Organic Agriculture Reduces Medical Expenses Among Rice Farmers in Thailand

May be there are many people out there has been asking what is the fuss about organic faming? For many different reasons actually, and today I'm sharing one of the interesting fact about organic farming and consumption could reduce medical expenditure.

The research was conducted by ASEAN Development Bank Institure (ADBI) involved 626 households in North and Northeast of Thailand. In Table 1 below, expenditures of organic and conventional farmers are almost at the same level in many categories except for household operations, education and medical expenses. The organic farmers spent more on the earlier two categories meanwhile the conventional farmers spent almost 53.3% higher than the organic farmers.

The assumptions made by ADBI with regards to the medical expenditure that "it is likely that the organic farmers are healthier as they are not exposed to toxic agrochemicals and have better access to homegrown organic products whics are known to have higher levels of vitamin and minerals (Brandt 2007)".

Table 1: Comparison of Amount of Pesticides Spent by Organic and Conventional Rice Farmers In Thailand
	Organic Farmers	Convetional Farmers	Difference (%)
Number of respondents	309	317
Household expenditure comparison on selected categories (Baht)
Food items	15,000	15,200	1.3
Tobacco and alcohol	1,800	1,900	5.2
Clothing	1,700	1,700	0.0
Personal care	2,200	2,100	-4.8
Fuel, transportation, communication	13,000	13,000	0.0
Household operations	8,900	6,500	-36.9
Education	9,800	7,800	-25.6
Medical expenses	700	1,500	53.3
Note: The expenditures stated above is estimated amount based on bar graph in ADBI research report

Source: ADBI Institute Working Paper No. 129

Let us now imagine if the whole agriculture sector is converted into organic method, how much would you think the national expenses on public health would be reduce. Not to mention other benefits related to health as well like environmental conservation. But of course there will also be some people who would argue with such low production of organic farming, how are we going to survive? May be in the next entry.