Photo Credit: Dwight Sipler

A new report published in Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, entitled “Organic agriculture in the United States: A 30-year retrospective,” tells the story of the organic movement transformation over the last three decades. In the article, authors Garth Youngberg and Suzanne DeMuth discuss the maturation of organic agriculture, going over such issues as the increased popularity of organic food, the creation of a legal definition of the production system, the certification process developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the development of formal research programs within USDA and the land-grant university system of direct relevance to organic systems. The report describes the success of organic, stating that “organic agriculture now represents a well-established, legally defined, and popular farming and food industry.”