By Dave Harvey
BBC Points West Business Correspondent
Better Food supermarket's sales have levelled out Every year at harvest time, Bristol hosts Europe's biggest organic festival. This year's festival, being held over the weekend, promises a bigger party than ever. Sophie Grigson is cooking, there is a grow-your-own organic garden to play in, a cookery bus to inspire kids and the mother of all farmers markets. Past years have attracted up to 100,000 people as the nation's foodies came out to play. Organic farming is no longer a campaigning niche. It has become chic and mainstream. But as food bills soar and belts tighten, is the party over? The figures are worrying enough for organic campaigners. Retail analyst TNS found that overall sales fell 8.1% during the three months to June compared with the same period a year earlier. If it's a choice between your principles and starving, the principles go out the window
Ben Yearsley The American organic chain 'WholeFoods Market' lost £10m on its UK operations last year, and is closing its Bristol store 'Fresh and Wild'. "I'm afraid it's simple economics," says Ben Yearsley, an analyst at Bristol investment house Hargreaves Landsdown. "People have got less money, their ordinary food shopping has gone through the roof; they're cutting out luxuries. And I'm afraid organic is a luxury." Mr Yearsley points to the growth in discount stores like Aldi and Lidl, which now have 6% of the UK's food market. Family meals But it is not all gloom. Box schemes, delivering fresh organic vegetables to your muddy doorstep, are still growing. And Bristol's Better Food supermarket, the largest organic store in the country, is holding up. "Last year we grew, this year we've plateaued", says Better Food's founder, Phil Haughton. "I won't pretend it's not hard. We have ordinary shoppers with middle to low incomes, and I have to help them shop organic, for less." In store, shoppers are urged to buy dried beans and soak them at home, instead of a can which is four times the price. Yesterday's unsold organic bread is free. And in October the Better Food Cafe's chef will run evening classes on how to feed a family for a week on £75, 100% organic. "But the supermarkets are offering 'Feed your Family for a Fiver'," says Mr Yearsley. "If it's a choice between your principles and starving, the principles go out the window." Natural fertiliser Mr Haughton rejects the mass market passionately. "Sure, feed your family," he says, "but what about the growers in Kenya or Cornwall? Organically-raised pigs benefit as rising oil prices hit non-organic production "How can they feed their families if we support this system of agriculture that worships the consumer? We just have to get used to paying the real cost of food." It's a tough argument to win in hard times. But organic farmers may get some respite from, ironically, rising oil prices. Conventional farmers use tonnes of nitrogen fertiliser, which is made from natural gas. As the price of oil and gas has soared, so nitrogen fertiliser has doubled in price. "This is my fertiliser - a field of clover, and it's free," says Helen Browning who farms just west of Swindon, and is famous for her pigs. She sells sausages to all the major supermarkets, but she raises wheat and barley too, mostly to feed her pigs, and then sows clover to feed the soil. Oil price influence In a little miracle of nature, clover harnesses nitrogen from the air and fixes it in the soil. And while it is doing that, Ms Browning grazes her pigs on it too. "They love clover, the piglets play in it, and it makes them healthier too," she says. "It boosts their fatty acids and the meat is better for us as a result." Clover is now looking like smart business. As conventional farmers' fertiliser bills rise, the gap between organic and non-organic farming will narrow. At the Soil Association's head office in Bristol, they have calculated the impact on farm profits. "Respectable experts have predicted oil at £109 ($200) a barrel by 2015," says the Soil Association's Policy Director Peter Melchett. "And at that level, some organic farms are more profitable than non-organic competitors, and most are breaking even." So the organic movement is caught in the two huge forces driving the world economy today. On the one hand soaring food prices are hitting consumers, who are in turn buying less organic. On the other, the rising price of oil may, eventually, make organic farming competitive.
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Millennium Square was filled with different stalls for the festival 
The Bristol Organic Food Festival, which is Europe's largest festival for organic food, launched today in Bristol. ''Wikinews'' reported from the event.

The event was opened at 11:00 local time (10:00 UTC) by Patrick Holden, director of the Soil Association, who said that the festival was " the benchmark for what I hope will be the future development of festivals all over the country."

The event includes a large farmers market, music, and a variety of different features run by 212 organic food and drink related organisations from the region. 

Other events that took place today within the festival incuded a BBC run stall promoting organic food, and several stalls which encouraged young children to eat organic food, including a 'cookery bus,' which showed children how to cook different foods. 

The festival takes place as sales of organic food in the UK are starting to fall. Research has found that organic food sales have fallen by 8.1% over the last year.

The event was launched despite the heavy rain which has occurred throughout the day in Bristol.
 
"People have got less money, their ordinary food shopping has gone through the roof; they're cutting out luxuries. And I'm afraid organic is a luxury," said economic analyst Ben Yearsley. This downturn in the organic food market has meant that some companies, such as WholeFoods Market are planning to close some of their stores. WholeFoods Market are one of the organisations that displayed at the festival.

===Gallery===

Image:Bristol Organic Food Festival 2008 - 1.JPG|There was heavy rain during many of today's events
Image:Bristol Organic Food Festival 2008 - Parmesan.JPG|Parmesan at one of the stalls


Photographs: Anonymous101