Organic Trends 2018

Just back from Biofach with a few taste treats from generous exhibitors. 

My twelve hour train journey home allowed me to read through most of this year’s ‘World of Organic Agriculture’, the nineteenth edition of the most authoritative source of statistics and commentary on the state of organic farming.  Here’s ten highlights from this year’s edition (all percentile changes refer to 2015-6).

• ·         15% increase in global organic certified land (though an estimated 2/3 of this is due to better data collection). (In ten years certified organic land has almost doubled).
• ·         13% increase in number of organic producers worldwide (again, some of this is due to better data collection). (In ten years the number of organic producers has grown by 120%).
•       Organic food now has more than a 5% share in seven countries, including among  the 'usual suspects, the Nordic and Alpine countries) the USA!
• ·         8% growth in organic land in Europe and a 10% growth in the organic market.  In Ireland, France, Denmark and Norway the organic market grew by 20% or more 
• ·         15 countries now have more than 10% of their land certified as organic, including Austria, Sweden, Italy, Switzerland , the Czech Republic, Finland and Uruguay       
• ·         More than 25% of temperate fruits grown in Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Montenegro are organic.
• ·         More than 10% of the grapes grown in Italy, Austria, Bulgaria and Spain are organic
• ·         More than 25% of French olives and almost 20% of those from Italy are organic.
• ·         There’s almost one million ha of organically managed coffee in the world (8.5% of the world’s total)
• ·         An estimated 33% of the world’s coffee, 25% of the world’s chocolate, 16% of its tea and 10% of its cotton are grown under various sustainability labels, including organic (NB figures are estimates that allow for possible ‘double-certification’).

All of which begs the question: is organic still a niche? 

En Passant days 15 and 16 - andorra la Vella

Two days outside of the EU! It was overcast and rainy and I felt claustrophobic amid the designer labels shops and stuck deep in a narrow valley - where for my stay at least the sun never seemed to shine. But I got to see an international football match (for free!). And I found a wine that won a gold medal at Biofach (the world's largest organic trade fair) for less than 3 Euros a bottle. I took the last three!

Bye bye Biofach / Fun fun fun on the Deutsche Bahn

Post-modern railway architecture: Liege

Two weeks ago Kraftwerk played a week long residency at the Tate Modern. Tickets were much sought-after. It encouraged me to revisit their music. Normally this would have meant digging out tapes and my tape recorder from the basement, dusting them down and connecting them up the hi-fi. These days we have Spotify (more about them later). I enjoyed a whole evening of synth-driven Krautrock and realised how much I liked them – especially their songs about motorways and train journeys.

A propos of this I found myself on a long train journey last week – when I actually went past a rather dated set of train carriages shunted into a siding with the immortal words Trans-Europe Express emblazoned on the side – (and I thought the TEE was apocryphal). These days we have ICE, Thalys and Fyra (the less said about that the better). They are comfortable fast and modern. The only draw back is that they are far more expensive than cheap airlines.

My journey from Brussels to Nuremburg (and back) was fast and comfortable (though with too many changes – one of them with a four minute turn around at Frankfurt – which was kind of tight). Previously my travels to Nuremburg have taken me over the Eiffel, a hilly area on the Belgian border. But this time, coming from a different place I had the joy of travelling along the banks of the Rhine for I guess an hour and a half– from Koln to Bonn, Koblenz and most of the way to Mainz. We also passed through Liege and Aachen.

It was a beautiful journey passing through many places I still intend to visit. This is a historic trade route. I have long wanted to travel it - on a slow boat, preferably a goods barge plying its way from Rotterdam up river. Still the view from the train gives a good impression. Very wealthy mansions along the riverside, castles on the tops of bluffs to protect the trade routes and vineyards planted at impossibly steep angles up the hillsides. Contrary to everything I know about agriculture they plant in vertical lines as opposed to horizontal ones – which should help reduce soil erosion – still what do I know compared to hundreds of years of practical experience. It would be a photographer’s delight – if one weren’t travelling at 150+ km/h + and it wasn’t raining.

I was hoping to buy a good novel for the journey home. German bookstores – even those at train stations- have a surprisingly wide selection of English language books – and at competitive prices. Often Murikami is well-represented. He has a big following in Europe – I even saw a Dutch (or was it German?) language Murikami diary last year. I hadn’t read his latest opus yet and was half hoping to find it. I like his magical realism based in a post industrial society: all the other magical realists I know seem write about pre-modern societies, so its good to feel that something ‘magical’ can still happen in our over-planned technological societies. But the last book of his that I read ‘felt a bit like all the others’ and I was hesitant to go buy the new one – but everyone I have spoken to says it is really good. Turned out that the book store at Nuremburg BH didn’t have any books that interested me (crime and romance mostly), so from Nuremburg to Koln I sat down to read the latest annual edition of the 200 page guide to the world of organic farming, produced by FiBL and IFOAM . I’m a sucker for stats. There’s plenty of those here – and reports and analysis of developments in the world of organics over the past year. Some of the reports I have seen before (we previewed them in Ecology and Farming over the past year) – but there’s still much that I didn’t know:

The US eclipsed the EU as the largest market for organic produce in 2010
The UK and Ireland are the only two EU countries where the recession has led to a dip in organic sales
Overall sales of organic produce in the EU rose by 9% in 2010-11- despite the recession
Scandinavian and Germanic counties continue to be the leaders in terms of market share
The share of organic land in Belgium rose by 20% last year (now there’s an interesting story line worthy of investigation) and in Ireland it went up by 13%. It's always interesting to find out whether such changes are led by subsidies or markets. While subsidies are important (to compensate for – temporary -yield losses) they tend not to be sustainable.

