07/01/08 Washington organic acreage sees significant growth again

Washington Ag July 1, 2008 Certified organic acreage farmed in Washington state continues to expand. An annual profile compiled by the Washington State University Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources says organic acreage in the state increased by 27 percent between 2006 and 2007. David Granatstein is a sustainable agriculture specialist with the WSU center; Granatstein: "We are over about 80 some thousand acres now of certified land plus 12-thousand or so in transition. So the total would put our state around 90-thousand for the end of 2007. For comparison I have numbers that go back to 1995 and at that point we were about 10-thousand acres. So that is a pretty dramatic shift. The largest increase has been since really 2005, the last three or four years, a really dramatic increase. So now we will see, does that start to level off, or continue to increase." Granatstein says it will be interesting to see how inflation in food and energy costs will impact consumers' decisions on buying more expensive organic foods. Two-thirds of the state's organic land is devoted to three crop categories, forage crops for feeding livestock, which showed the most growth in 2007, vegetables and tree fruit. I'm Bob Hoff.