The OTA survey projects that growth rates over the next two years will at least keep pace with the 2013 clip and even slightly exceed it.
“The US organic market is experiencing strong expansion, with organic food and farming continuing to gain in popularity,” said Laura Batcha, executive director and CEO of OTA. “Consumers are making the correlation between what we eat and our health, and that knowledge is spurring heightened consumer interest in organic products.”
Organic food sales in 2013, at $32.3bn, accounted for roughly 92% of total organic sales. Non-food organic products – including flowers, fibre, household products and pet food – are currently a very small part of the total organic market, but are making quick inroads.
Sales of non-food organic products, at almost $2.8bn, have jumped nearly eightfold since 2002 and have almost doubled in market share.
A niche industry in the huge food sector just a decade ago, consumer purchases of organic food first broke through the $30bn mark in 2012 and now account for more than 4% of the $760bn annual food sales in the US. More telling, the growth rate of organic food sales, which has averaged almost 10% every year since 2010, has dwarfed the average annual growth of just over 3% in total food sales during that same period.
A product breakdown of the organic food sector shows that the fruit and vegetable category continues to lead the sector with $11.6bn in sales, up 15%. With more than 10% of the fruits and vegetables sold in the US now organic, the $1.5bn in new sales of organic fruits and vegetable represented 46% of the organic sector’s $3.3bn in new dollars.
The relatively small organic condiments category posted the strongest growth at 17%, to reach sales of $830m. Also showing double-digit growth were:
Just two categories of the organic food sector showed single-digit growth rates:
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