Organic Farming: Increasingly Profitable, Popular

Organic farming has become less alluring than it once was. Although prices for organic food remain high, and profits in the sector good, farmers can now make so much money selling conventional corn, soybeans and wheat that fewer cultivators are opting to go green.

Why make the three-year transition and struggle with mountains of paperwork to be an organic farmer when you can get rich doing what you've always done?

"We may be seeing over the next few years a turnaround, where organic agriculture contracts in this country," Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, a U.S.-based environmental research organization, told the The New York Times.

Don't you believe it. Interest in both organic foods and organic farming remain strong in the U.S. and across the globe, and as consumers become more health conscious and environmentally aware, demand is bound to surge.

A look at recent Internet activity bears this out. According to Google Trends, a Web site that tracks Google search terms, there has been a recent uptick in the use of the keyword "organic" this year: queries using this term rose in the first five months of 2008 compared to the same period last year.

This has reversed a previous four-year trend. From 2004 to 2007 searches for "organic" actually fell in frequency.

Among the top ten geographic locations where these 2008 Internet searches were made were countries in Asia, North America and Europe (not to mention Australia and New Zealand). The languages used in the searches include English, Chinese, French, German and Japanese.

There has also been an increase in the use of organic-related search terms, including "organic farming," "organic seeds," "organic fertilizer" and "organic pesticides."

Then there's the upward trend in the number of organic food-related keywords: "organic milk," "organic meat," "organic chicken," "organic beef," "organic bread" and "organic juice."

Global interest in organics has been growing for many different reasons. In the U.S. Amish farmers prefer organic cultivation because they believe it strengthens the family. In the Philippines a group of mothers has started their own organic gardening plots because they want to eat more healthfully.

In Jamaica government officials are recommending organic farming to reduce dependency on expensive chemical fertilizers. Australian officials are encouraging local farmers to go green to boost profits.

Whatever the reason, interest in organics continues to rise, as do sales of organic foods--they've grown at a double-digit rate over the last nine years.

Yes, organic foods have risen in cost along with conventional foods, and some consumers will be cutting back to accommodate their budgets, but there will be plenty of new consumers who will more than make up for that drop off in demand. The Organic Trade Association forecasts 18% annual growth through 2010.

With growing demand will come rising prices and fatter profits. It's only a matter of time before farmers that are making a mint selling conventional foodstuffs will see the sense in making even more by going green.