Italian Organic Market Continues to Grow

A further report of continued growth in the organic market in Europe. Italy saw growth of 10.5% through 2010 it is seeing continued double digit growth through the first 4 months of 2011. The star performer being dairy produce which is growing by just over 20%. The Danes reported continued growth of between 6% & 10% recently and we have had enquiries from European buyers seeking supplies as their domestic supplies are tight.

Why is the UK market so dramatically different?

Development of sales in Italy

(Source: Ismea for supermarkets sales, Assobio for other channels)

Significant growth in Italy has come from the independent and food service sectors in Italy as shown in the table above and perhaps this diversity of marketing channel provides greater robustness for the organic sector as sales volumes are less reliant upon the views or whims of a few supermarket buyers.

Recently Sainsburys have been out of stock of organic milk and sausages when I've tried to buy them and without the produce available it is buy it and so I am sure that the influence of the supermarket buyer is significant but this alone cannot be the answer. The fact that food service growth in Italy is so significant indicates to me that the Italian consumer is now expecting better quality food wherever and whenever they are eating.

Not for them the "oh well if that's all there is available" attitude but an expectation that high quality, organic food will be available and it is this consumer demand that is driving the growth they report. Perhaps then it comes back to the much lamented "lack of food culture" we have in the UK.

Perhaps this is the easy excuse. Time and again premium priced food products are being successful sold in the UK in large volumes, for example Dorset Cereals, Tyrells Crisps, Cravendale milk, Anchor butter, Premium own label sausages. The evidence indicates the consumer is not afraid of paying for food where they perceive value and yet organic is failing to persuade enough consumers it is providing very good value when one considers the multiple benefits that organic farming systems and so foods deliver.  


Currently organic delivers most of the requirements consumers have when considering ethical purchases.  It delivers lower chemical contamination, improved animal welfare and environmental enhancement and there is increasingly evidence of improved nutrition.  In some European countries organic is understood to be a "shortcut" encompassing all of these values in a world of increasingly confusing labelling of food packaging.  Rather than searching for a particular ethical criteria shoppers look for the catch-all organic label and buy this.


We need organic to be repositioned along similar lines within the UK so a whether a shopper is looking for for "high welfare", "great tasting", "improved nutrition", "less nasty chemicals" it is organic they chose to fulfil all of these aspirations and more besides.

In Praise of Hauliers

We sometimes get minor gripes about the hauliers we use although the vast majority of loads hauled run very smoothly.

I recently had a problem with a courier moving a sample of wheat from a farm to a watermill for the watermill to test. This was organised as a "next day" service and cost over £2 per kg delivered. It was not collected the next day or the day after but on the 3rd day after it should have been. I still don't know when or if it will be delivered.

Fuming on the phone to the courier I made a few calculations and reported to the courier company that:

"As a business we deliver in excess of 20,000 kg of material each year. Sometimes this needs to fit in with the specific collection requirements of the farmer loading and often needs to meet a specific tipping time at the delivery point. This is done for a charge on average of about £0.01 per kg.

Sometimes our hauliers don't get it right but they are all far better than the courier company I have recently had dealings with at a fraction of the cost - about 1/200th of the cost to be precise.

Thankfully we don't use couriers too often. Remember it's two sugars in his mug of tea next time your haulier turns up!

In short, organic soil hangs onto more of its “good stuff” for a longer period of time, while chemical systems can lose the “good stuff” more quickly

What a brilliant synopsis of how a healthy soil works. This report by the Rodale Institute is the culmination of a 30 year trial comparing organic and conventional farming systems in the US and shows that organic systems outperform conventional ones over a wide range of parameters both environmental and financial. It gives a positive view of the benefits organic farming systems deliver in making farming systems more robust in sub-optimal conditions and should be read and taken seriously by policy makers and agriculturalists as we look at making food production better suited for the 21st centuary.

The US systems studied are directly comparable to those employed in the UK but the principles of healthy soils are surely universal. Improved soil carbon levels act as a reservoir of both moisture and nutrients and a biologically active soil can make these available to growing plants. Whether the soil is lacking moisture or inundated with moisture the higher carbon levels seen in organic soils makes them better able to cope with both scenarios.

Read the full report. It is an excellent arguement for greater focus on organic and agro-ecological farming systems. The Rodale Institute 30 Year Trial Report