Sorry Monsanto: Organic Food Demand is Absolutely Exploding
Perhaps you remember a time not too far in our collective grocery-shopping past when regular grocery stores chains and places like Walmart had no idea what organic food was. Organic milk? Bread? Produce? They didn’t carry it. You had to find an obscure health food store or a farmer’s market if you didn’t live near a Whole Foods to find non-GMO, healthful food that wasn’t full of pesticides. But thankfully, consumers are demanding different products now. Demand for organic food has busted through its glass ceiling.
You can attribute this change in market demand to education. You can attribute it to the mass awakening happening around the planet. But either way, you can’t argue with the numbers. Eating organic is no longer ‘fringe’ or something done solely by health-nuts and athletes, hippies, and paranoids. In fact, consumer demand for organic food is seeing double digit growth year over year, and it doesn’t show signs of stopping.
Over 20,000 stores now offer organic food products. A report has shown that in 2012, more than $28.4 million was spent on healthful organic food, and that number has grown since the report published such findings. According to Nutrition Business Journal, organic food sales will reach a startling $35 billion this year. For those of us who don’t take our health for granted, this is just the beginning of a food revolution.
We’re eating better in every category of food, too, not just organic apple and oranges. People are boycotting toxic food-producing companies faster than you can say ‘lawsuit’ as they realize we’ve been lied to. People now know that something made in vats with chemical additives or spliced and diced with GMOs is anything but ‘natural.’
We are turning away from companies like Kellogg’s and Pepsi-Co, Coca-Cola, and Kraft to companies that we can actually trust – companies that don’t sell us non-food and call it food.
Or how about putting harmful additives used to make yoga mats in bread, as Subway once did before individuals pressured them to remove azodicarbonamide from their food? We just won’t sit silent anymore. Even beer companies are feeling the pressure to not only disclose toxic ingredients, but to change their ways, and stop using them.
While fresh fruits and vegetables leading the way in organics for the past three decades, and accounting for 43% of U.S. organic food sales in 2012, dairy, bread, packaged foods, snack foods, meat, poultry, seafood, and even condiments are seeing an up-turn in organic sales.
For now, individuals are purchasing their organic foods primarily through conventional and natural food supermarkets and chains, according to the Organic Trade Association (OTA), but this is also changing as more people turn to food co-ops and even neighbors for fresh, organic food.
We’ve come a long way since the organic food movement’s beginnings. Yes, our grandparents and great-grandparents just grew… food. They didn’t even call it organic, though they often didn’t use pesticides or herbicides, and certainly not petroleum-based or chemical fertilizers.
The modern organic movement began at the same time as industrialized agriculture. It began in Europe around the 1920s, when a group of farmers and consumers sought alternatives to the industrialization of agriculture. In Britain, the organic movement had gathered pace in the 1940’s. Today, people around the world, from the US to Bhutan, are asking for, and even growing organic food.
Indeed, growing our own food is becoming an absolutely essential part of our collective future.
In the same way that petrochemical companies don’t want to see the impending evolution of solar and wind power, Big Ag doesn’t want to accept what is happening with our food consciousness. We know better now, and so we ask for better. Our wallets are truly determining the future food landscape.
When I want to eat I want food and not some high profit garbage being sold to make us sick and kill us off. As soon as I tuned out all mainstream “advice” about foods and health and went with my instinct I started to feel better and I have not had any health issues for a few years. I will never go back to the trough for my food.
Monsanto is a monster with tiers to pharma and other nefarious outfits. They have never made anythig good for anyone in their history, look it up.
Genetically modifying food is an outright attempt to kill off the people, there is no other explanation that can stand up to scrutiny.
Even Monsanto’s employees refuse to eat GMO food in the company’s cafeteria.
They serve only organic food in their cafeteria
That’s what I meant. So it’s fine for their employees, but not for the rest of us. I wonder how many people they will lose eating caf lunches when there is no more organic food because it’s all been poisoned?
A million thumbs up on your comment! I did the same, unplugged from the mainstream “advice” and followed my instincts and re-taught myself how to eat by these awesome groups and websites online. I have NEVER felt better and any ailment I had prior to hitting my “reset” button on what I eat is completely gone! I feel 20 years younger and that is not an exaggeration.
Congratulations! Good work!
Anti-Semite! Anti-Semite!! Anti-Semite!!!
Oh, whoops… wrong article.
(you’re still a anti-Semite)
LOL
Whaat? are you telling me people don’t want to eat POISON?? how dare they avoid our poison! Pass a law and make them eat our poison!!!
Eat local, even if it gets a little bit boring. Processed food and especial Kraft produce is disgusting and poisonous.
In addition of the residues we have in food and are resposible of numerous diseases, Monsanto products are killing bees and this has a serious impact in our ecosystem
The only way we can beat Monsanto chemical is to ban together and purchase as much non-GMO’S as possible
Now the government is trying to make us out as a psychological disorder
WELL INFORMED IS IMPORTANT ABOUT THE ORGANIC FOOD . EAT WELL EAR FIBER , DRESS RIGHT DRESS ORGANIC AND NATURAL DYED !
The petrochemical companies are the ones that should be taxed for producing harmful chemicals that cause illness and kill essential nutrients. They are the ones causing more pollution in the earth and in our bodies.
Thank you again, Christina!
My family can’t afford to organic foods. With limited resources we have to stretch our money, and make the best choices. Shop @ farmer market during summer and rely on supermarket in winter months. We can’t afford $2.99/lb for organic apples when non-organic apples are .79/lb. I wish the organic industry would price compare and reduce prices. Wish we could afford organic but food is a necessity not a luxury.
Agreed.
Score. 😉 Mel at catesgarden
First of all if every food company that does not use GMO’s puts “NON GMO” on their package then we won’t have to fight with Monsanto, etc. Also, if GMO’S are stopped (just saying) then eventually nature would get back to normal….it may take some time but they can’t last forever without their magic witchcraft.
So, GMO food can be organic right? In fact, isn’t it easier to go organic if you have crops that are resistant to pests to begin with. “Organic” is not “GMO” and “GMO” is not “organic”. I would be willing to bet that the Organic food you are buying has gone through one form of Genetic Modification or another. This article is just lumping problems together without understanding or defining the differences. This makes consumers misinformed about the issues.
Monsanto bought Whole Foods so how can you support them???
You said…
“A report has shown that in 2012, more than $28.4 million was spent on healthful organic food, and that number has grown since the report published such findings. According to Nutrition Business Journal, organic food sales will reach a startling $35 billion this year.”
it’s not 28 millions, it’s probably 28 BILLIONS. I found that in 2014 the growth was 11%. So it obviously didn’t multiply ten fold between 2012 and 2015.
That imprecision makes your whole article less valuable, especially since it’s centered on this very growth and that this statistic is the core of your article.
(I’m also against Monsanto by the way.)
Comming from a backround that has farms and is about farms. I hope all of you understand that pesticides are still used on organic crops.