The Organic Produce Network in partnership with Nielson released 2017 figures on sales of fresh organic produce sold in grocery stores. The figures are impressive. Overall, organic fresh vegetable sales led the produce sector with $2.4 billion in sales, up 6 percent by volume and 4 percent by value from 2016. Organic fresh fruit with sales of $1.6 billion showed stronger growth, with volume and dollar sales up 12.6 percent compared to 2016.

Data on production and sales of organic food products at the farm level is harder to come by than data in some other areas of agriculture. The latest production from USDA is from the 2014 Organic Survey. Certainly any data collected by USDA, no matter the frequency, is helpful, but to track more granular trends, the industry turns to private data. The data mentioned above, collected by OPN and Nielsen, is proprietary so we are not able to dive as deeply into it as we might otherwise, but the headlines are interesting.

Read the full article on the American Farm Bureau Federation website.