Healthy living & lifestyle There’s something in the soil
Organic food has long been heralded as the fi x-all for environmental and health concerns. But with it only accounting for less than 2% of the total food and drink market, is it still the answer it was originally touted as? Martin Morris speaks to Gareth Morgan, head of farming policy at the UK’s Soil Association; Professor Derek Stewart, director of the Advanced Plant Growth Centre at the James Hutton Institute; and Patrick Harte, joint managing director at CambridgeHOK, to fi nd out what the market can do to become more sustainable, affordable and drive future growth.
hen the Soil Association released its Organic Market Report in February this year, the numbers (on the face of it) made for impressive reading. Growth is up 25.4% over the previous three years – compared with the pre- pandemic performance, UK organic sales in 2019 were £2.45bn. Evidence, perhaps, that organic represents a resilient investment opportunity with a strong growth trajectory, at least. Yet when set in context, the market size is still miniscule when compared with the overall food and drink market. And this point is not lost on the industry, which has long accepted that more needs to be done to promote itself.
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One elephant in the room has been supply chains; frayed by a combination of Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic that subsequently led to worker shortages from seasonal fruit pickers, through to abattoir staff and lorry drivers. This has created huge problems for farmers across the UK and highlighted the lack of resilience in the food system. But that doesn’t mean resolving these issues is necessarily insurmountable.
Making the agroecological transition A recent study by the French think-tank IDDRI showed that if implemented alongside dietary shifts, an agroecological transition could move the EU from
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