The Pacific Northwest sun is slowly burning off the crisp October morning fog as a young girl and her father walk down Cornwall Avenue to the Bellingham Public Market. At the market the girl watches as her father handles a large organic eggplant, inspecting it carefully.
Meanwhile, a red Ford pickup cruises down one of Whatcom County's busiest thoroughfares, Meridian Street, from Lynden. A young mother of three steps down from her vehicle and guides her children into Wal-Mart where she regularly purchases organic milk for her family.
Although these two consumers may differ in political, financial, and moral reasons for purchasing organic food, they both contribute to the blossoming organic food movement. With an annual growth rate of 15 to 20 percent per year, and annual sales topping $14.5 billion in 2005, the organic movement is reaching critical mass and is catching the attention of large international corporations such as Wal-Mart and General Mills. But with expanding growth and popularity, the organic food movement is struggling to sustain its original ideals.
The organic movement started in the 1970s in response to the environmental movement. In an effort to provide consumers with a product free of chemical additives, farmers joined together to promote guidelines and standardization. The standards provided product assurance to consumers, said Catherine Green, senior agricultural economist of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Stephen Trinkaus, owner of Terra Organica, one of the nation's first all-organic grocery stores said that in the early days of the organic movement, people strived to attain an ideal of pure food production.
"There was a dream that society would move organic someday," Trinkaus said. "The more acreage farmed organic the better."
But as the industry matures, it may become a victim of its own success.
While we are still far from becoming an "organic society" as Trinkaus described, organic farming has nonetheless managed to establish itself as a viable alternative to conventionally grown food, with a market share of almost 2.5 percent in 2005, according to the USDA.
With organics becoming available from larger retailers, organic farmers aren't able to meet demand according to a British Food Journal study by Uwe Latacz-Lohmann and Carolyn Foster of Wye College, University of London.
As the industry grows, groups such as the Organic Consumer Association (OCA) and the Organic Trade Association (OTA) have begun to scrutinize the actions of large food distributors and producers to assure that food labeled organic really is organic.
Simply stated, organic food demand may inadvertently undermine people's intention to purchase "green."
"People think they are supporting a social outcome, a better environment or healthier lifestyle. Organic food today simply doesn't represent that fact," said David Granatstein, of the Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources at Washington State University.
USDA standards say nothing about the environmental impact of food distribution and transportation, Greene said.
For example, if a consumer shops at a grocery store in search of an apple, they may select an organic apple grown in New Zealand, when instead they could have purchased an apple that isn't USDA organic, but was grown locally.
Small-scale organic farmers simply cannot satisfy the consumer's demand for locally produced organic goods, said Ginger Oppenheimer, marketing manager of Bellingham's Community Food Cooperative.
"It's hard to get enough local produce to serve five stores," Oppenheimer said.
Oppenheimer described the difficulty the Co-op had finding enough carrots to satisfy local demand as well as the difficulties that lay ahead when the Co-op opens their second store in 2007.
As a result of insufficient local supply, large retailers often resort to importing products from different states or even overseas.
"Organic farmers also rely on shipping food out of their market to allow prices to be competitive," Granatstein said. The increased demand for a product with limited local availability couldn't have come at a worse time. The organic food industry and the U.S. population are expanding rapidly and arable land in the United States is diminishing. According o the USDA, since 1982, cultivated lands decreased by nearly 20 percent while population has grown by nearly 22 percent. This situation results in over 68 million more mouths to feed, many of which prefer organic food.
Organic food requires more land because farmers fertilize their crops less efficiently by avoiding use of synthetic chemicals, according to a study by Anthony Trewavas of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Organic pea and bean yields were only approxiately 65 to70 percent and oat yields were only approximately 85 percent when compared to a conventional farm.
Trewavas's study also showed that organic farming requires that alfalfa and other grasses be rotated with food crops to provide sufficient nitrogen fixation in the soil, creating a lay period.
In addition to increased land required to produce enough organic food, the purchase of smaller companies by larger international conglomerates may dilute organic ideals.
According to Latacz-Lohmann and Foster's study, the basic ideals governing the organic production and distribution aren't compatible with large-scale operations. The study also shows the inherent inability of organic food to provide a consistent product to a market that demands convenience and consistency.
An example of smaller companies being purchased by international corporations is the purchase of Stonyfield Farms, an organic dairy producer, by French dairy giant Dannon.
"[These purchases] give the smaller companies a chance to get their food to a larger array of stores," Oppenheimer said.
In addition to giving smaller companies the necessary financial support of large-scale business, the takeovers can make organic farming attractive to conventional farmers who may have never considered growing organically before.
However, the OCA, a group with over 800,000 members recently boycotted Horizon Organics, which is owned by Dean Foods, the largest dairy processor and distributor in the world. USDA organic cattle guidelines require that the livestock have access to shade, shelter, exercise areas, fresh air, and direct sunlight suitable to their stage of production. The association accused the company of massive factory-scale cattle feedlots, including one Idaho farm with more than 4,000 cattle in a near-desert environment.
According to an OTA manufacturer survey, dairy products are one of the fastest growing sectors of organic food, with a 23.6 percent growth rate in 2005.
The National Organics Standards Board, a 15-member panel, proposed less ambiguous grazing standards to the USDA, however they have yet to be accepted and implemented.
Some farmers like George Vojkovich, owner of Skagit River Ranch, are practicing their own ethical organic standards.
Vojkovich's products include organic beef, pork, chicken and dairy products. He described the pleasures of making what he considers to be a superior product, using only organic grain and grass-fed cattle. But Vojkovich says his style of farming is difficult.
"It's so labor intense and expensive," he said.
How can a consumer know that costly organic products adhere to organic standards?
Storeowners such as Trinkaus claim to be a filter for consumers, by selling only ethically produced products.
"The ability of the organic food market to meet demand is fundamentally different [than the conventional market]," Granatstein said.
When considering the costs in land, fuel, and higher prices, consumers have to decide if choosing organic is always the most environmentally ethical choice.
"Every time you eat, you have the opportunity to change the world three times a day," Trinkaus said.