Colruyt Group is going to support organic vegetable grower De Lochting from Roeselare, Belgium, with the expansion of its organic cultivation. From mid-April, the Colruyt and OKay shops started selling a number of ‘vegetables in transition,’ which can only be certified organic officially in two years. That guaranteed purchase helps De Lochting to financially tide over the difficult transition period. The initiative fits in with Colruyt Group’s strategy of working with as many local producers as possible to create a production chain as sustainable as possible. This way the group ensures itself of a qualitative and Belgian supply of organic vegetables to meet growing demand. Colruyt Group also starts the collaboration with De Lochting because, as a sheltered workshop, it offers opportunities to people who cannot enter regular employment.
From now on Colruyt Group will buy several ‘vegetables in transition’ from De Lochting, including kohlrabi, parsley and French breakfast radish. Beetroot will follow in September, and chestnut pumpkin and winter purslane from October. The products will reach the shelves of Colruyt, and in part at OKay, under the brand Boni Selection Bio. A sticker on the packaging will explain to customers that they are vegetables in transition, and not conventionally grown vegetables or certified organic vegetables. Bio-Planet, the organic specialist of the Colruyt Group also offers products in transition sometimes, when supply of 100% organic vegetables does not meet customers’ demand.
Products in transition: from fallow to organic
Colruyt Group wants to support De Lochting with transitioning further from conventional to organic cultivation. The transition period is at least two years for annual plants, and three years for perennials, a period when the farmer has less income.
Land that was previously used for conventional agriculture, has to lie fallow for a year first, or be used for growing grain or leguminosae. The farmer can then start cultivating according to organic principles, and his harvest will receive the label ‘in transition.’ Only after two or three years may the products be sold as organic, at least, if all requirements for organic certifications have been met.
Spontaneous partnership with a social mission
The partnership between Colruyt Group and De Lochting grew spontaneously, for the cultivator already supplied a large part of his harvest to Bio-Planet. Colruyt Group’s organic supermarket is eager to purchase more, just as the Colruyt and OKay shops are, in answer to customers’ growing demand for organic.
De Lochting also wants to increase its area of agricultural land for organic cultivation. “Through this partnership we want to help the sustainability of agriculture along. It is also a bonus that we can support an organisation that has a social mission, providing people with meaningful work. This collaboration fits perfectly with our corporate mission to create sustainable added value, in economic, ecological and social terms,” Rony Neufkens, head of department for purchasing fruits and vegetables of the Colruyt Group, concludes.
Dirk Lammertyn, manager of De Lochting, adds: “This collaboration with the Colruyt Group will create extra opportunities for De Lochting in several fields. The expansion creates extra employment, while at the same time creating different types of work as well. Packaging jobs attached to them are challenging and offer opportunities to better prepare employees for future jobs in regular food companies. Colruyt Group’s interpretation of corporate social responsibility (people, planet, profit) finds an attractive common ground with our wish to be ‘a company with a heart for people and nature’ this way.”