One of the hot workshops at this year's Maine Agricultural Trades Show is called Convergence Equals Sustainability. It's billed as an effort to bring farmers together to talk about food safety, biotechnology and the challenges facing organic and conventional agriculture. One group excluded from these sessions, organized by the Maine Farm Bureau, is MOFGA, the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association. Jay Field reports MOFGA's exclusion comes as it releases a new report, showing growth in the number of organic farms in Maine and in the amount of revenue and jobs they create.

Organic farms forgo or strictly limit the use of manufactured fertilizers, pesticides, livestock antibiotics and other genetically modified organisms. In 2007, Maine had nearly 600 of them, up from just 41 in 1988.

Many new organic farms have started up, while other older conventional ones have followed the lead of farmers like Jan Gorenson. In the late 70s and early 80s, while she was in college, Gorenson talked to her aging father about turning the family's Dresden pototato farm into an organic operation. "We couldn't go very far in that conversation when he was alive."

But a few years later, her father passed away and suddenly Gorenson found herself in charge and struggling to keep the farm afloat. "And so we were using the same kinds of chemicals that my dad had used. Similar fertilizing. Same fungicides. And our goal was to be able to maintain the farm as a farm."

Things stabilized. Gorenson and her husband had time to think. "Both of my parents have died of cancer. So for health reasons and environmental reasons, we looked for ways we could move away from the chemical production of food--that we were selling to people who we wanted to be healthy."

So Gorenson and her husband began the long, sometimes costly and difficult, process of diversifying their crops and going organic. But now, unlike 20 years ago, they have more colleagues to commiserate with, including many half their age.

"Organic farmers are skewed young," says Russell Libby, who heads the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, or MOFGA. "That is--we're bringing in a lot of new farmers. They tend to be women and organic farms have more jobs per farms than comparable farms."

MOFGA commissioned a study based on statistics from the 2007 Census of Agriculture, and among other things, it found that Maine has one of the largest collections of organic farms in the nation. Still, admits Libby, they're a small part of the agricultural landscape in Maine. Organic farms account for roughly seven percent, respectively, of the state's overall farming acreage, assets and gross revenue.

"MOFGA has just done a five-year plan and we have a pretty ambitious 'get to 10 percent' goal," Libby says. "Our goal is to double the number of farms over the next five years.

Jay Field: "Do you think that's doable."

Russell Libby: "Well, there's a lot of people farming organically that haven't come out of the closet, so to speak. So that's part of it. Part of it is our training programs bringing new people into the business."

In theory, people like Mike Banzella. On the surface, he seems like an ideal candidate for such training. He lives in Standish and is in the process of starting up a Community Supported Agriculture Cooperative that will sell vegetables. He plans to use organic practices like composting and row covers. But get certified by MOFGA, says Banzella? Forget it.

"On MOFGA's website they'll say a pepper that is grown organically, with organic methods, is safer, more nutritious, more healthy than conventionally grown peppers. And you look for data to support that and you really can't find it," Banzella says. "And even if you find a study that says an organically grown pepper is more nutritious, you can't generalize that for every crop."

Other farmers say farming organically just takes too much extra time, costs too much money and would cut into their already thin profit margins. MOFGA's Libby says there's plenty of research that shows even small residues of pesticides on vegetables have negative health impacts.

Still, that Russell Libby has to even address this question highlights the challenge he faces, as he tries to grow MOFGA's membership and make Maine an even bigger leader, nationally, in organic agriculture.