US organic produce sales continued strongly in quarter two of 2021. According to a report from the Organic Produce Network, they confidently overcame the reopening of restaurants, which drove down conventional produce sales in the same period a year ago.
Steve Lutz, senior vice president of Insights and Innovation at Category Partners: “I think it is encouraging that even though consumer purchases of conventional produce were lower than quarter two of 2020, organic produce continued to generate growth.”
The report compared sales from Q2 of 2020, when the closing of restaurants due to Covid drove up retail produce sales, to sales from Q2 of 2021, when restaurants started to reopen, leading to more normal consumer purchase behavior.
The Q2 report comes after a sensational year-over-year growth rate of 9% in organic produce sales in quarter one of 2021, but those numbers were heavily skewed by COVID-19, according to Lutz, who said the absence of competition from restaurant sales drove up the retail numbers.
Source: organicfarmermag.com