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Organic food culture

Organic food culture indicates a recent social and cultural trend whereby there has been, beside a healthy and environmental conscious consumption of organic food, the spreading of an increased and generalized love for wholesome and healthy food.

This attitude ascribes to food a central role for health, but, nevertheless, it does not neglect the aesthetic and hedonistic aspects of food consumption.

This social trend crosses many aspects of the social and cultural realm, such as market practices and media content and has led to some novelties and changes in these fields.

Attitudes concerning the consumption and consideration of organic food have reached global proportion, which seems to overcome local food cultures and traditional gastronomies, while incorporating them.

Critical Consumption of food

Consumption of organic food is a form of responsible consumerist behaviour since it is framed in a more general system of values and it expresses deeply anchored beliefs related to personal and public welfare. This practice requires a conscious consumer, who knows what he wants and the reason why he wants it; these reasons can be political or ethical ones and orient the behaviours of the subject. Such a vision of the consumer involves both collective (environmental concern) and private responsibility (well-being, personal satisfaction and pleasure)..

Organic food thus implies creative potentials and works in a very personalized fashion. Moreover it is also a mean of communicating personal beliefs.

Even if consumers can be consciously active, in order to be sure that the products they consume are actually produced according precise criteria, they relies on institutional bodies, which intervene in the management of organic food circulation and provide the consumer with a set of recognizable signs and information about provenience, way of production, ingredients and nutritional values.

Such a vision of the market practices assigns a great power to the consumer, who is conceived as able to lead a conscious market demand.

In the case of organic food indeed, it is the demand that, initially, created the market, even if today this latter is also pulled by the increasingly availability of products labelled as “organic”.

National Variation and Food Policies

Localization Practices

The rising popularity of organic foods raises important questions of interest to governments. Demographic and agricultural histories and legislative procedures are fundamental to understand recent food system localization practices. It is the growing recognition of the significance of locality within a globalised food system that moved considerable interest in attempts by farmers and/or consumers to challenge the global agro-food complex mechanisms through the operation of alternative food systems. Much of the emphasis in the new food economy policy initiatives has conflated speciality products of local provenance with organic and ecological products. The turn to local food may cover many different forms of agriculture, encompassing a variety of consumer motivations and giving rise to a wide range of politics. Much as the laissez-faire economics of the nineteenth century prompted both radical and conservative responses with resistance to contemporary globalisation.

Food Policies in Europe

In many European countries food is crucially linked to a sense of belonging to a national community and a sense of national identity and superiority. The debate over GM food in Europe, has brought interest groups, social movements and NGOs to spread the importance of health, nutrition and ecological consideration to legislative bodies. European Commission expresses ambivalent views on regulatory policy. Some countries support the growth in the biotechnological industry, other countries have adopted the precautionary principle to avoid industrialized food production. The Consumer Union has campaigned for introduction of regulation requiring labelling of products to manifest purity and quality. Scepticism about GM food has brought increasing demand for organic food. It brought a steady rise of vegetarianism, seen as a way to eat only trusted food and exclude other to provide a sense of order (food sectarianism). Since 1970 agricultural policy in member states has been taken over by the Community. Farmers and retailers have grown accustomed to thinking of food issues in political terms, associated with a major involvement in environmental issues and genetic engineering. These phenomena implied a need for aa strong environmental policy and a higher level of consumer representation.

Local Varation

In country like UK, government policy focused its regulations on the centrality of informed consumer choice, via ingredients labelling. UK is the European country where the most vocal and radical resistance to new agricultural innovation can be found, due to the government’s slow response to food scares. Studies proved that in country like Belgium, Norway and UK there is a strong preference for ecologically cultivated food. In spite of it, UK government has to attempted to mobilize the organic food market. In other countries like Italy, instead, transparency and quality seem to have a different meaning, and it implies that labelling of products play a slightly different role. Labelling is necessary to put a greater emphasis on traceability, that is perceived as safety. Food culture provides national belonging. The Italian debate on GM food is very recent (second half of ’90s) and has grown rapidly. Food safety has become a media issue, that brought consumers to prefer organic products. Organic food is portrayed as safer, articulating familiar themes as cultural traditions and territorial awareness. Associazione Italiana per l’Agricoltura Biologica reports a growth of nearly in organic acreage and Italy is one of the leader country of organic food production. Italian government has a more involved approach to the organic food matter. Politicians have taken a strong line and the government has made great efforts to mobilize value change. Organic food illustrates the combined impact of moral or value issues with questions of localized trust. There are strong signals of the politicization of food. Food is linked to issue of political legitimization, becoming the object of continuous debates and struggles. Interactions between producers, retailers and consumers is originating new styles of consumption that has created a more political notion of the consumer. In US and European societies, marketing and retailing agents provide ecological information to their customers, and people has started to questioning big companies and government statements about food, this represents a major proof that food consumption is, among other things, crucial to people’s sense of belonging to a political community.

