If we were to get rid of the federal subsidies on conventional and GMO crops, the pricing would be competetive. Subsidize Organics instead, and the price point would be reversed. It has nothing at all to do with the actual costs of things. Organic farming has less input costs and less costs in collateral damage to health, the economy, and the environment--but the ag subsidies distort that.
BTW I live in Hawaii (another island
) and I pay just over thirty dollars these days for a THIRTY pound bag of organic feed. But buying non-organic is not an option for me. There's no way I'll be eating eggs and chicken raised on GMO corn and soy. And it's worth ten dollars to me to know that I'm not complicit in the destruction that those practices are unleashing on the world. If I could I would refuse to pay my portion of the ag subsidies that perpetuate this, but unfortunately if you refuse to pay your taxes around here you go to jail...
So I use that feed as a base ration, but I horde it and use it very economically--a lot of what I feed is garden veggies, larvae and insects, kitchen scraps, fruit, coconuts, and other things I've grown or scrounged for them plus what they can scavenge on their own, and I'm always working on new ideas of how to close the circle more completely. They are better off on insects and scraps than on corn and soy anyway--those crops can supply protein and carbs for them, sure, but they are far less than ideal sources of feed. The wild jungle fowl don't eat soy meal for protein, they eat insects, just like free range farmyard birds always have...
