What are the biggest challenges facing the natural and organic food industry?
Commodity prices and marketplace confusion are two of our biggest challenges. The historically high wheat, cocoa and other commodity costs are hitting organic companies particularly hard. At the same time, there is still some confusion in the marketplace between what it means to be organic versus all natural versus made with organic. Two major points of confusion for consumers are companies using organic in their brand name to describe products that are not organic and conventional companies greenwashing their packaging. What’s the one natural product you can’t live without? I cannot live without organic, dark-chocolate cookies. I’m not sure how I survived before. Second place would have to go to the new-and-improved Seventh Generation diapers. Natural Foods Merchandiser volume XXVIII/number 8/p.
