French organic organizations have sent the following open letter to the CEOs of Leclerc, Coopérative U, Carrefour, Auchan, Casino, Intermarché and Cora.
“Gentlemen,
With the rapid inflation our country has been experiencing for nearly a year, consumers are reacting by changing their food purchases. Overall, we observe a downward trend when it comes to the choice of products purchased, with an increased consumption of ‘first price products’.
Organic products are therefore strongly affected by these changes in consumption.
Inflation is not the only cause: the development of approaches such as HEV or Zero Pesticide Residue is confusing to consumers. These labels often claim to represent the organic label but they are far from meeting the same level of requirement.
In this context, as leaders of the food distribution, it is your role to maintain a visible, attractive and diversified organic offer. However, we have noticed that your stores tend to increasingly dissociate themselves from the organic market.
Many teams that used to be dedicated to the organic offer in your stores have now been dismantled. We have observed the deterioration of the level of expertise on our products and we are concerned to see our organic products being vaguely categorized as ‘sustainable’.
Even more troubling is the fact that the organic offer in mass retail has been declining at a very fast pace. In September 2022, the offer had dropped by 7.3% from January 2022. This decrease is even more significant than the actual decrease in organic product consumption, measured at -5% over the same period.
This gap is really concerning because it may fuel the already existing decline in demand. Indeed, the less organic products are promoted, the less consumers are encouraged to buy them. We risk entering a vicious cycle that could jeopardize entire sectors in just a few months and compromise the years of efforts made by public authorities, producers and companies to go organic.
Over the past 20 years, and more specifically between 2015 and 2020, the sectors have structured themselves to meet the strong increase in demand thanks to the French production and processing industry. This development relied largely on the commitment made by processing plants to the producers in order to meet the demand from retailers and consumers. Organic producers and the processing industry (mostly SMEs) invested heavily to meet this demand, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic.
It is essential to maintain what we have achieved and not to lose sight of the growth of the organic market in the medium/long term. Between 2016 and 2020 (before the pandemic), the organic sector was experiencing double-digit growth in supermarkets each year and its market share had nearly doubled, going from 2.8% to 5.2%.
However, the rapid decline of organic products is likely to cause losses for farms and companies, with a long-term impact for the French organic sector, much like what happened to the organic sector in the UK in the 2010s.
It usually takes at least 3 years for a farm to obtain the organic label, according to the legal delay imposed by the specifications. In practice, the full process often takes 5 years. In order to be able to meet the demand once it increases again, it is essential to preserve the existing sectors.
We can do this together, by placing organic products back in the spotlight.
Alongside several interprofessions, from Agence Bio to the French Ministry of Agriculture, our organizations contributed to the recent #Bioréflexe campaign, which was an excellent initiative that should be renewed and expanded.”
Mathieu Lancry, president of FOREBIO
Philippe Camburet, president of FNAB
Didier Perréol, president of SYNABIO
Photo: Riccardo Milani / Hans Lucas AFP