The 40th EcoFarm Conference – the oldest and largest organic farming conference in the West – went off without a hitch in late January, providing some 1,600 attendees with a wide range of information about how to grow food sustainably.

Once a niche product, organic farming is the fastest-growing sector of the U.S. food industry. In fact, organic food today is a nearly $50 billion industry, employing 1.4 million people nationwide and more than 400,000 in California alone, according to the California Certified Organic Farmers Foundation (CCOF).