Rodale Institute Begins Work on Center for Regenerative Organic Innovation
Will 10 million acres of US cropland be certified organic by 2030?
That’s the goal the Rodale Institute mentioned at the groundbreaking ceremony for its new Center for Regenerative Organic Innovation on July 20. The $24 million project will involve renovating a historic bank barn known as the Siegfried Building to be a “model for modern green architecture,” including geothermal heating and cooling, a rainwater collection system, and solar-powered electricity.
The Siegfried Barn will be remodeled to become the Center for Regenerative Organic Innovation
The new building project will provide classrooms and workspaces for Rodale Institute’s “10 Million Acre Solution,” a $139 million fundraising campaign with the goal of “transitioning 10 million acres of industrial farmland in the direction of regenerative organic.”
By 2030, Rodale plans to conduct 10 research trials; educate 100,000 farmers, professionals, and consumers; reach 100 million consumers; and catalyze and impact 10 million acres of farmland.
Why the relatively short timeframe of 2030? Rodale Institute lists three reasons why it’s a critical time to accelerate the transition to organic. One reason is that sales of organic foods in the US continue to grow, and that demand is increasingly being filled with imports because domestic organic production is not increasing.
Another reason this is a critical time is that the majority of US farmers are reaching retirement age, which means that 95 million acres of US farmland will transition to new ownership in the next few years. If that land transfer could be accompanied with a transition to organic production, it could drastically increase the amount of organic acreage in the US.
Rodale Institute picked the number 10 million because it “represents a systems change—the point that organic agriculture begins to influence markets, investment decisions, supply chains, and farmer adoption at a fundamentally different scale.”
It’s a great goal. The big question is, will the Rodale Institute’s increased research, education, and consulting program be able to do it? As the National Organic Coalition highlighted in a January 2026 webinar, the number of certified organic acres in the US actually decreased between 2024 and 2025.
Surprisingly, we don’t actually know for sure how many acres of certified organic farmland are in the United States. The USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service hasn’t done a survey of organic farmland since 2021, at which time it reported 4.9 million acres of certified organic crop and rangeland. Argus Media, an independent data collection company, used different methodology and reported 9.1 million acres for that same year.
According to the Argus data, 2021 was the peak in organic acreage. Certified organic cropland has declined slightly since then, while certified rangeland has plummeted from nearly 4 million acres in 2021 to only 2.5 million acres in 2023.
Certified organic acreage has declined since 2021. Hopefully the Rodale Institute’s new program will help reverse this trend.
Will the Rodale Institute’s expanded educational program help reverse that trend? Hopefully. But they won’t be able to do it alone. It will take everyone in the eco-agriculture community working together to demonstrate organic farming, spread the world, help farmers make the transition, and increase organic acreage once again.
And maybe, just maybe, we could add 10 million acres by 2030.
