 PM UTC

Organic Boondoggle

• 5 Comments
• by: Yokel

So the other day, Mrs. Yokel and I went to the local froo-froo organic/gourmet grocery store.  Normally, I don’t tend to like the places – it seems to me you’re more likely to find salmonella than salvation in the “organic” food – but there I was.  I don’t mind Trader Joe’s, mostly because they’ve usually got a well-stocked aisle of good beers, and I can bide my time deciding which lucky six pack gets to go home with me while everyone else shops.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t a Trader Joe’s (we’ll call it the “Bran Barn” to protect the innocent) so I had to tag along through the rest of the store.  And that’s when I saw it.

I grew up on a farm, and would drive the grain cart during harvest in the summer.  Every so often, when the air conditioner couldn’t keep the hot afternoon sun out and the Rockies on the radio were in the 5th inning or so, I’d jump outside, climb up the grain cart, and grab a handful of fresh grains of wheat.  It wasn’t much, but it was a tasty snack on a hot afternoon.

In the aisles of the Bran Barn, I saw just that very same snack I used to enjoy so many years ago – whole grains of wheat.  It was in a clear plastic, generic cup with the “Bran Barn” logo on it.  They probably used the packaging for everything from almonds to sesame sticks.  But on the back of this cup was a sticker, on which was printed “Organic Wheat Berries,” and the price.

It cost $1.19 a pound.

I did a double-take to make sure I read that right.  And I had.  Then I looked again at the contents, and, sure enough, it was just whole grains of wheat, just like I used to snack on in the tractor.

Let’s do some math.  Wheat runs the gamut of weights, but a good round number that’s close is 60 pounds to the bushel.  That means the wheat at the Bran Barn cost $71.40/bushel. 

Hopefully I didn’t owe my dad *that* much for a couple of handfuls each summer.  So I looked up the current wheat prices, and found them running in the $5.25-$5.50/bushel range. 

That’s roughly nine cents a pound, or a 13x mark-up at Bran Barn.  I know the generic plastic cup didn’t add that much on the price.  And, while there’s no genetic modification or pesticides, reducing the yield, as well as a certification fee  for organic farming, it’s certainly not 1/13th the yield.  It’s not even close.

So how does Bran Barn justify a 13x mark-up off of market price for what’s basically a market product?  Heck if I know.  It wasn’t even that great of a snack – you’d practically break your teeth.  But it’s nice work if you can get it, I suppose.

And, Dad, if you’re reading this, I owe you about 99 cents.