Organic food industry goes to college
More classrooms, labs focusing on research, instruction
The organic food industry, which has more than quadrupled its sales in the USA in the last decade, is getting more attention in university classrooms and research labs.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has put an unprecedented $117 million into organic research in the last three years. Advocates are pushing for a bigger share in a new five-year farm bill Congress expects to pass this year. The amount of research on organics still is dwarfed by the more than $10 billion annually spent on public and private agricultural research in the USA.
A new report by the Organic Farming Research Foundation says the number of states that have devoted land for organic research nearly doubled from 2003 to 2011 to 37. Universities offering academic programs in organic farming jumped from zero to nine, says the OFRF, which supports organic farmers and processors.
The group says the universities of Florida, Tennessee and Minnesota, and Washington State, Michigan State and Colorado State universities are doing the best among 72 schools it judged on eight measures of organic farming research and instruction.
“The organic industry is just the fastest-growing sector in agriculture right now,” says David Butler, an assistant professor of organic, sustainable and alternative crop production at the University of Tennessee. “There are a lot of small producers interested in organic crops, just to capture the greater dollar for their crops and make a living on a smaller piece of land.”
About 14,600 farmers are certified under USDA organic regulations for agreeing not to use synthetic fertilizer or genetic engineering, among other requirements. The USDA hopes to increase that number by 20% over five years. Recruiting more organic farmers is also part of the USDA’S efforts to replace an aging farmer population with at least 100,000 new farmers overall.
The Organic Trade Association says sales of organic products rose from $7.4 billion in 2001 to $31.4 billion in 2011 and increased from about 1.4% to 4% of total U.S. food sales.
The rise in demand comes from health and environmental concerns and what Deputy Agriculture Secretary Kathleen Merrigan calls “this growing desire of people . . . wanting to know how their food was produced, and who produced it.”
Maureen Wilmot, executive director of the Organic Farming Research Foundation, which has awarded about $2.75 million in small research grants in the last decade, says public universities are not meeting research needs for rising organic demand.
Merrigan says the organic industry’s growth has led to innovations for non-organic producers. “Organic farmers in many ways have been research pioneers,“she says.