Organic Food

There’s a growing hunger for organic food. It’s no wonder. It’s widely believed that organic foods are more nutritious and safer than non-organic — they’re even said to fight cancer — though the evidence is far from clear. Consumers have been paying a lot to eat organic; foods with the certification sometimes costs twice as much as conventional products. The premium prices may not be buying everything that’s promised.

Worldwide, land farmed organically expanded almost fivefold in six years to 51 million hectares in 2015. Australia farms almost half that total, but Liechtenstein’s organic farms claim the highest share of total agricultural land, at 30 percent. (The global average is 1.1 percent.) The demand for organics is driven in part by rising interest in locally grown food — two-thirds of U.S. farmers markets have at least one certified organic producer. About three-quarters of American grocers sell organic food, including mass-market retailers, like Wal-Mart and big supermarket chains like Kroger. The increased competition has cut into the bottom lines of traditional organic and natural-foods markets like Whole Foods. In 2017, Amazon.com Inc. acquired Whole Foods and reduced prices at the chain, once nicknamed “Whole Paycheck.” While organic products make up just 5 percent of all food sales in the U.S., in Denmark it’s almost 10 percent.