Organic food sales in the USA are up, up, up - yet it turns out that organic farmland in the United States is shrinking. The decrease in organic acreage is approximately 1.5 million acres from 2021 to 2023. Yet, in 2024, organic sales were more than $71 billion dollars. What is going on?
Unfortunately, a big reason is because the United States is being flooded with cheap foreign imports, which may or may not be real organic foods. It turns out that organic standards are not the same for United States organic farms and foreign organic foods.
"...industry observers contend that a significant number of organic farmers who follow the letter and spirit of the law have been forced out of business because competing on an uneven playing field is not financially viable."
Forging of documents, no farm inspections necessary - it's basically "take our word for it being organic". Hah! This has been documented over and over, yet nothing has been done to correct the fraud. The group Organic Eye is an organic industry watchdog documenting the organic certification abuses.
An excellent group to support is the Real Organic Project - local farmers who are following the letter and spirit of organic certification. In other words, they are practicing organic as it's meant to be.
Another group that scores organic foods (e.g., organic dairy and organic eggs) and whether they are real organic or not is Cornucopia Institute. A fantastic resource when trying to decide what eggs or dairy foods to buy at the grocery store (ranking of 5 is best to 1 is poor/basically no documentation that it's actually organic).
From Organic Insider: The Quiet Decline of U.S. Organic Acreage — and What It Will Take to Reverse It
For decades, organic has been surging in popularity among consumers, with the sector growing 5.2% in 2024 and topping more than $71 billion in sales.
While that is welcome news, the domestic supply of organic is just not keeping pace, and last Friday, the National Organic Coalition held a webinar titled Why Are We Losing Organic Farms? to discuss this very topic.
From 2021 to 2023, the data showed a decrease in organic acreage for field crops, a significant drop for pasture and rangeland, and little to no change in non-field crops. In aggregate, the decrease is approximately 1.5 million acres from 2021 to 2023, taking into account that we do not have data for 2024 and 2025.
What this indicates is that while the U.S. organic industry has been growing its top-line sales, there has been an increasing reliance on imports, as the total amount of U.S. organic acreage — at approximately 7.5 million acres — continues to decline.
Does the USDA’s National Organic Program have the necessary resources to effectively oversee our industry, and is it a well-functioning economic system that encourages new participants to enter the marketplace?
Even prior to the current administration taking over, many in the organic community argued that the NOP was under-resourced. This may get much worse, with the NOP reportedly having had its staff reduced by roughly one-third at the end of fiscal year 2025, according to industry sources.
Not all organic certifiers are enforcing the same set of rules.
For example, some certifiers allow hydroponics while others refuse to do so, asserting that this growing practice violates federal law. This same discrepancy holds with industrial-scale dairies and animal farms, with some certifiers allowing them and others not.
In both of these examples, industry observers contend that a significant number of organic farmers who follow the letter and spirit of the law have been forced out of business because competing on an uneven playing field is not financially viable.
Despite a greater emphasis on fighting fraud in recent years, including the adoption of the Strengthening Organic Enforcement Act, many people believe that fraud remains a massive issue.
“Bad actors have been exploiting the organic equivalency agreements we have with other countries, and untold amounts of fraudulent products are flooding into the U.S., completely unchecked,” said Mark Kastel, executive director of the watchdog organization OrganicEye. “Crops grown in Africa, Asia and Central America are being certified by Canada, but these shipments never touch Canadian soil. Only the paperwork does.”
As the U.S. grows more dependent on imports, monitoring organic farms across the globe becomes increasingly difficult — and raises mounting national security concerns.
Ultimately, if the organic industry is serious about reversing the decline in domestic organic production and acreage, the underpinnings of a well-functioning system must be in place: namely, the National Organic Program has the resources to succeed, the rules are consistent and strictly enforced by all certifiers, and there are severe consequences for fraud.