TL;DR
A study of German farms shows that the economic benefits of organic farming mostly go to distributors, not farmers.
The author has in-laws in Germany who run a biodynamic farm. They say one perk of going organic there is that you can charge more, making the farm more profitable.
Does going organic lift revenue?
Researchers from UC Davis and the University of Kiel analysed revenue data from almost 55,000 German farms between 1995 and 2018, comparing farms that converted to organic with similar conventional ones in the same state.
At first glance, converting farms do see a revenue bump. Look closer, though, and that bump already existed a year before the switch — and after converting, the gap is not statistically significant.
Who pockets the gains?
Farmers turning organic don't actually earn much more. Distributors like supermarkets squeeze them, leaving revenue barely above that of conventional farmers.
The author sees this as a case where the benefits of organic farming accrue to the most powerful players in the supply chain — the distributors, not the farmers.
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