Is organic food a victim of its own success?

 A growing success

In the 21^st century more and more people are aware of the environmental and ecological issues the world is faced with. Perhaps thanks to this, or because marketing has done its job well, eating organic food has become more and more fashionable. And this could explain why the French organic industry registered 19 percent growth despite the slump and reached an income of 2.5 billion euros in 2009.

This significant increase in demand even raised hypermarket interest towards the “green businesses” and they are now selling more than 45 percent of the organic production. 

 The aim of organic food threatened ?

One out of every four French consumes at least one organic product a day. However, it can be pointed out that 60 percent of the organic food sold in France comes from abroad: a quarter of the organic production sold was produced in Germany, Denmark and Austria. Half of the groceries come from the Third World, and a third of cereal production is imported from Romania or Poland. As for the organic meat which is produced in France, the organic soya given to the cattle comes from China. 

That is to say 40 percent of the organic production sold in France is imported - this is way too much considering the purpose of organic farming itself : protecting the environment (by limiting pollution and improving the quality of the fields). Yet the damage caused to nature by importing organic food from Austria is more considerable than buying French apricots that received pesticides during their sprouting. Especially since those importations that come from outside the European zone are harder to control.

  

Mixed results

However, it seems quite impossible to reduce those importations at the moment. In spite of the critical behavior of French consumers that would like to eat French organic off-season produce, therefore increasing the need for importations. There is a huge gap between the growth of the demand and the poor surface assigned to organic farming in France. No more than 2.46 percent of the French total farming surface was used for organic farming. The government had promised to triple this surface by the end of the year, which is not likely to happen. 

Converting fields to organic farming requires time and money: it takes at least two years for a field to be converted to organic farming, and the public aids granted to those farmers are lower than those granted in Germany or Italy for example. Lobbyist groups have a stronger influence in France as well and have managed to convince farmers of the benefits and necessity to using pesticides in their fields. This is why it is easy to understand why farmers are thinking twice before embarking in organic farming. What a shame for the first European agricultural power!

 POLICAND E.