Organic Farming Profits: Organic Demand Keeps Growing

August 21, 2013 admin3

We have recently been reporting on the exponential growth of and and demand for Canadian Organics. The following article posted on Wealth Daily continues the discussion of current opportunities for investing in Organics. While the numbers presented in the article are from the US, Canada is also continuing to experience similar patterns with the Canada Organic Trade Association reporting comparable growth rates.

The following text is taken from Wealth Daily:

-By Joseph Cafariello, August 15th, 2013

So you’re looking to get into business, preferably in a field that is not saturated and is still in its infancy with plenty of growth potential. Well, the field you might want to look into is the field itself… farming.

But I’m not talking your conventional agriculture. I’m talking organic farming. There is more than just organic foods growing in the fields of organic farms; there is profit potential growing in the field of organic farming.

Growing Demand for Organics

Perhaps the first thing an entrepreneur assesses when selecting a business activity to undertake is the demand for its products and services. Have you taken a good look at your local supermarket shelves lately? Larger and larger sections are being devoted to organic foods, and the stats are there to back that observation.

Still a relatively new field of business, it was only in 2002 that the USDA put into place national standards governing organic food cultivation. Since then, the number of certified organic farms, ranches, and processing facilities has mushroomed from about 7,200 in 2002 to 17,281 operations by 2011, an increase of 240%.

Most of the demand for organic foods in America is – you guessed – on the West Coast, where people tend to place a greater emphasis on health and fitness. According to AGMRC – Agricultural Marketing Resource Center:

“While there were organic farms or ranches in all 50 states, nearly 20 percent, or more than 2,700 of the operations, were in California. Other states with large numbers of certified and exempt organic operations were Wisconsin (1,222), Washington (887), New York (827) and Oregon (657).”

OK. So they are popular. But is there money in it? “A recent study by the Organic Trade Association (OTA) indicated that U.S. sales of organic products, both food and non-food, have grown from $1 billion in 1990 to $31.5 billion in 2011, increasing 9.5 percent in the last year … and industry experts are forecasting steady growth of 9 percent [per year] or higher,” AGMRC reports. Now that’s growth potential!

But there is a lot more to organic agriculture than just contaminant-free apples and lettuce, as The Organic Trade Association breaks down for us: “The organic food and beverage sector was valued at $29.22 billion, while the organic non-food sector reached $2.2 billion…The organic food sector grew by $2.5 billion during 2011, with the fruit and vegetable category contributing close to 50 percent of those new dollars. The fastest-growing sector was the meat, fish & poultry category, posting 13 percent growth over 2010 sales.”

Aside from the well known organic fruits and veggies, there are also organic juices and other beverages, plus the meats of the land and sea, whose 13% annual growth is well above the entire organic spectrum’s 9.5%.