Last week there was earth-shattering news in the compassionate — and increasingly competitive — world of morally righteous food. Rachel Rowlands, the cowgirl who runs what was the country’s first organically certified dairy, announced that she was dropping the word “organic” from her brand name. Henceforth, the name on the tubs of her unctuous confections (my favourite is the creamy coconut with lots of lovely bits) will be Rachel’s, tout court. “Research showed that existing consumers call it that anyway and the majority preferred the simpler version,” she explained.

I know it doesn’t sound much. But as anyone who has recently visited one of the country’s many hushed, gleaming, almost embarrassingly overstaffed and under-frequented temples to organic, any of these stone-floored, wheatgrass blitzing meccas for foodie fundamentalists, will be aware: this tiny name change from knit-your-own yoghurt to plain yoghurt is a lot more than a straw in the wind.

Although some might be sceptical, I’m assured it is not some cunning plan to quietly drop Rachel’s (I feel I can call her by her first name) commitment to sustainable agriculture, animal welfare and a quality product that has been lovingly produced from hand-reared cows and sheep. Not at all. It’s a land grab for the mainstream market. It’s a ploy to snag a bigger slice of the pie for her product. Suddenly “organic” has ceased to be a selling point and started to be a liability sales-wise. How could the wheel have turned full circle so fast?

As the grocery surveys show, consumers are still supporting and shelling out for stuff that has the fair trade, or local, or high animal welfare tags on the label. Sainsbury’s says that sales of meat, especially chicken, sold under the animal welfare ticket have “gone through the roof”, thanks to campaigns fronted by well-known faces such as Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

Ethically traded tea and coffee, local and seasonal vegetables, free-range eggs and meat that meets high welfare standards are all seeing big increases, according to a report called, somewhat predictably, Appetite for Change, put out by the National Trust (the country’s largest owner of farmland and one of the largest fresh food caterers). Which is all great.

What’s not so great is the fact that the only segment of the grocery market that has seen a decline is organic. And within the organic market two things seem to be happening.

The good news is that those for whom wearing hemp clothes and cloven-toed shoes shaped like pasties is a way of life are still buying. The fundamentalist, hardcore keepers of the flame are still resolutely not allowing anything that has been produced by “traditional” farming methods past their lips, and I know you will be relieved to hear that their bodies, at least, are still temples.

Where things are going pear-shaped is at the glossier, plumper, sheenier end of the organic food chain. It’s the posh places that people are passing on and going to the superstore instead for the cheap-as-chips parmesan and parma ham. The people who bought organic as a status symbol — well, they’re driving up to Lidl in their 4x4s in droves.

Which is not so great for the brave souls who have invested personal fortunes in selling high-end organic produce, such as the WholeFoods market people from Austin, Texas; or indeed our own Carole Bamford, whose Daylesford Organic farm shops and hay barn spas have, to some minds, turned the shires into outposts of Harvey Nichols, but were so heavenly handy for the well-heeled of Poshtershire.

There was no better place to take your labradoodle for the latest tips on doga (dog yoga, darling), wear cashmere tracksuit bottoms in restful shades of oatmeal, or have a girlie lunch for the price of family holiday in Spain. Daylesford was — is — perfect for indulgences and I still pop into the London store in Notting Hill several times a week for seven-seed sourdough bread and hummus, braving my husband’s crack that Bamford saw me coming.

Whether I keep shopping at Daylesford’s is irrelevant: the whole organic sector is down 20% and having to adapt to the new reality, which is that shoppers such as me, suckers for the high-end pampering, self-gifting experience, are much thinner on the ground.

Bamford is finally becoming alive to the importance of price-points: just as Waitrose is doing internet-only deals, M&S is doing a meal for two for a tenner, and Sainsbury’s is doing a Love Your Leftovers and Feed Your Family for a Fiver offers, Daylesford is now offering its own discount range in the tastefully packaged shape of “buyer recommends” products. Even WholeFoods is doing its own version of the dreaded supermarket economy ranges.

Frugal is the new fancy and it’s smarter to carry a plastic bag from Aldi than a Fendi baguette. Indeed, according to the brand gurus, saying “organic” is sticking a neon label on your product that doesn’t say mmm, yummy, good for you, nice for the animals, kind to the land: it just shrieks expensive. And that association is a marketing disaster.

It’s also a disaster for the environment. As the Soil Association says, the single most effective action that anyone can take to promote a more sustainable and secure food future is to buy organic food. Okay, so organic products may be ridiculously expensive (I have the scars on my credit card to prove it). But the cheaper alternatives are still more expensive for the planet.

- Connie Culp, the American woman who has had a face transplant, told a child who called her a monster, “I’m not a monster. I’m a lady who was shot.” We have a reflexive urge to avert our gaze from any deviation from the norm. As the late Dr Martin Kelly, the craniofacial surgeon said, this leaves those who look as Culp did, thanks to tumours, attacks or, in her case, being blasted in the face by her husband with a shotgun, “imprisoned by the stigma of deformity”.

By chance I was in the maxillofacial unit at Chelsea and Westminster hospital last week. I picked up a leaflet for the charity that Kelly co-founded, Facing the World. If you have any vestigial doubt about the value of this sort of work and its genuinely inspiring practitioners and patients, have a look at the documentary clip on the charity website. I urge you to watch it. If you can see it through the tears streaming down your face, that is.

rachel.johnson@sunday-times.co.uk

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