Even more venues and supermarkets are adding or expanding organic product offerings:

• Dining halls at the University of Colorado in Boulder are adding local and organic produce as well as other organic products as part of the university's sustainability efforts.
• Due to increased student demand for organic foods, dining services at the University of Arizona are continuing to add organic products, including organic meat.
• Good Stuff Eatery, opening at Pennsylvania Avenue and 3rd Street SE on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., offers organic ingredients.
• Organic to Go has opened a freestanding airport café at San Diego International Airport, in addition to its seven other cafés in southern California.
• Pizza Hut, Inc., is introducing pizza made with organic and all-natural ingredients in response to demand from customers for healthier menu items.
• Wyndham Hotels and Resorts now serves organic and Fair Trade Certified^TM Starbucks® coffees in its hotel restaurants, cafés, bars, and as part of its room service. According to company representatives, the switch from conventional to organic and Fair Trade was prompted to meet the company's evolving environmental and social responsibility policies.
• Grocery chain Supervalu, Inc., has launched a Wild Harvest organic and natural private label brand nationwide priced at a 15 percent discount to branded organic and natural products. It replaces the chain's Nature's Best private label brand as well as the Wild Harvest brand it bought from Albertson's.
• United Grocers has introduced Natural Directions^TM, a line of natural and organic food products that will be sold in independent grocery stores throughout the western United States.

Studies show the following consumer trends:

• Open to new experiences: In a recent study, online advertising network Mindset Media found that people who purchase organic products are 153 percent more likely than the general population to be highly open to new and different experiences. The study, which consisted of a panel of 8,000 participants from around the United States, also revealed that "organic devotees" are more likely than the general population to possess certain leadership qualities and be creative, spontaneous, and altruistic (www.mindset-media.com).
•  Organic milk purchases up: An April 2008 report released by the California Department of Food and Agriculture found that total sales of organic milk increased nearly 55 percent over the total organic milk sales in April 2007. The California Farm Bureau reported that the largest sales increase within the organic milk category was for fat-free organic milk, growing by 60 percent.
• More core organic users: New research from The Natural Marketing Institute (NMI) reveals that consumers are increasingly incorporating organic into their lifestyles. Total household penetration across six product categories has risen from 57 percent in 2006 to 59 percent in 2007. The research also showed that the number of core users has increased from 16 percent in 2006 to 18 percent in 2007 (www.NMIsolutions.com).

States and universities announce efforts to encourage organic farming practices:

• Inmates at the Cook County Jail in Chicago, IL, have the opportunity to participate in the jail's garden project, which produces an average of 8,000 to 10,000 pounds of produce per season. The project has supplied over 500 tons of fresh produce to area homeless shelters and non-profit organizations since its inception. Increasingly, efforts are being made to incorporate organic management practices, with plans to supply local restaurants with fresh, organic produce grown in the jail garden. Project directors are seeking funding to build a three-season greenhouse in which organic vegetables and herbs can be grown and later sold on the Chicago restaurant market.
• The New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets granted Alfred State College $29,320 to facilitate a collaboration between the College's dining services and local farmers. As part of this collaboration, the Center for Organic and Sustainable Agriculture will provide technical, agricultural and marketing support to participating farmers.
• University of New Hampshire researchers have received a three-year $380,000 grant to study the university's organic research dairy as a sustainable closed agro-ecosystem. The grant from USDA's Sustainable Agricultural Research and Education program will be used to study whether closing energy and nutrient cycles can help small dairy farms in the Northeast survive economic challenges.
• Aurora Organic Dairy and Colorado State University (CSU) have announced plans to collaborate in a multi-year master research agreement with several of the University's colleges, including the College of Agricultural Sciences and the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. CSU professors and top professionals in the field of agricultural science will lead the collaboration, made possible through a three-year $500,000 grant from the Aurora Organic Dairy Foundation. Offering opportunities for hands-on, on-farm research, the partnership will focus on such topics as animal welfare, veterinary medicine, and soil fertility for organic pasture development in the Rocky Mountain West region.
• New York State Agriculture Commissioner Patrick Hooker has announced the formation of the New York State Organic Advisory Task Force to advise how the state can help organic farmers meet increased consumer demand for organic products.
• With increased legislative funding, the University of Minnesota plans to expand the resources it dedicates to organic farming. Included will be the establishment of a faculty position at the College of Food Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences, which will focus on organic and sustainable food systems; funding for two or more graduate assistantships focused on organic research; and the creation of a faculty position at the Southwest Research and Outreach Center in Lamberton, MN, centered on the study of organic crops.

More research studies are looking at organic products and farming:

