A quarter of Germans mostly consume organic products

22 Jan 2021

Almost a quarter of German consumers already buy mostly organic food, an area in which fresh Spanish products dominate, and in which the majority guide is the seals that certify them.

The latest data comes from a survey by the consulting firm PwC, which based on a sample of a thousand citizens over 18 years of age published this week found that 24% of consumers buy mostly organic products, compared to 14% of just four years ago. “The popularity of these products is increasing, especially in vegetables, fruits, milk, but also in sausages,” Christian Wulff, director of retail and consumer goods at PwC Germany, explains to EFE. .

55% of those consulted in the survey said that they trust the certification seals to guide their purchases of organic products but there are still many – 29% according to the survey data – who have a “rather low” confidence in those and 6% do not trust anything.

Data from the German Federation of Organic Foods (BÖLW for its acronym in German) indicate that in 2019 the Germans spent 11.97 billion euros on organic food and beverages, 10% more than in the previous year.

The retail sale of these products had a turnover of 7,130 million euros, a growth of 11.4% and thus this distribution guaranteed 60% of the total of the figures that the sector moves in Germany.

Germany is in eighth place in the world by consumption per inhabitant: 132 euros per year on average in a list headed by Switzerland and Denmark, according to data from the specialized portal Statista.

According to those provided by the Agricultural Market Information Company (AMI), the organic food market share in the entire food trade is around 5.7% and the highest turnover shares in the entire food market were achieved with flour organic, with 26%; eggs, with 23%, and milk, with 14.4%.

More than 84,000 products in Germany currently carry an organic seal, almost four times more than in 2004, when there were 24,000 products with this quality certificate, according to Statista.

“It is not so much the seal but where I get the product, there is a big difference between buying organic products through a local farmer or in a large conventional supermarket, logically I will trust more in the first option”, Maike Brahms, student of 20 years on the doorstep of a Biomarkt LPG in the Steglitz district of Berlin.

Different prices are recorded depending on the trade and, for example, in a Berlin supermarket of the Rewe chain, half a dozen organic eggs cost 2.29 euros and in an organic store, Alnatura, 2.79 euros; a kilogram of organic wheat flour costs 0.79 euros in the first and 1.49 euros in the second.

But in this area, Wulff believes that the price difference between supermarkets and organic stores is more related to the form of production than to the brand: “We are entering a difficult field because it is not clear when production begins to become organic “, he estimates.

The German market has difficulties in sourcing its own products and the national share rarely reaches 20%; practically the only organic vegetables of domestic origin are pumpkins and courgettes, according to data from the 2017-2018 season collected by the Ökolandbau internet portal.

The source confirms that among European suppliers of the organic food sector, imports from Spain, France and Italy are almost half of the total and Spanish products predominate in these.

Even during the domestic season, German organic products between May and August are not enough to supply demand and imports from Spain increase, whose products “basically dominate” the market in those months.

Source: Efe.com