Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
predominantly market driven and therefore not entirely related to the consumer demand.
The share of organic land in total utilised agricultural area was rapidly growing in the last
decade and has reached 6,4% in the year 2010. In the same year 2,218 farms have been in the
system of organic control and 1,897 have acquired the organic farming certificate (MAFF,
2011). It should be noted that intensity of growth for all the indicators of organic farming
has slowed down in the last few years, which is mainly due to the already mentioned
“passive organic farmers phenomenon” and therefore low market orientation.
There is still only limited marketing information available for the Slovenian organic sector,
despite a stable increase of consumers demand and development of the supply. Some
fragments of market-related estimates can be found in the EU research project OMIaRD
(Hamm U. et al., 2002; Hamm U. and Gronefeld F., 2004). However, the estimates provided
within the project largely lacked local expert verification and can thus have only an
indicative value. The first exploratory analysis of the organic food supply was done by Slabe
et al. (2005) who revealed significant organisational weaknesses of the domestic production
and processing supply chain. The main identified drawback is insufficient supply, especially
for the most demanded products such as fresh vegetables and fruits, grain and processed
vegetables. Furthermore, there were no producer organisations and hence deficient
marketing capabilities as well as fragmented production capacities. The problem of non-
differentiation of the organic cattle was identified, since the considerable part of the farmers
was selling their organic animals as conventional. However, the range of domestic organic
food products on the Slovenian market is relatively broad, but the quantities available are
extremely small. The main items are seasonal farm products or simple processed foods such
as dried fruits, juices, vinegar, olive oil, wine, and some bakery products and pasta. One of
the smallest industrial dairy enterprises has started with the production of fermented
products in 2007 which are now widely available. Similarly, a poultry processing firm in
2010 offered organic meat and meat products in a major retail chain. However, there are still
rather large challenges ahead for the Slovenian organic agro-food sector particularly to
increase its market presence and assure stable supply of produce.
2.2 Slovenian organic food market volume
Only recently a rather comprehensive research project on Slovenian organic market
development and domestic organic farms performance was carried out (Slabe et al., 2010).
One of the central objectives of the study was to evaluate the organic food market volume
with the evaluation of the sales channel structure and the share of the domestic products in
total market supply. That part of the analysis was based on (i) in-depth interviews with the
key market players which cover around 80-90% of total organic food turnover (ii) analysis of
secondary information (mainly 2009 annual reports and other publicly available business
documents) and (iii) a detailed survey of all national organic farmers markets including in-
depth interviews with the market coordinators and a sample of approximately 30% of the
farmers which were registered sellers on these markets in 2010.
The total estimated market value of organic food products and beverages in Slovenia for the
year 2009 was 34.5 million EUR (Slabe et al., 2010). If this figure is compared to the total
households expenditure for food and beverages in 2009 (SORS, 2011) the organic food and
beverages represents approximately 1% of the budget. On average, per capita expenditure
for organic foods and beverages respectively amounts to 17 EUR. If these two figures are
compared with selected old EU countries this is relatively low. For example in Slovenia's
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