Anyone who is producing organic food, who is in the organic trade sector in India or wants to find out about the Indian organic market in the context of international markets could find recent information at the Webinar series of Biofach India. The second #organicwebinars edition was given the latest available data by international experts as Amarjit Sahota, Ecovia Intelligence and Louise Luttikholt, IFOAM Organics International to inform on developments, trends, challenges (COVID 19) and future perspectives.
In case you missed one of the editions of #organicwebinars or want to get some special information about the session, you can watch the recording and update your knowledge. In the following BiO Reporter International will also highlight some information and key takeaways for a quick overview from the second edtion.
BioFach India hosts the #organicwebinars series. It is curated and moderated by BiO Reporter International, Karin Heinze and Sundeep Kamath, who were very happy to present international and Indian experts who shared their knowledge and insights.
Historic Growth of the Global Organic Market
Amarjit Sahota, Ecovia Intelligence
Amarjit emphasized the historic growth of the worldwide organic market that surpassed the 100bn $ mark in 2018. The analysis shows that Asia is increasing its market share in a relevant way in the last years. This is an ongoing trend. Main market drivers are health concerns, food and health scares but also the increasing availability and distribution of organic products and consumers opposition to GMOs. Amarjit´s presentation you can find on the video from minute 10:05 to 25:12 as well as Q/A starting minute 47:30.
Interesting are also the facts that Amarjit gave about the effects of the Corona pandemic. The effects of this crisis have changed our lives very much and are still changing as nobody knows when the pandemic will end. As the main impacts, Amarjit mentioned the de-globalisation of the supply chains, food security concerns are causing more focus on domestic production. More and more governments are promoting organic agriculture as a sustainable system. As people are caring more about their personal health and immunity the organic sales are rising during the Corona times but also e-commerce is in favour of many consumers. Other important topics of the presentation were the proliferation of eco-label (Q/A 1:20:34) and the rising of veganism.
Trends and challenges in Organic Sector Growth
Louise Luttikholt, IFOAM Executive Director, presented facts from the producers and farmer´s side (minute 26:28 - 43:27). The good news is: "Organic is growing around the globe. But we need way more of it", she said.
Louise gave us the selected statistics of the global organic developments related to the production site, gathered in collaboration with the Swiss-based Research Institute FIBL. It shows the increase of organically managed land worldwide in 2018. Around 71.5mn hectares of land under the production of 2.8 mn producers with an uprising growth trend is a success. Nevertheless, there are also challenges in terms of unequal regulations and certification systems. Answer on the PGS system from minute 1:18 onwards.
As most of the organic farmers are located in Asia, especially India, the markets for retail sales are still in North America and Europe.
Looking at the growing organic area in 2019 and the increasing demand for organic food during the Corona crisis Louise concluded: There is a good potential for organic but the challenge is to keep the demand and supply in balance. She asks for more and better data and linking data for policymakers, market actors and researchers.
Reporting of the entire #organicwebinar episode 2
Exporting Organic Goods has an enormous Potential
In the second part of the webinar, the focus was on the Indian organic export industry with presentations of Saurabh Tiwari, Organic India and Surya Shastry, Phalada Agro.
Saurabh Tiwari (minute 52:13 - 1:05) explained in his presentation how the mission and vision of the company helped to bring really supportive products to the consumers, give help to the farmers who produce for Organic India and take the opportunity to expand the outreach of the enterprise on a global manner. He mentioned among others that alternative and preventive medicine and holistic wellness is the need of the hour and Ayurveda is known across the globe as well as health-conscious living lifestyle plus organic agriculture is gaining popularity.
But they're not only positive effects. A lot of challenges awaits organic enterprises during pandemic times.
Only with the help innovative methods and a good supply chain management, the analysis and forecast of raw materials you could manage the crisis, Saurabh said. The agro-team became a critical role and the relationship with the farmers as well as the processing units directly connected to the farmland. But also innovative marketing became very important.
All this led to success, as Saurabh showed.
This is the Time to start with Organic
Our last speaker, Surya Shastry, Phalada Agro, told us that the future is very bright for organic and the potential is huge (minute 1:07 - 1:17). He elaborated from the experience he has made during the last years and especially the last month, that Indian organic exports are growing consistently and that the major share is taken by processed food followed by oilseeds, cereals, sugars, tea and spices.
As future trends, he named fresh produce like mango, pineapple, coconut or Tumeric as seasonality varies and India can fill a gap. The biggest challenge would be the infrastructure facilities for fresh organic products.
The question, if Pure& Sure brand will be available for exports, is answered from minute 1:25.
Key Takeaways (minute 1.26 following)
All panellists on the screen
Surya Shastry: "The market definitely is out there to expand exports from India to many other countries. One major challenge for exporters will be the flood of many different eco-label and to manage that."
Saurabh Tiwari: "There is a lot of potentials. Years back people often asked what is organic, today if you say you work in the organic sector people are giving you praise. The future is ours the new normal will be us!"
Amarjit Sahota: "The future is still very bright for the organic industry. The question is how will it grow in a post-COVID market. What we are beginning to see is a big shake-up of the supply chains. Implications to India will be quite fairly big because sourcing is gonna be more locally if possible. So maybe the organic industry should focus more on domestic markets instead depending on foreign markets too much."
Louise Luttikholt: "There is optimism and the future is green. You can also say, there is no future except the green one! we have challenges due to Corona crisis but we also notice a bigger consciousness of governments and institutions like FAO. we are beyond the niche. But it also shows us our responsibility and that we have to stick to where we come from, our Organic Principles."
Please join us for the next session of #organicwebinars on 20th August with the topic of
"New EU regulations it imüact on Indian exporters and mitigating measures"