The key to understanding organic usage is through exploring the evolutionary process a consumer goes through as they become an organic consumer. For this journey to continue, they need easy access to information about organics in order to make decisions that will impact their way of life. The more consumers pick and choose from the information out there, the more they begin to build their own knowledge structure about organic products, leading them to look to organic foods as a simple solution. In this issue we will examine how this process evolves and who today's organic consumers are (something that might surprise you). Along this evolutionary path we will also take a look at a linguistic analysis of what the term 'organic' currently means to the consumer from the periphery of the organic world to the core. We end this feature issue by taking a day-in-the-life tour of a mid-level organic consumer to see how she has evolved and to understand how she lives, where she shops and what she buys. | 