Producers fly the flag for an organic future
BioFach 2008 is the world’s largest organic trade fair.
One of my first visits was to the impressive organic wine stall.
However, the reality is that only 2% of French wine is grown in that way.
One grower from Argentina assured me, however, that his red wine was much easier on the head because of the difference in the way organic wine producers clean their barrels before storing each crop.
From an Irish perspective our presence at the BioFach 2008 would have been abysmal but for the support of BIM (Irish Sea Fisheries Board) which sponsored several farm salmon producers from the west coast and a number of companies offering a variety of products made from seaweed.
What the Irish stand had to offer was impressive but the big issue is that going organic means getting involved in a sector that may be growing, but whose rewards can be quite modest in a monetary sense.
For Irish salmon producers going organic has led to a strategic marketing niche that ought to yield dividends in the long term, so much so that by the end of 2009 all salmon produced offshore Ireland may be totally organic.
Generally those who go the organic route tend to be very committed to the philosophy of growing locally and selling locally.
It displays a certain regard for the world and how those people wish to interact with it.
But on a very pragmatic level the organic route confers serious benefits to producers, provided they can live up to their promises and meet the exacting demands involved in producing products organically and meeting customer requirements.
Those demands will vary from one situation to the next.
What was obvious from the BioFach fair was that many African countries see the organic route as a way of helping poor communities.
Opportunities exist for farmers or villagers to improve their income earning power by tailoring what they produce to meet the growing organic end of the market.
A case in point are farmers who will convert a small amount of their modest holdings to grow geraniums, to be used to make an oil of essence to be sold as an ingredient for a variety of purposes.
The point about the project is that if the farmers can deliver it will given them a significant income boost.
It is a case of less being more and it seems that the salmon producers off the west coast of Ireland are operating the same principle.
They cannot compete with the likes of Norway, which produces masses of salmon annually compared to the modest 13,000 tonnes produced here.
But according to the BIM bosses, going organic should have far-reaching implications for the industry, provided of course the Norwegians don’t decide to get in on the act.
In the round we are looking at a market going forward that is growing at the rate of €3.3 billion a year and that is currently worth €27bn.
Being at the BioFach 2008 last week was a reminder that for a small country where scale is hard to deliver that niche marketing is a very serious option.
Given that food and drink exports totalled more than €8bn last year this must be an area that can and should offer an additional marketing angle to companies who may otherwise find it difficult to make it on to the shelves of the big multiples.
Irish salmon producers could be setting a trend.
