Sales of organic food in the US may be soaring but the country’s farmers are struggling to meet demand, the Senate Agriculture Committee has been told.
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Organic food sales are forecast to have hit US$16bn during 2006, with the sector growing at around 17% a year.
However, industry watchers are concerned that the US farming industry is finding it difficult to keep pace with that demand, leading to growing imports of organic food products.
Lynn Clarkson, a board member of the Organic Trade Association, said farmers are faced with a number of obstacles to converting to organic production. Farmers, Clarkson said, have a limited knowledge of organic farming systems and lack the necessary marketing and infrastructure to capitalise on soaring sales.
“Despite surging retail sales, growth in organic farm acreage in the United States is not keeping the same pace,” Clarkson told a committee hearing yesterday (24 April). “While we do not know how much, we do know that part of the market demand for organic goods is being filled from imported agricultural products. The US is not reaping the full environmental benefits of organic production.”
Kathie Arnold of the National Organic Coalition, a group lobbying for stringent organic standards for the sector, said the US government should “provide financial and technical support” if farmers decide to convert to organic.
“The process for farmers to convert to organic takes three years,” Arnold said. “During this conversion process, farmers incur the higher costs associated with organic production but do not receive the higher price premiums that come with final organic certification.”
Arnold also called for the US Department of Agriculture to fund greater research into the sector. Organics account for 3% of all US food sales, she said. However, the USDA spends under 1% of its research spending on the sector.
