In Åsnes, Norway, the organic cauliflower is looking very well, but the grower might have to sell them as pig feed because of a lack of customers.
Heinrich Jung breaks off a leaf to cover the cauliflower with it. They could turn yellow if they get to much light. “It doesn’t matter for the flavour, but customers don’t want yellow cauliflower,” he says. Heinrich has been growing organically since 1999, and he’s proud of his work. However, he’s now worried about the future because he might have to dump several tonnes of cauliflower. Heinrich supplies 16 per cent of the organic cauliflower bought by distributor Bama. The agreement was that Heinrich would supply 20,000 cauliflowers over four weeks. In this warm and dry summer, he would’ve liked to supply everything within a few days.
Manager of communication Pia Gulbrandsen of Bama understands the grower’s frustration. “We have an agreement that the cauliflower is supplied over several weeks. Now that everything can be harvested at the same time, there’s a problem. But we just can’t supply everything to our customers at once.” Pia is now in conversation with supermarkets to try and speed up sales, by having campaigns and using social media, for instance, although this won’t increase customer demand suddenly. Besides, there wasn’t much demand for cauliflower this summer to begin with. “Because of the warm weather, people eat a lot of salads and fruit, and they don’t buy a lot of cauliflower or other types of cabbages.”
Growers pay the price
Heinrich thinks the risks should be spread out. This way, new growers might not dare to get started growing organically, and experienced growers might not be willing to continue with it. “Conventional growers are also at risk, but the organic production is often more expensive. This means the loss is even bigger if you can’t sell your product. This risk has to be spread out more,” he says. Naturally, growers are personally responsible for their management and planning, but wholesalers and supermarket chains should also bear responsibility. Besides, he thinks politics should also play its part. “Otherwise we might lose diversity, which we should be trying to increase, and we’d have to start importing again in future.” If he’s unable to sell his cauliflower in the coming days, he would lose 40,000 euro in turnover.
Source: www.nrk.no