Organic Labels

EU organic food logo

In the organic food market, consumer’s trust is a crucial issue since purchaser are not able to verify whether or not a product is an organic or not, not even after consumption. Organic certification has a long tradition in many European countries. Organic certification labels on product packages and/or price tags are used to signal consumers that a product is a certified organic product. In the European Union, only those products can be labelled and sold as organic food that comply with and are certified according to the principles of organic production, certification and labelling of Regulation (EC) No 834/2007. Since July 2010, all prepacked organic products produced and sold in the EU must be labelled with the new mandatory EU logo.

Besides the EU label, there are several other organic certification labels in many European countries, which are owned by different kinds of organisations. These can be differentiated into governmental labels on the one hand and logos of private organisations on the other hand. Governmental logos are found in some but not in all European countries (e.g. Danish ‘Red Ø’ logo, German ‘Bio-Siegel’).

Very few consumers perceived organic products without a certification logo to be credible. For producers, processors and retailers, it is highly recommendable to label organic products with a well-known and credible organic certification logo.

Markets

Production

Fig. 1. Global distribution of organic retail sales by single market, 2014. (Source: FIBL-AMI survey, 2016).

Organic market has revealed a huge potential and today it displays a steady annual positive growth in all that Country that invests in production.

The organic market in EU increased by 7.4% in 2014, lead by Germany with 7,910.00 Million Euro retail sales and a growth rate of 4,8%, followed by France, UK and Italy. (FIBL-AMI survey 2016 based on national data sources).

Worldwide, organic market is headed by the United States, which hold 43% of global retail sales, followed by EU (38%), China (6%), Canada (4%) and Switzerland (3%). In the United States the solid growth of organic food market is expected to continue until 2018, according to the new “United States Organic Food Market Forecast & Opportunities, 2018” (2013) that puts a compound annual growth rate of 14% on the sector.

Consumption

In EU, consumption of organic food is almost doubled in the last decade: consumers in 2005 used to spent, on average, € 22,4 per capita on organic food, while in 2014 the number is increased up to € 47,4. In this case, the Nation that consume more is Switzerland, followed by Luxemburg, Denmark and Sweden.

Distribution

While at the beginning organic products were mainly sold by specialized retailer, at the end of 1990s sales began to cross over the mainstream retailers. Today general retailers are the main distribution channels, followed by organic retailers and direct sales, even if these channels differ in importance from country to country.

Retailers and marketing approaches

Retailers and Marketing agents had to adequate to the ever more growing and conscious flow of demand for organic foods.

Organic products are perceived as premium products, and this requires the market to handle them in such a way to create, if absent, preserve and possibly enhance this perception.

As a consequence of the fact that consumption of organic product is embedded in a wider system of beliefs, of which it is expression, buyers are highly involved when purchasing these type of products and the activity itself involves mental and emotional processes, in addition to the mere physical ones. Thus marketing approach toward this type of consumption is said to be more cognitive than behavioural, since its aim is primarily to understand how consumers link the physical attribute of the product to more abstract value. Typically, to the taste, texture and odour of the food consumers relate a kind of hedonistic achievements and to the organic way of production is connected, in a hierarchical ladder, a healthy life-style and thus wholesomeness and physical wellbeing and eventually happiness and a general inner harmony.

From the retailer point of view, organic food constitute, together with a set of other food products such as food supplements, weight loss bars and free-from products, a category of goods that attract many consumers and also generates high margins od revenue. Traditional supermarkets are increasingly promoting organic food products by mean of wider variety, price differentiation and private labels.

Organic private labels play a particular important role, since they help to build the retailer image and consumer bindings. As a sign of the corporate social responsibility, they influence consumer trust in the company and its products. In the case of organic products, trust plays a crucial role since, even if the consumers want to feel to act in a conscious, rational and independent way, they finds himself in a vulnerable position. Usually, consumers cannot directly verify whether the organic products they purchase cohere with the terms of organic farming: organic is not an attribute that consumers can verify in a product. If consumer suffers from information asymmetries, this can make him feel vulnerable. For this reason it is important for the consumers to rely on third parties, which present themselves as guarantors that the products have actually been produced according to organic farming practices and that signal this information through official labels.

