Filling Their Sales (WhereisYour *Organic* Food Coming From?)

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original-grist

Filling Their Sales
If organic food is so popular, why are so few farms transitioning their land?
By Tom Philpott
22 Mar 2007
On a recent trip to Austin, I visited the flagship Whole Foods -- a vast space where people gather en masse to render financial sacrifice to that new god, organic food. From the depths of the parking lot, as you make your way up to the store, you're urged again and again by a sign that simply says, "Love where you shop." From the doe-eyed look of the supplicants making their way up, and the glazed-eyed look of those carrying their treasure down, most clearly do.


While few Whole Foods stores have the buzz of the Austin flagship, that veritable cathedral of gustatory virtue is emblematic of organic food's rising social status. According to the Organic Trade Association's most current figures , consumer demand for it leapt 16 percent in 2005.

That's a little lower than the 20 percent figure commonly bandied about to describe the market's growth, but it's by no means shabby, considering that the overall U.S. food market grows by just 2 percent to 4 percent per year. It turns out that the $34 billion the food industry drops on marketing every year doesn't inspire people to eat more -- it just gets them to shift around their food dollars from one product to another.

No wonder corporate giants from Wal-Mart to McDonald's are groping for a slice of the organic pie. Generating 16 percent annual growth for a given product normally requires a massive marketing budget; organic foods fly off the shelf just by being labeled as such.
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complete article including links to other sources here