Are Organic Foods More Expensive than Non-Organic Foods?

By: Bethany Clearwater

Date: December 7
th
, 2011

My report is on the question of organic and non-organic foods and the difference in
prices. Organic food, in this case, are fruits and vegetables grown without any use of chemicals,
so they are grown naturally. Non-organic food, are fruits and vegetables that may have been
grown using some sort of chemical or growth process. I chose this topic because I am majoring
in nutrition and I have always wondered what the difference in price would be between the two
groups of food. My hypothesis is that the organic food will be more expensive than the non-
organic food.
I collected my data on November 18
th
at the King Soopers on Sheridan and Hampden. I
collected the data by writing down the prices of the fruits and vegetables that King Soopers had
labeled Organic then found the matching fruits and vegetables that had not been labeled
Organic and wrote down those prices as well. The prices came in many variations such as
price per pound, price per package, etc. When it came to price per group I measured numerous
groups and took the average.


After an evaluation of the histograms for my data I came to the conclusion that both the
Organic Histogram and the Non-Organic Histogram are skewed to the right. Although, my Non-
Organic histogram may be considered a multi-modal histogram. There is one potential outlier
which makes the histogram seem multi-modal, but I still believe that it is a right skewed
histogram.
After a thorough study on my data I have come to the conclusion that organic fruits and
vegetables may be more expensive than the non-organic fruits and vegetables. The only part of
my data that I found strange was that the non-organic avocadoes were much more expensive than
the organic. I wonder if this was a mistake on my part or if the avocadoes really are cheaper
when they have the organic title.
After conducting the paired t-test I have failed to reject the null hypothesis that organic
prices and non-organic prices are equal. My test statistic resided in the fail to reject region. In
order to prove that organic prices are higher than non-organic I would need to take another
sample, possibly from another section of the population.



#3 Percentage of observations that lie within 1, 2, and 3, standard deviations of the mean.
1)


2)


Conclusions:
In this study I was attempting to prove that organic prices of fruits and vegetables are higher than
non-organic prices. Throughout the study I found that the organic prices were higher, but when I
conducted a paired t-test I found that overall the prices are approximately the same.
Overall I am not sure if this study was conducted correctly. If I were to do this study again then I
would have selected a larger sample, or compare samples from two populations. Such as prices
from King Soopers verses Sams Club.
I enjoyed this study and I believe in what I have found.

References:
King Soopers:
2810 Quebec St, Denver, CO 80207

Abstract:
This project consists of a study of the prices of organic fruits and vegetables verses non-organic
fruits and vegetables. In this project I am trying to prove that organic fruits and vegetables are
more expensive than non-organic fruits and vegetables. In my study I have found that though the
prices of organic seem to be more expensive when looked at through the mean and standard
deviation in my paired t-test I have found that they are approximately equal.




Relative Frequency table:
Organic:
Class Frequency Relative Frequency
.08 < .16 6 .2
.16 < .24 15 .5
.24< .32 2 .06
.32 < .40 2 .06
.40 < .48 2 .06
.48 < .56 2 .06
.56 + 1 .03


Non-Organic:
Class Frequency Relative Frequency
.0< .1 11 .37
.1 < .2 13 .43
.2 < .3 5 .16
.3 < .4 0 0
.4 + 1 .03