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If stores and vendors know there is a demand for organic products, they will make them. The more they make, the more the cost comes down.

Every major food company now has an organic division. There's more capital going into organic agriculture than ever before.

Adopting big-business practices is one thing, and adopting agribusiness practices that would dilute the meaning of 'organic' is another. On the whole, I think we're doing a pretty good job of preserving the integrity of organic foods.

In general, great companies prefer to grow 'organically,' as Wall Street likes to say. That is, from the inside out, by finding new markets or by taking market share from their competitors.

When people say they prefer organic food, what they often seem to mean is they don't want their food tainted with pesticides and their meat shot full of hormones or antibiotics. Many object to the way a few companies - Monsanto is the most famous of them - control so many of the seeds we grow.

If some consumers believe that it's better from the point of view of their health to have organic food, God bless them. Let them buy it. Let them pay a bit more.

I don't always buy organic food. It is more expensive.

When I was in the California legislature in the '80s, the organic growers, who were sort of the small hippie farmers in those days, brought it to my attention that there were no regulations on organic labeling. In essence, anybody could just grow a thing any way they wanted and put 'organic' on it.

When I can afford it, I'm very into organic food and I love going to restaurants that use organic produce and such. I think that it's a shame for everyone that, unfortunately, organic can be pretty expensive, so you just do what you can.

It's become more readily apparent that we need to be growing our own food and growing more things organically.