If you’re an American reading this, the odds say you suffer from chronic disease — 60 percent of U.S. adults have at least one chronic disease, and 40 percent have two or more. Heart disease, cancer and diabetes are the leading drivers of the nation’s $3.8 trillion in annual healthcare costs.
The worst part? We’re doing it by eating food that’s bad for us. We’re eating ourselves to death.
And it’s not just how much we eat, or our addictive taste for ultra-processed foods. It’s the way we are growing our food. If we really want to turn this mess around and lower health care costs and the prices of groceries, we have to eat more organic foods grown on American Farmland. And we have to use fewer pesticides — a lot less.
U.S. organically grown food demand is soaring, with double-digit growth since 2000, reaching a record $70 billion in 2023. Traditional grocery stores like Walmart, Costco and HEB now sell more organic foods than natural food stores do.
Hippies in San Francisco aren’t driving this trend — moms and dads in Chevrolets are. They want the apples in their apple pies to be organic.
A Pew report proves it: 55 percent of the public says organic fruits and vegetables are better for our health than pesticide-laden produce. That number is only likely to grow; more than three in four millennial and Gen Z respondents say it is important to buy and eat organic food.
But production isn’t keeping pace. The Organic Farmers Association says we’ve been losing domestic organic acres and farms since 2021. And only 1 percent of farmland grows organically raised crops, despite 6 percent of the market being organically grown food.
To bridge the gap, we import nearly $3 billion a year worth of organic foods. We’re never growing coconuts in the U.S., of course, but it makes no sense to import organically grown corn, rice, soybeans, tomatoes, blueberries, strawberries and squash. We can grow those here, and in the process, we can Make America Healthy Again.
In February, President Trump created the Make America Healthy Again Commission. Among its responsibilities is to study “any potential contributing causes” to childhood diseases, “including the American diet” and the “over-utilization of medication, certain food ingredients, certain chemicals, and certain other exposures.”
We already know we should switch more acres to organic. Ask any American farmer whether he or she wants to grow food using a ton of pesticides and you’ll get a hard no. But there are real — and really expensive — barriers to switching.
For one, the government should keep its word on contracts it signed and guaranteed during COVID to reimburse organic farmers who invested in farm infrastructure. Nobody likes a welcher, especially a federal one. If we want to Make America Healthy Again, a good start would be to honor those signed contracts.
Next, try upping the incentives to shift to organic farming. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has the Transition to Organic Partnership Program, but even with past federal investments of $300 million to expand the effort, this is, to pardon the pun, small potatoes. We need to invest more, create new tax incentives for businesses who buy organic commodities domestically, and target grant funding to move away from pesticides to the foods the public wants.
What won’t help? Eliminating the EPA’s Office of Research and Development. Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency needs to take a mulligan on that, and instead put farmers and families ahead of chemical companies. Invest alongside farmers in research that supports the resilience of organic farming.
Last, we must go hard after the people who lie when they claim to produce organic products. Those soaring foreign organic imports have brought a higher incidence of foods fraudulently claiming to be organic. The Strengthening Organic Enforcement policies that went into effect in 2024 are a good start, but we need this administration to fight this fraud even harder.
George Washington said, “Agriculture is the most healthful, most useful and most noble employment of man.” That goes double for organic farming. If our food system on the whole is making us sick, organic farmers provide the best medicine with healthy food.
We have the answers. We just need to decide we have the will.
Ricky Silver is CEO of organic food provider Daily Harvest.