• Alleviating global warming: Research at The Rodale Institute has shown that organic practices can remove about 7,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air and sequester it in an acre of farmland per year. Thus, Rodale estimates that if all 434 million acres of U.S. cropland were converted to organic practices, it would be the equivalent of eliminating 217 million cars-nearly 88 percent of all cars in the country today and more than a third of all the automobiles in the world.
• Protecting soil and wildlife: A four-year study by the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology found that organic agriculture is helpful in protecting soils and conserving wildlife. The study, representing the work of over 400 scientists and 30 governments and NGOs, grew out of discussions by the World Bank and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations about the need for an international assessment of the role of agricultural knowledge, science, and technology in "reducing hunger and poverty, improving rural livelihoods, and facilitating environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable development" (www.agassessment.org). 
• Comparable yields: Research conducted jointly by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the agricultural consulting firm AGSTAT published in the March-April 2008 Agronomy Journal showed that organic crop rotations had similar yields to their conventional counterparts. The research compared six cropping systems (three cash grain and three foraged-based crops), which ranged from diverse organic systems to conventional systems. Results of this multi-year study found that forage crops produced using organic methods yielded as much or more dry matter as their conventional counterparts "with quality sufficient to produce as much milk as...conventional systems."  The results of the study also revealed that organic corn, soybeans, and winter wheat produced 90 percent as well as the same crops produced in a conventional manner (www.newswise.com/institutions/view/?id=1622).
• More nutrients: A report entitled "New Evidence Confirms the Nutritional Superiority of Plant-Based Organic Foods," jointly produced by The Organic Center and professors from the University of Florida Department of Horticulture and Washington State University, provides evidence that organic foods contain, on average, 25 percent higher concentration of 11 nutrients than their conventional counterparts. The report was based on estimated differences in nutrient levels across 236 comparisons of organically and conventionally grown foods (www.organic-center.org/reportfiles/5367_Nutrient_Content_SSR_FINAL_V2.pdf).
• Children and organic diets: A study published in the April 2008 issue of Environmental Health Perspectives showed that children who substituted organic fresh fruits and vegetables for their conventional equivalents had lower concentrations of organophosphorus pesticides in their urine. The study, which involved children ages 3-11 and was conducted over four seasons in the Seattle, WA area, supported findings outlined in the National Research Council's 1993 study entitled "Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children" indicating that "dietary intake of pesticides represents the major source of exposure for infants and children."  
• Ecological virtues: A study published in the March 6 online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science showed that fertilizing apple trees with synthetic chemicals produced more adverse environmental effects than feeding them with organic manure or alfalfa. The findings, published by Stanford University graduate student Sasha B. Kramer and colleagues, showed that the use of organic versus chemical fertilizers helped reduce nitrogen pollution.
• Pasture-fed cows: Organic cows grazing on fresh pasture produce milk with higher levels of antioxidants and beneficial fatty acids such as conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) and omega-three fatty acids, according to research findings from Newcastle University in the United Kingdom published online in the Journal of Science of Food and Agriculture. Part of the ongoing Cross-European Quality Low Input Food project, the study involved 25 farms across the United Kingdom and looked at three different farming systems: conventional high-input, organically certified, and non-organic sustainable (low-input).

Meanwhile, other research continues to raise additional questions about practices not allowed in organic production:

• Fertilizer run-off: Research performed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Environmental Sciences Division has shown that hypoxia, a fatal condition that affects thousands of fish, shrimp, and shellfish in the Gulf of Mexico each year, is partly the result of fertilizer run-off from agricultural activities in the Mississippi basin. The run-off, along with the temperature differentials created when the warm water from the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers comes into contact with the cold Gulf waters, forms a deadly combination whereby algae grows, dies, decomposes and uses up the oxygen the organisms need for survival.
• Atrazine and deformed tadpoles: According to research performed by Tufts University biologists, tadpoles experienced negative physiological changes, including deformed hearts and malfunctioning kidneys and digestive systems, in early phases of their lives when they were exposed to atrazine, an herbicide commonly used to treat golf courses and residential lawns. While causation had not yet been conclusively determined, researchers found that "compared with control populations, the tadpoles that were exposed to atrazine had a dramatically higher incidence of abnormalities.
•  Pesticide exposure and Parkinson's: Recent findings published in the BMC Neurology Journal found that of 600 people studied, those exposed to pesticides had a 1.6 times greater risk of developing Parkinson's disease than those who were not. Those who made "heavy use" of pesticides, or who were exposed to them more than 200 days in the course of their lifetime, were found to have over twice the level of risk, suggesting that "there is very strong evidence" linking pesticide use and Parkinson's disease, according to lead researcher Dana Hancock (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7318188.stm).
• Pesticide exposure during pregnancy: A study published in the April 2008 issue of Environmental Health Perspectives found that the sons of women exposed at work to pesticides during pregnancy suffered impaired reproductive development. Specifically, the sons were found to have reduced penile length, testicular volume, and abnormal concentrations of various reproductive hormones. The study also found that female workers who were exposed to pesticides on the job were three times more likely to give birth to sons with cryptorchidism, a condition in which one or both testes are absent from the scrotum, than non-exposed female workers.
• Children at risk in agricultural areas: According to findings published in the April 2008 issue of Environmental Health Perspectives, children living in regions of intense agricultural activity in the United States face a higher risk of many types of childhood cancer. The risk was found to be highest among children living in counties having 60 percent or more of their total acreage dedicated to farming. The study also revealed that the incidence of certain types of cancer varied by crop type, suggesting a link between cancer type and the use of crop-specific pesticides.
• Concerns about antimicrobials: In a report released in April 2008, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) expressed concerns about the growing use of antimicrobial agents in food. Citing the potentially negative impact of these agents on human resistance to bacteria and other microbes, EFSA spokesperson Alun Jones told FoodProductionDaily.com that "Antimicrobial resistance cannot be predicted-it comes from the mutation of existing bacteria...so we need to keep an eye on this issue and make sure that all the potential entry points into the food chain for such resistant bacteria are controlled" (www.foodproductiondaily.com/news/ng.asp?id=84762).