Ireland's organic food industry lags woefully behind the rest of Europe and its growth is slowing, Gretchen Friemann reports
It was once considered the lowly stepchild of conventional farming, but the organics industry is exploding into a multibillion-euro global business, with corporate heavyweights such as Kraft Foods and Heinz offering their customers organic options. Here, though, the market is stalling as Irish consumers are turned off by confusing labelling and soaring prices.
Britain's organic-food industry is worth about €1.4 billion a year, and in three years it is expected to be worth as much as €2.4 billion. Yet in the Republic total revenue from organic produce struggled to reach €38 million last year - a performance less than half as strong as that in Britain, considering each country's population - and Bord Bia says the market is not growing as fast as it was expected to.
Why is the organic food industry here lagging behind its UK and European counterparts? Are Irish consumers uninterested in organic produce, is the Government to blame for a lack of support or is the industry too weak and its products too expensive to attract the consumer confidence and interest it so desperately needs?
Bord Bia says consumers have become more sensitive to price over the past three years. In a report entitled Organic Food Market Developments - An Irish Perspective, the organisation says the number of people willing to pay an extra 10 per cent for organic produce dropped to 44 per cent of consumers last year, from 57 per cent in 2000.
The figures seem to confirm what many in the industry have been claiming: organic farmers are facing an increasingly difficult battle for survival.
Bord Bia's report shows the number of consumers buying organic food has dropped over the last 18 months, and the industry's woes are further compounded by the limited number of organic producers and the lack of consistent availability of some products. This has forced both retailers and food processors to increasingly rely on European imports to beef up their organic product ranges.
Trevor Sargent, the leader of the Green Party, blames the Government for years of inaction. "Other countries in the EU view organics as the next stage in sustainable farming, whereas our Government labours under the notion that the organic sector is comparable to any other alternative food production that might be termed slightly exotic, such as ostrich farming. It's a ridiculous state of affairs."
It certainly seems odd that Irish farmers are failing to capitalise on a global retail market that is set to be worth more than 30 billion by the end of next year. Between 1995 and 2000 the number of approved organic farmers in the Republic grew by 45 per cent a year. Yet since then the growth rate has slowed to 4 per cent. About 1,000 farmers supply organic produce, far fewer than are needed to spearhead growth.
It's a problem that sparks fierce debate. Some organic producers say that the industry suffers from a lack of promotion by the Department of Agriculture and Food and Bord Bia and that the Government has long been hostile to the concept of organic farming. Jim O'Connor, an organic producer, describes Bord Bia's efforts as nothing more than "paying lip service to the industry".
Bord Bia says there is little it can do to promote a sector that can't even decide on an umbrella certification body. At present three groups certify organic producers: Demeter Standards, the Irish Organic Farmers and Growers Association and the Organic Trust. This, it says, confuses both consumers and farmers contemplating converting to the sector.
Padraig Brennan, Bord Bia's senior analyst on the organics industry, says acommon logo is vital as a marketing tool. "Consumers need to be given a clear message about organic food and its associated benefits, and the best way to do that is with a national logo which allows us to generate awareness in the public about this industry."
He acknowledges that the sector receives less generic marketing than the conventional food and drink industry. In fact it's impossible to establish exactly how much Bord Bia contributes, as organic food is not singled out in its annual report's breakdown of funding. Instead the "business support", as Bord Bia describes it, that producers receive is included in a general category that includes all companies employing alternative farming methods.
The dearth of marketing funds persistently frustrates the organics industry. John Hoey, chairman of the Irish Organic Farmers and Growers Association, says interest in the benefits of organic produce is waning partly because "nobody is actively promoting the sector".
But he believes the failure of the Republic's organics industry also goes beyond shortfalls in promotional funding or Government support. He attributes the lack of consumer demand and the reluctance of more farmers to switch to organic methods to "something in the Irish psyche that is quite resistant to realising the benefits of what is already here and can be benefited from on this island".
He says: "I believe the problem goes into the perception and notion of Irish people and their history. The past is always seen as a terrible struggle, as the bad old days and anything that isn't modern or clean and spanking new . . . is not to be desired in some way."
Others blame a combination of inertia and internecine warfare within the organics industry. One observer claims that senior figures at the Organic Trust, which certifies large organic companies such as Ballybrado and the Good Herdsman, have obstructed efforts to establish a national logo.
He claims the trust is "openly counteracting people's attempts to do something together because of the fractious relationships that exist between those who founded the trust and organic certifying organisations." He adds: "There is no rationale behind the obstruction; it is simply continuing their history of non-co-operation."
Joseph Finke, founder of Ballybrado and the Good Herdsman and a director of the Organic Trust, dismisses this interpretation. He says an organic marketing development board established last year to agree an umbrella logo, comprising various industry representatives, had become mired in a dispute over whether the certification should distinguish between Irish and foreign produce.
Finke, who recently resigned from the organic marketing development board, points out that the Organic Trust certifies 80 per cent of organic producers in the country. He argues that a symbol that differentiated between Irish and foreign produce would make the system too bureaucratic. "The aim of this exercise is to establish a single logo consumers can understand and be confident about. By placing all these demands on producers to prove their produce is Irish makes the whole system more complicated and more expensive."
Sargent believes the Government is using the logo problem to sidestep introducing a law to prosecute people who sell produce that claims to be organic but has not been certified. "This legislation is required under EU law, and the Government should have introduced it 12 years ago," he says.
"If producers are paying overheads to be recognised as an organic producer their business is clearly undermined when someone comes along and starts selling his or her products without having to pay for certification.
"And the Department of Agriculture is allowing the existence of three different labels to become an excuse."
A bigger problem may be price. Organic food must get cheaper, according to Richard Auler, an organic beef farmer for more than 20 years.
"It's a disgrace that consumers are asked to pay €39 per kilo of organic beef, and I often see supermarkets charging those prices," he says. "It's not the producer that gets the margin, it's the middlemen: they are making all the money." The desire to cut out middlemen is behind the growth of farmers' markets, he says.
Bord Bia acknowledges the role farmers' markets play in offering producers direct access to consumers, but it warns that more conventional farmers will have to convert to organic production if the Republic's organic producers are to avoid their market being overrun by European imports.
More information from
www.plan organic.com www.irishorganic.ie
www.bordbia.ie
www.agriculture.gov.ie