Filling the Organic Gap

Oranges from Spain, avocados from Israel and honey from Chile are all commonly found on German supermarket shelves, and while shopping carts have long been melting pots of conventionally farmed goods, internationality is spreading into the organic department as well.

Germans spent about 4.5 billion euros ($5.8 billion) on organic products in 2006, and the German market for organic products grew by 15 percent in 2005, according to reports from the Central Agricultural Market and Pricing Center.

"Organic markets are global markets," said Gerald Wehde, a spokesman for Bioland, Germany's largest organic farming association. "No store can get away with not offering organic products."

Demand outpacing supply

Indeed, conventional German shops and supermarkets are adding organic products to their shelves and exclusively organic shops are popping up in small and medium-sized cities so quickly that German farmers can no longer keep up with demand.

"It would also be possible to sell many more German organic products if we were able to produce them," said Alexander Gerber, general manager of the Association of Organic Food Producers and Traders.

Taken by surprise by the organic market's sudden growth, Germany is dependent on imports because fewer local farmers have been choosing to switch from conventional to organic farming methods, Gerber added.

While no data exists to show what percentage of organic products sold in Germany are imported, industry groups estimate between 20 and 30 percent come from outside the country.

Making the switch to organic

Despite limited supply and increased demand, only small numbers of German farmers are adopting organic methods, Gerber said.

"The growth that we have in the German organic market is largely due to the fact that existing operations are growing," he said. "There are relatively few new farms switching."

The cost of changing over to organic methods and cuts in state support for farms are the main hurdles holding farmers back, Wehde said.

Regulations on the conditions products have to meet to be considered organic also make it nearly impossible for farmers to change their fields over quickly. It takes two years of production under organic standards before a field that produced conventional products can be certified as organic.

Trend expected to continue in 2007

"We expect more German operations to switch in 2007 because there was a long quiet period over the last few years," Wehde said. "We'll have to wait and see if farmers think the positive signals coming from the market are enough to switch."

However, German Agriculture Minister Horst Seehofer said last week that he did think it was time to subsidize a growing market.

"In a free society it should be up to the market to decide," he said.

At the beginning of 2006 there were some 17,000 organic farms on 810,000 hectares in Germany, amounting to about 4.3 percent of land used for agricultural purposes.

But, according to Gerber, the government's decision to lower aid from 2003's average of about 160 euros per hectare to some 135 euros is shortsighted and won't help German farms compete against imports, especially when other European countries, such as Austria, Italy and Slovenia, offer their farmers higher subsidies to increase exports.

Agriculture's environmental impact

The benefits of organic farming also go beyond helping German farmers, Gerber said.

"Organic farming is the best way to maintain an environmentally friendly agriculture policy," he said. "For this reason there should be concrete incentive for organic practices over conventional farming."

Wehde agreed that convincing more German farmers to switch to organic methods would be good for the environment as German and European organic standards apply only to how products are grown, not their environmental impact.

"From an ecological point of view it is not just about the organic production but an overall environmental evaluation," he said, adding that some imports, whether organic or not, could not be avoided. "We don't have anything against importing organic bananas, but it is a missed opportunity when milk and grains, which can be produced here in Germany, are imported."