I do find a copy of IQ84 at the bookstore at Koln station, but by that time I am so engrossed in the world of organic statistics that I decide to save it save it for a rainy day.


Industrial railway architecture: Koln

Biofach Impressions

(Please read part one, below, first. This is a continuation)

I have two meetings arranged for the fair – both to discuss ongoing projects – and not strictly necessary – but it certainly helps oil the wheels and promote understanding. There’s also a project bid where I haven’t yet met the client (I will be a sub-contractor on that one). I also edit a lot of magazine articles by organic players I haven’t actually met. I get to meet several of them. It’s good for me to not only put a face, but a personality and set of interests, behind a name. But mostly it’s good to be there and catch up on gossip.



There’s a tradition on the second day to have ‘post-fair stall parties’. It’s a ligger’s delight. As the second day winds down I pass the Irish stall, where the Irish ambassador to Germany (who has travelled all the way from Berlin) is encouraging ‘the troops’: speaking of Ireland’s reputation and quality foods (and of it being one of the few countries in the world that has a trade surplus with Germany).

Further down the line I meet the obligatory lunatic. There’s always more than one at these shows and he hid it well. It wasn’t until ten minutes into our conversation that I reasons there were good reasons why no-one was funding his research proposals about the energetic pathways between soil and plants. Unfortunately we’d gone through the card swap ritual before I realised this! I could regret that.

Having managed to shake him off I get to the Portuguese stall where one of my colleagues is based this year. I get a lesson in the complexities of Portuguese wine-making, get to taste a brandy based on the strawberry tree and then another colleague turns up with a bottle of brandy distilled in (get this) Iraq. Everybody said he was crazy and would never get away with getting that production line going. (Having tasted it they might have still have some way to go with refining the process – but I guess they don’t face much domestic competition). One of the Portuguese farmers appears with a leg of acorn fed smoked ham – which causes some logistical problems as no-one has a knife large or sharp enough to slice it – but someone finds a solution (exceedingly pissing off a top Australian chef- whose knives were used in his absence and who apparently threw a tantrum the next morning). With brandy and pork in their bellies the Portuguese farmers are soon in song – regaling us with songs (about tractors or just love found/lost?).



There’s some talk about going to Fusser Bar - a Sausage and Steiner place in the old city centre – in a brick vaulted cellar that holds about five hundred people, which the organic community traditionally ‘invades’ on the Thursday night of the fair. But it’s already late (after nine) and I remember the difficulty of getting a seat or served at that time. Someone invites me to the Demeter stall party – which I have never been to before- and has a DJ spinning real vinyl and is still serving alcohol- At some point I get introduced to the Bavarian Minister of Agriculture (who was distinctly unimpressed by my tentative link to Renate Kunast). The day was long but I had to say goodnight at some point.

Viva la mundo biologica. A world of diversity and possibilities.

Biofach 2013

Going to Biofach always brings back memories. My first visit was in 2001, when I came on a fact finding mission for a research project. The next year I was invited to do a presentation on that report. It was probably the highest profile speaking engagement I have ever done. The room was packed included two ex-bosses of mine, Patrick Holden (then President of the Soil Association) – with the guest of honour being Renate Kunast - the then German Minister for Consumer Protection, Food and Agriculture.

I was a bit in awe -especially at the reality of presenting a report to a ‘Green Minister’. Greenpeace, who had commissioned the report, had been busy with their press work and later that day I did a phone interview (on my newly owned first mobile) with Fred Pearce of the New Scientist. Truly my light shone brightly that day – but it was the result of more than a year’s hard work. At the time I thought that it would be a launching pad for an illustrious research career- but that’s another story. The experience gave me a great benefit: it gave me some recognition in the organic world. Even though I have been on the periphery of organic research for some time, a lot of people at Biofach recognise me and through collaborations over the years there’s never a shortage of people to talk to about shared interests and ongoing projects (including in my recent role as language editor for Ecology and Farming). Quite often I am surprised by the breadth and depth of my network there – with people I don’t do business with every week – or even every year.

The show itself can be overwhelming. 2,400 exhibitors from almost ninety countries. Almost 40,000 square metres of display space and 40,000 visitors over the four days. This is the hub of the organic world where producers, buyers and consultants connect, and fish, if not for contracts then at least contacts and inside info about who is doing what and with whom. The Dutch contingent, it has to be said, are particularly proficient at this form of networking. One of my colleagues seemed to spend the entire four days running from meeting to meeting, pretty much structuring a large part of his next two years work schedule. I admire such chutzpah. I don’t have it - and am possibly glad that I don’t – but I certainly have learnt from observing it.

Fortunately these days I have a press card, which apart from giving free entrance to the show (not a big deal compared to the travel and hotel costs involved) also gives me access to the press room, where there is free coffee, water and wifi and space to sit think and write (I’m writing this here there now). It gives me the space to be able to enjoy the show at a leisurely pace. And to put down some impressions of the show (to follow).