[quote]That’s Australia. In some countries, including Canada, which still adheres to supply management in the dairy industry, it is almost double. At my local supermarket it is about 2.95 to 3.95 for a 4L bottle of milk. If it is organic it is about 5.95 to 6.95. That is nearly double.
Again, a lot of the premium California-based organic apple juice in supermarkets in North America is over $10. [/quote]
But you just explained why, in that very sentence: retailers charge that much because they can, not because it’s inherently more expensive to produce. The retail price of food is almost completely disconnected from the farm gate price because the supply chain is so long and convoluted.
As for the economist quote: I like that magazine, but they’re desk jockeys, not farmers. Farming isn’t like, say, aluminium smelting, which is done the same way all over the world and is easily costed. It’s an unbelievably complex operation that defies conventional economic analysis; there are simply too many different ways of doing things. One farm can be so different to another, even if nominally “organic” or “industrial”, as to defeat any facile comparison. This, for example, is utter bollocks:
In 1920, farmers were averaging 3 tonnes of wheat per crop (“Three Acres and Liberty”, Bolton Hall), fully organic. It’s now about 4 or 5 tonnes/ha per crop. Seriously, who cares about a 50% increase (not 300%), given the additional cost of fertilizers and pesticides, land degradation, and runoff pollution? The difference is even more marked in rice farming: “green revolution” chemical-fed rice delivers 5-6tonnes/ha, while best-practice organic methods deliver 7-8tonnes/ha (SRI and the no-till method both have outputs in that range). Also, because the land is cared for, organic methods often permit more crops-per-year, alley cropping, or similar methods of enhancing total yield. Journalists often regurgitate corporate propaganda because it’s repeated so often that it’s become “fact”.
GiT said everything else I was going to say regarding monoculture and the “necessity” of chemical controls, so I won’t bother repeating it 
MM: I really don’t understand your argument. You seem to be saying that Aboriginal people are somehow different from us in fundamental ways, in that their culture is inextricably bound up with hunting and that taking it away from them will destroy their culture. This simply makes no sense at all. We haven’t seen any chinless aristocracy in England take to their beds with a bottle of moonshine until they curl up and die, just because they’re no longer allowed to hunt foxes for sport. And I believe it is still legal to kill foxes humanely (if necessary). You’re just not allowed to hunt with dogs. I don’t think anybody here is suggesting that hunting, per se, should be illegal; merely that hunters should not use destructive or antisocial methods.
There’s something far more complex going on in the clash between aboriginal and “modern” cultures, and I don’t pretend to know what that is. I believe Confuzius is correct in saying there needs to be far more dialogue to find out what’s going on and what we (I mean, everyone involved) can do to fix it. I also can’t help wondering whether it’s because many aboriginal peoples don’t actually have a culture. They are too few, too dispersed, and too much at the mercy of natural forces to have ever bothered with such a thing. What we refer to as traditions are really just practical rules-of-thumb for ensuring survival, i.e., technology. These days, they have a lot more options. Those rules-of-thumb no longer apply. I’m sure, as someone else mentioned, they could teach us a lot. But it’s up to them to develop a counterpoint to the modern world - which does have many faults - that’s worth teaching.
There are probably a wide variety of habits even among Taiwan’s tribes, but some of them would be classed as “unsustainable” in the face of population pressure and would 
