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By Matt Hughes mhughes@timesleader.com
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In 1983, you wouldn’t have called Gary Hirshberg a business mogul. Farmer, academic, even hippie would have been a better fit for the president of Stonyfield Farms, now the largest producer of organic yogurt in the world.

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Gary Hirshberg

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Hirshberg

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If you go

What: Stonyfield Farm President Gary Hirshberg delivers the Allan P. Kirby Lecture in Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship

Where: The Dorothy Dickson Darte Center for the Performing Arts, Wilkes-Barre

When: Tuesday, March 22, 7:30 p.m.

Cost: Free

“Back then, I couldn’t even use the word organic and industry in the same sentence; it was a movement not an industry,” Hirshberg said Friday in a conference call.

Over 28 years, Hirshberg transformed a seven-cow organic farming school into a company boasting $360 million in annual sales.

On March 22, he will deliver this year’s Allan P. Kirby Lecture in Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship at Wilkes University.

Hirshberg said he became an entrepreneur out of necessity – federal funding for his organic farming school was cut during the Reagan administration – and businesses today have been boxed into a similar situation in which they must adapt sustainable green business practices or face rapidly-rising operating costs.

That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though, he said.

Organic food is now a $26.8 billion industry in U.S. that has grown at a compounded rate of about 20 percent annually over the past 15 years, and Hirshberg said he sees “nothing but blue skies ahead” for the industry. Organics now make up about 4 percent of the food sold annually in the U.S. Hirshberg anticipates it will rise above 10 percent in the not-too-distant future.

The industry has stood strong even in recession – conventional food sales grew 1 percent or 2 percent in 2009, versus a 6.5 percent growth in organics – and Hirshberg said the industry is more insulated from recession versus the conventional food industry because the prices organic producers pay farmers are not indexed against federal commodity prices.

Hirshberg also predicts the organic foods and other green industries will also continue to create jobs and entrepreneurship opportunities well into the future.