This year’s news for small farmers is a sobering reminder that there is still a long way to go to achieving a real, sustainable “movement” that could also help small-scale farmers. According to a report released last month by the US Department of Agriculture, farmers’ incomes are projected to drop by as much as 34% in 2015 as compared to the 2014 forecast. In this grim scenario, the Northern Crescent region of the U.S. is expected to be hardest hit. Some of the reasons for this decline are lower crop yields, lower crop prices and higher costs of doing business.

Despite the ongoing challenges small-scale farmers face, there are some encouraging reasons to pay attention to small-scale farming in 2015, and to understand its importance for the (local and global) economy, the environment, and for reducing your exposure to toxins in the food you and your children consume, whether or not you patronize your local farms.

Last week I shopped at Costco, as I do about twice a month. What was different this time was that upon entering the warehouse and showing my ID, I was handed a brochure advertising Costco’s latest organic offerings. I was curious: there seemed to be a lot more organic goods than I remembered, and some of the items I had been shopping for had disappeared from the store shelves, replaced by these new, supposedly healthier, products. If I sound a little skeptical it is because I am inherently more distrustful of organic products offered by big box stores, especially their own organic brands, than of organic products made by my local organic farmer, or sold by the small, local health-conscious stores where I’ve shopped for organic products for years. (Still, this skepticism hasn’t always prevented me from buying Safeway’s O-organics brand or more recently, Costco’s organic offerings.)

Browsing Costco’s “Save on organic at your local Costco” brochure did make me wonder, though, why some stores seem to be increasing their organic foods inventory.