It helps to do some research, so you can know exactly why this price difference exists. Local organic is usually family farms, niche farms, and their business is labor-intensive. A factory farm may be able to make the claims of organic, however, their treatment of soil and plants is not at the same level of care. Add to this the shipping factor and how long the plants you are offered have been away from their milieu, their support - most have been harvested early en masse to withstand shipping before they are actually ripe; or to fulfill a bureaucratic quota, whether ripe or not, as happens so often with subsidized chem-ag; or done so because the entire crop brings a better price than harvesting as it ripens. Consider lost nutrients through miles of transport, including the effects of heat/cold, exposure to air, dehydration, etc. Consider a factory hiring machines and a few people to deal with plants, or you have smaller businesses of people hiring people to provide some front-line interaction with the process, providing actual food, and concerned for each item, since they get paid on the value of their produce. These are the ones most likely to feel vested in providing value to the consumer - often with some care and concern. And as an added level of influences, if as science has proven repeatedly in the last fifty years, our minds affect so much of our experience in the world, then if you compare those outcomes (of tended produce contrasted to mechanized produce), we might perceive another level of what it takes to experience nourishment when we eat.