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Ag economy tightens margins for organic grain growers

An organic grain farmer says the sector is also being strained by the challenging ag economy. 

Fourth-generation farmer Mark Vollmar tells Brownfield he was one of the first growers to transition to organic in his region in the early 1990s.

“Things started leveling off on the demand in about 2015,” he shares. “It was mostly because our prices kept going up, and it attracted production from other countries. Now we’re importing all kinds of organics, and we’re struggling to compete with the import prices.”

Vollmar has experimented with several organic grains over the decades and is currently growing soybeans, black beans, and the ancient grain einkorn.

“All of our costs are going up,” he says. “The land, all the inputs we put into it. We’re not buying chemicals, but still our inputs that we are buying are all more expensive, so we’re being squeezed too.”

He says growers have to be careful when diversifying into niche markets and make sure they find enough demand for what they produce.

Brownfield interviewed Vollmar during the recent Michigan Agriculture Advancement’s Underground Innovations event in Frankenmuth.