Where are the organics?

According to a recent study by the U.S.D.A. there are approximately 2.6 million acres of organic farmland in the United States. That may seem like a lot of acreage, but when compared to the over 300 million acres of traditional farmland, cited by the U.S.D.A, it isn't much land. .

Perhaps this is the reason that in the past couple of years many organic products have been undersupplied in major grocery stores and in the diets of Americans. In the 2008 Farm Act, congress appropriated an initial $5 million for "an expanded organic data collection initiative" and an annual $5 million for the research team to conduct their studies. This decision was made after evidence from grocers indicated that more and more people are trying to go organic.

Although there is a relatively small number of organic farms, the number could be increasing more and more within the next few years. The U.S.D.A. has issued several stipulations in order to be a certified organic farmer. A report by the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service broke down the steps that are required to meet the certification. The most stringent parts of the process are the need for a third party organic observer and three years of organic growing before the certification process can be finalized.

A three, sometimes more, year waiting period can pose problems for farmers who want to sell their organic products but are not allowed to marked them by what they really are. In those three years, a farmer could lose out on a large amount of profit from the organic community. Because of the time requirement, the journey that "organic" food takes from farm to fork turns into a much longer travel.

The sales of organic products has increased over six-fold since 1997 and only shows signs of increasing if the amount of farmland is able to multiply as necessary to meed the ever-growing demand.

In 2005 the largest quantity of an organic crop was grain, with over 607,000 acres; however, organic produce accounts for the most sales of any product. If sales are so good, then what is keeping some farmers from becoming organic growers.

For next time, I'll dig more into they WHY of organic farming, and for some, the WHY NOT. I am also interested to find out: if any requirements were changed, would farmers make the switch.