Organic Trends

A new report by two Washington State University researchers shows that the organic industry here in the state has a lot of room for growth. The report by Elizabeth Kirby and David Granatstein at WSU's Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources is available online. Granatstein says the main message is that the organic market will continue to be strong.

GRANATSTEIN: We've seen a tremendous growth in sales even though the number of farms has really been pretty static and the number of acres overall has been fairly static but in certain areas like vegetables and I think the grains, we've seen some real big growth and we're expecting a pretty big growth in tree fruit join the next few years.

He says the industry is seeing a supply constrained situation.

GRANATSTEIN: There's just typically not enough product to go around. There's a lot more being imported and therefore opportunities for U.S. producers are really positive right now. The rate of growth in sales slowed very slightly during the worst part of the recession but it's back to 12% a year. That's a lot of growth if you start to compile that and yeah, we're just not keeping up.

Granatstein says he hasn't seen the latest USDA organic report but says that for producers this might be a good time to think about getting into organic.

GRANATSTEIN: It's a great time to learn more and take a look at whether they want to diversify their portfolio. The nice thing in the U.S. is it's not all or nothing. You can have one acre organic and ninety-nine acres of non-organic. Whatever works for you and so it's a great chance for growers to diversify their market.

That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network of the West.