Though, by many metrics, organic tree nuts have boomed during the last few years, they are still dwarfed, as a category, by their contemporary counterparts. Strong demand for nuts throughout the world has fueled the growth of nuts overall, but it's expected that there's plenty of room for growth for organic nuts as better pest management practices are developed.
The US Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service released a report last week detailing the strides organic tree nuts have made in the last few years. Since 2008, the report noted, organic products in general, and organic nuts in particular, have exploded as a result of strong demand. Organic nut acreage increased 10% from that period of time to 2011, reaching 17,478 acres in the latter year. But while plantings and sales for organic nuts have increased, it's still dwarfed by the overall growth of organics as a category as well as by conventional nuts.
Organic nuts represent less than a tenth of the total organic sector, and organic nut sales are still less than one percent of total nuts sales in the US. For all nuts mentioned in the ERS report, only organic pecan production reached one percent of its conventional counterpart production in 2011. The rest of the nuts mentioned each had production numbers during that time that were under one percent of the production for their respective conventional counterparts.
Organic almonds were the most harvested out of all the organic nuts mentioned in the report, with their 8.2 million pounds harvested in 2011 representing 45% of the organic nut sector. But even as the most prevalent organic nut, their production was dwarfed by the production of over 2 billion pounds that conventional almond growers brought in during the 2011 season. Likewise, the other leading organic nuts, walnuts and pistachios, had production figures that were much less than conventional walnuts and pistachios.
The full report can be found here.