Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
support for the local economy and food's country of origin, interact and explain the complex
organic food consumer behavior. Last, the chapter focuses on explaining the decision
making process of organic food consumers by characterizing the differences between market
clusters.
2. General trends
2.1 The organic food market
The organic market is moving from a niche market to a mainstream market within the
agricultural industry, and was originated in the nineties (Agrifood Canada, 2011). It
following a number of food scares in the conventional sector. The global market for organic
products approximated US $18 billion in 2000 then US $23 billion in 2002 and has increased
by 43% reaching US $33 billion in 2005, and US $50 billion in 2008 (Willer and Yussefi, 2007;
Van Elzakker and Eyhorn, 2010). Double-digit growth rates were observed each year, except
in 2009 because of the world economic crisis reducing investments and consumer buying
power (Willer and Kilcher, 2011). Further, there are 633,891 farms managing 31 million
hectares of “organic” land (Willer & Yussefi, 2007). More specifically, Oceania and Europe
account for almost two-third of the world's organic land; 39% for the former and 23% for the
latter. At the country level, Australia (11.8 million hectares), Argentina (3.1 million hectares),
China (2.3 million hectares) and the US (1.6 million hectares) have the greatest organic areas.
These figures
2
translate into a total of 130 countries producing certified organic food, 90 of
which are developing countries presenting ideal environmental conditions for the
development of satisfactory organic produce. There were almost 1.9 million organic
producers in 2009, an increase of 31% since 2008, mainly due to a large increase in the
production in India. As a matter of fact, 40% of the world's organic producers are in Asia,
followed by Africa (28%), and Latin America (16%). In North America, Canada allocates 0.7
million hectares to organic production while the United States has 2 million hectares. This
represents 7% of the world's organic agricultural land.
Although organic agriculture is now going mainstream, demand remains concentrated in
Europe and North America. However, these two regions are not self-sufficient because
production is not meeting demand. It is also obvious that the supply is not located where
the demand is. Most of the demand is coming from Europe and North America. Hence,
large volumes of organic imports, coming in from other regions, are used to balance the
undersupply. In Europe, sales of organic products approximated € 18,400 million in 2009
(Willer and Kilcher, 2011). The largest market for organic products in 2009 was Germany
(5.8 billion euros) followed by France (3 billion euros) and the UK (2 billion euros). US sales
of organic products grew in 2009 by 5.3%, to reach 26.6 billion US dollars, representing 3.7%
of the food market. On the Canadian front, the report of Agri-Food Canada in 2010, based
on the 2008 sales of organic foods, concludes that the total Canadian organic market
approximates CA $2 billion annually (Willer and Kilcher, 2011). Further to this, sales growth
rates by Canadian provinces are distributed as follow: Alberta (44%), British Columbia
(34%), Maritimes (34%), Ontario (24%), and Quebec (21%) (Macey, 2007).
2
Survey conducted in 2009 by Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL) and the International
Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM).
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