Consumer groups, government, retailers and growers agree demand for organic produce continues to grow, but the wave of popularity isn’t a tsunami and a variety of sandbars continue to slow its progress.
Organic produce volumes went up about 18% in 2014 and sales rose 19% — or more than a half billion dollars — according to scan data from FreshLook Marketing published in The Packer’s 2015 Produce Market Guide. Organic produce accounted for 6.9% of all produce sold in the U.S. in 2014, up from 6% in 2013.
Volumes of organic produce sold in the U.S. hit almost 1.43 billion pounds in 2014, up from 1.2 billion pounds in 2013, according to the scan data.
At retail, those volumes translated into consumer costs of an average $2.89 per pound in 2014, up only 4 cents from 2013. Total retail sales of organic produce in 2014 topped $4.1 billion, compared to $3.45 billion in 2013.
Those sales include an understood markup because of higher organic production costs related to the additional labor needed to do the work that pesticides and herbicides do in conventional fields. Data from a survey of New Hampshire consumers shows they are willing to pay that markup.
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LOCALLY GROWN, 'NATURAL' TAKE TOLL
Research published this fall in the journal “Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems” documents New Hampshire organic fans are willing to pay 30% more for organic green beans and 25% more for organic cucumbers. However, locally grown was even more appealing to Granite Staters, who said they are willing to pay 35% more for local green beans and and 55% more for local cucumbers.
When shoppers’ misunderstanding of natural vs. organic is factored in with the infringement of locally grown on consumers wallets, the challenges organic growers face are compounded.  
One in every three consumers don’t make a quality distinction between “natural” and “organic” on labels, according to survey results released in October by the Organic and Natural Health Association, Washington, D.C. About 60% of the survey respondents said they used organic products less than once a week or not at all, but more than a third of respondents said they use natural products once a day or more.
The survey revealed that 46% of respondents believe the federal government regulates the term “natural.” Another common misconception uncovered by the survey is that two-thirds of respondents believe that “natural” means the product is free of synthetic pesticides.
The study’s authors concluded that the organic industry needs to do a better job of educating consumers about the differences between natural and organic.
“To have raised all U.S. crops as organic in 2014 would have required farming of 109 million more acres of land. That is an area equivalent to all the parkland and wild land areas in the lower 48 states or 1.8 times as much as all the urban land in the nation.”                                                               — Steven Savage
U.S. FAR FROM ORGANIC EXCLUSIVITY
Further muddying the perceived beneficial organic waters is a dissection of data from the U.S. Department of Agricultures 2014 survey of organic growers.
The USDA reported 2014 was a record year for the organic community, with 19,474 certified organic operations in the U.S.
At least one researcher contends vastly more ground than currently farmed by those operations would be needed to put the U.S. on an exclusively organic course.
Organic cropland accounts for less than one-half of 1% of total cropland in the U.S.
Steven Savage, a contributor for Forbes who earned a bachelor’s in biology at Stanford University and a master’s and doctorate in plant pathology at the University of California-Davis, dived deep into the USDA organic survey data.
“I compared 2014 survey data from organic growers with overall agricultural yield statistics for that year on a crop by crop, state by state basis,” Savage wrote in his Forbes column.
“To have raised all U.S. crops as organic in 2014 would have required farming of 109 million more acres of land. That is an area equivalent to all the parkland and wild land areas in the lower 48 states or 1.8 times as much as all the urban land in the nation.”
Savage contends if organics were to expand significantly, the lower land-use efficiency would become problematic.
In 55 of the 370 comparisons Savage made from the USDA data, yields were higher in organic. Almost 89% of those were with hay or silage and 10% with row crops. Less than 1.5% were fruits and vegetable