The most widely grown organic products in the United States are carrots, lettuce and apples, closely followed by dairy. Check out article we found at Natural News.
Enormous demand leads to shortages
John Foraker, the president of Annie’s Homegrown (owned by General Mills), said that over the past five to seven years his company has regularly experienced supply chain shortages. A few years, ago, for example, organic cornstarch – “which you took for granted” – became incredibly hard to find.
“All of a sudden it’s in short supply and you can’t figure out why,” Foraker said.
In order to combat this problem, several food giants are actually offering monetary incentives to encourage more farmers to go organic.
According to industry observers, many more farmers would like to convert their farms to organic than are actually doing so, for one main reason: cost. While organic agriculture is actually more profitable, yielding higher prices, the time and expenses associated with achieving organic certification add up quickly.
One of the largest financial costs of organic certification is the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s requirement that a farm be free of prohibited chemicals for three years before receiving certification. The rationale behind this is that it takes several years for the biochemistry of soil to recover after years of intensive chemical abuse.
The problem is that for those three years, farmers are bearing the costs of a transition to a different farming method, but are not yet able to get the higher prices commanded by an organic label. The prospect of this three-year transition prevents many farmers from making the switch.
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Read Full Article: Super high demand for organic produce across USA means an agricultural goldmine for farmers willing to go organic
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