Why does organic food cost more than inorganic food?

The Little Earth Book, by James Bruges, says it's simply because the market is distorted.

"Market fundamentalism does not apply when agribusiness can influence the government. Society, not the farmers, carries the cost of pesticide contamination, polluted water and other health, chemical-management and environmental impacts associated with industrial farming - not to mention the massive subsidies to big-scale farmers. Organic food represents the true cost of food food in an undistorted economy."

The Ethics of What We Eat tells a similar story:

"Organic food costs more partly because...intensive industrial agriculture leaves others to pay the hidden costs of cheap production - the neighbours who can no longer enjoy being outside in their yard; the children who cannot safely swim in local streams; the farm workers who get ill from the pesticides they apply; the confined animals denied all semblance of a life that is normal and suitable for their species; the fish who die in the polluted streams and coastal waters (and the people who previously caught and ate those fish); and the unknown number of inhabitants of low-lying lands in Bangladesh or Egypt who will be made homeless by rising sea levels caused by global warming.

It is understandable that people on low incomes should seek to stretch their dollars by buying the lowest-priced food, but when we look at the larger picture, the food produced by factory farming is not really cheap at all."