The booming U.S. organic industry posted new records in 2015, with total organic food product sales reaching $39.7 billion, up 11% from the previous year, according to the Organic Trade Association’s 2016 Organic Industry Survey. This far surpassed the overall food market’s growth rate of 3%. Nearly 5% of all food sold in the United States is organic.
Organic produce retained its longstanding spot as the largest of all the organic categories with sales of $14.4 billion, up 10.6%. Produce has always been and continues to be a gateway to organic. Almost 13% of the produce sold in this country is now organic.
The demand for fresh organic was most evident in the continued growth of “fresh juices and drinks,” which saw growth of 33.5% in 2015, making it the fastest-growing of all the organic subcategories. The fastest-growing of the eight major organic categories was condiments, which crossed the $1 billion mark in sales for the first time in 2015, an 18.5% growth. Dairy, the second biggest organic food category, accounted for $6 billion in sales, an increase of more than 10%. Dairy accounts for 15% of total organic food sales.
Also seeing a big growth in sales in 2015—and more than triple the level of just 10 years ago—was the organic snack food category, with sales of $2.3 billion, up almost 14% from 2014.
Increased consumer demand for organic products in 2015 could be attributed to greater access to these products from mainstream retailers. As supermarkets, big box stores, membership warehouse clubs, and other outlets continued to up their organic offerings, organic options have become more available than ever before.
The growth in the organic market, however, did not come without continued challenges to the supply chain. Dairy and grains were two areas where growth could have been even more robust in 2015 if greater supply had been available. There is an industry-wide understanding of the need to build a secure supply chain that can support demand. This goes hand-in-hand with securing more organic acreage, developing programs to help farmers transition to organic, and encouraging new farmers to farm organically.
