The UK organic sector has found itself at the centre of another culture-shifting food debate as Riverford Organic Farmers launched its new anti-glyphosate campaign, calling for an end to its use as a pre-harvest desiccant on food crops. The campaign lands at a fascinating moment for grocery, with consumers more sceptical, informed and willing to pay for reassurance than they have been in years.
The latest Soil Association Organic Market Report showed the UK organic market grew by 7.3% in 2024 to £3.7bn, with unit sales in major retail growing four times faster than non-organic. Growth is increasingly being driven by younger shoppers and middle-income households rather than affluent niche consumers: it’s moved from luxury to accessible aspiration.
Social media has accelerated this shift at pace, with TikTok, Instagram and YouTube becoming parallel food education systems. Consumers are now discovering terms like UPF and regenerative farming from creators rather than retailers, government campaigns or media.
Three trends are driving this: the uprising against ultra-processed foods, which saw a 300% explosion in social media mentions; the pesticide-free mandate, which fuelled a 150% spike in viral content in response to the ‘Dirty Dozen’ report; and a 600% surge in searches for PFAS (forever chemicals) in produce. This has resulted in a demand for radical transparency, with 73% of UK shoppers now using social media to verify ingredient origins and 83% using organic labels as a shorthand for safety in an era of heightened chemical anxiety.
The glyphosate and ultra-processed foods debates, once confined to trade circles, are now reaching consumers in real time via influencers like Professor Tim Spector, who has 759,000 Instagram followers, and accounts like @exposingyourplate_ with 328,000, while apps such as Yuka have put real-time ingredient analysis in shoppers’ hands at shelf.
Nevertheless, for decades, organic has wrestled with the same accusation from mainstream shoppers: “I’d love to buy it, but I can’t justify the premium.” Inflation, unexpectedly, may have changed that equation. The cost of living crisis was supposed to be catastrophic for organic, but instead it has become one of the category’s most important reset moment.
According to the Office for National Statistics, conventional food inflation reached 3.7% in the 12 months to March 2026. In contrast, estimates based on NIQ tracking and the 2026 Soil Association Organic Market Report suggest that organic food inflation was significantly lower at just 1.9% for Q1 2026. Conventional prices are currently rising nearly twice as fast as organic because they are tethered to volatile fossil-fuel fertilisers (key inputs into nitrogen based fertilisers rose by 46% in the single month of March 2026), industrial energy spikes, and long-haul global supply shocks, shocks that organic’s circular, localised farming models are built to resist.
As conventional prices surged, the gap between organic and non-organic narrowed. Suddenly, the jump to organic no longer felt like an indulgence. In many cases, it felt marginal, and that psychological shift matters. Retailers have noticed and the old passive organic strategy – a small bay, inconsistent ranging and a quiet assumption that committed shoppers would seek it out – is changing. This is evidenced with major supermarkets expanding their organic ranging, while loyalty pricing has helped normalise organic purchasing behaviour.
Organic is also increasingly being merchandised through health and wellness cues rather than purely environmental messaging and that repositioning is critical because the consumer conversation itself has changed. For years organic marketing leaned heavily on sustainability and animal welfare but now the conversation is increasingly dominated by ultra-processed foods, pesticide exposure, gut health and ingredient transparency. The modern organic shopper is not simply trying to save the planet, but reduce the risk to their personal wellbeing.
Shoppers are reassessing what ‘better for you’ means, and this is where organic has found a powerful new tailwind. The irony is that inflation may ultimately have democratised organic in a way years of marketing never could. And as Riverford’s glyphosate campaign shows, organic is no longer content to sit quietly on the edge of the supermarket – it is increasingly shaping the conversation at its centre.
Siddhi Mehta is CEO & founder at Rhythm 108
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