Europe: Production and consumption of organic food in the EU are growing

The latest figures collected by the french national organic agenic ageny now show that organic food now is more than only a niche in the market. France now No 2 in Europe, Germany , but also Austria and the neighbours, the baltic countries, Skandinavia and the relly suffering southern members like Italy and Spain. Less populated countries can sometimee show more extraordinaty facts but in the whole organic food is a part of European economic reality and even a country like Italy – hit by the economic crisis – is now in the organic comsumtion No. three in Europe.

And we also see another fact: Statistics show, that in the vast majority of the countries organic food is mainly sold in normal retail. An exemption is Italy, whre we have a lack of a strong national chain for that. And in France we see that 47 % of  the turnover of organic food is sold in the hyper- and supermarkets of normal retail and that the succesful chains of organic shops also have very professional structures similar to the retail. In Germany the specialist section is in a way under-developped compares to France because of the structure of organic specialist shops and trade. Only Dennree and Alnatura have the power to build up a strong national distribution as a modern-type wholesale-partner. So in Germany as a traditional organic country it is due to the performance of the specialist players that the normal retail and the discount also got the major organic players.

At the time of the first implementation of the EU-Organic certification nobody could forsee and imagine that this step would have been as huge as it is today. But today we probably have to think about, how to develop more this standard and certification for our future mass market.