Organic restaurants

Organic and green restaurants constitute an additional food service connected with the spread of organic sensitivity. They have recently gained popularity and exploit market segmentation in order to attract those costumer engaged with the pursuit of a healthy diet.

They usually stock up directly from local productions, proposing to the clients dishes cooked with fresh and local ingredients. Recently, as for the organic product itself, some certifications have been instituted. For example in Italy, ICEA, Institute for Ethical and Environmental Certification has set a certification system that allows for more control and standardizes the requirements in order to get the recognitions. Beside the certifications for organic, it releases also certification for gluten-free, vegetarian and vegan menu.

Another example is the American “Green Restaurant Association”, which enlarges the prerequisites for the “green” certification to more general environmental issues. Indeed it takes into consideration, beside sustainable food, also water efficiency, waste reduction and recycling, use of energy and pollution reduction.

The released certifications testify the service’s adhesion to the standards.

Media content

Even if there are numerous factors influencing shopper behaviours, we know that media plays a great role and over 90% of consumers receive information about food and biotechnology through popular press and television. For some people documentaries, for example, can be so unpleasant that they make you change your behaviour instantly. Emotionally people feel intimidated by the strong visuals and strong communication of mass media and so react by either rejecting it totally or allowing it to sink in. If the public debate or overall level of media coverage of the risks of a food technology increases, the perceived likelihood of those risk becoming manifest, increases too. Erving Goffman and others have identified the importance of how information are “framed” in risk judgements. Frames provide meaning, and a way of thinking about our lives, events, and the world in general. Depending on them, judgements about the perceived risks versus benefits of a technology might be quite different. As frames, news stories offer the public definitions of social reality. Through frames, media highlight certain points of view and marginalize or ignore others, defining occurrences, and explaining how they are to be understood. The media, acting as “amplifications stations”, raise public awareness and debate.

Organic agriculture is often portrayed in the media as an alternative to allegedly unsafe and environmentally damaging modern agriculture practices, so organic is defined by what it is not, rather than what it is. Of the themes health, safety, and environment, food safety was the least important in the discussion of organic agriculture in the media. This could be explained by the fact that health and environment have historically been larger drivers in the organic food industry. However, media reporting on the superior health benefits offered by organic foods appears to be influenced more by positive news developments on the topic. In general media not balance the coverage of the topic with scientific evidence or other viewpoints perpetuating an ideology rather than providing facts for consumers to make their own decisions

Bibliography

• Bezawada, R; Pauwels K (2013). “What is special about marketing organic products? How organic assortment, price, and promotions drive retailer performances”. Journal of Marketing. 77 (1): 31 – 51.
• Pivato, S; Misani N; Tencati A (2008). “The impact of corporate social responsability on consumer trust: the cafe of organic food). Business Ethics: A European Review. 17 (1): 3 – 12.
• Sassatelli, R (2015). “Consumer Culture, Sustainability and a New Vision of Consumer Sovereignty”. Sociologia Ruralis. 55 (4): 483 – 496.
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• Stacey Cahill, Katija Morley, Douglas A. Powell 2010 “Coverage of organic agriculture in North American newspapers, Media: linking food safety, the environment, human health and organic agriculture”.
• Courtney Meyers and Katie Abrams “Feeding the Debate: A Qualitative Framing Analysis of Organic Food News Media Coverage”.
• Hughner, Renée Shaw, et al. "Who are organic food consumers? A compilation and review of why people purchase organic food." Journal of consumer behaviour 6.2‐3 (2007): 94-110.
• Janssen, Meike, and Ulrich Hamm. "Certification logos in the market for organic food: What are consumers willing to pay for different logos?." paper presentato al Congresso EAAE, Change and Uncertainty, Challenges for Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, Zurigo. Vol. 30. 2011.
• Sassatelli, Roberta, and Alan Scott. "Novel food, new markets and trust regimes: responses to the erosion of consumers' confidence in Austria, Italy and the UK." European Societies 3.2 (2001): 213-244.
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See also

• Organic food
• Eco-gastronomy
• Critical consumerism
• Natural foods
• Organic certification

External links

• ICEA
• Green Restaurant Association
• AIAB