Organic Food Industry Scope

Indian organic food market is growing. There is great increase in the percentage rise of demand of organic products since the last decade and as per many reports, more and more individuals are opting for organic products nowadays. So it is not surprising that the number of organic farms in India has also grown up with a great pace while the total number of farms declined in the last decade. The market may be expanding rapidly but organic is still only 2% to 5% of total shelf space in various hypermarket and supermarket chains such as Spencers, Natures Basket, Fabindia, Hypercity, etc and organic food market is even less than 2% of total food market in India. In comparison, organic products are 5% of the American food market, 8% in Germany. The organic industry has a great room to grow in India and abroad: the world organic market is already close to $100 billion a year.

It should be easy to persuade a lot more farmers to switch to organic methods as organic methods are not only good for soil, water, air and whole ecosystem and organic food is nutritious and tasty but organic methods of farming are a bit profitable than the conventional farming methods because of the use of the latest technology and innovative ideas for cost reduction in it. Other reason is that organic saves energy of almost 30-50% per hectare.

So what is not to like about the organic approach? It all comes down to yield. Organic methods produce about 30-40 per cent less grain per hectare. From the point of view of the farmer, it is not about volume but net income, where organic is the clear winner. But what about feeding the world? Without the boost from chemical fertilizers and pesticides, there just wouldn't be enough food. Even if farm chemicals damage health and the environment, the alternative of mass starvation is worse.

Is there a way to solve this problem? Can we get the benefits of organic farming with the productivity of chemical farming? I think maybe yes.

One thing to consider is that for decades most agricultural research has gone into conventional farming that uses chemicals. Worldwide billions of dollars are spend for research and development in agriculture and agri-food every year and as compared to that, an extremely small amount is spend for organic food science. Could the productivity gap be narrowed if more research went into organic methods?

Another thing to consider is whether there are ways to increase the food supply without pumping it up with chemicals. Through various Agriculture and Agro-Food reports and survey, it is found that around one-third of the global food supply is lost or wasted every year. In India, food worth $8.3 billion, or nearly 40% of the total value of annual production, is wasted last year (of which, meat accounts for about 4% of food wastage but 20% of the cost, while 70% of fruit and vegetable output is wasted, accounting for 40% of the total cost.). India is the world biggest producer of milk and 2nd largest producer of fruits & vegetables, but also India is world largest waster of food. Household food loss and waste accounted for around 1/5th of total wastage, with retail waste and loss (example, poor warehousing conditions, absence of modern distribution chains, few cold storage facilities, etc resulting into perishing of food, ) accounting for the rest.

Eliminating waste in the agro-food system could, in part, make up for the lower productivity of organic methods. Other consideration is that despite its high productivity, the global agrofood system fails to feed close to a billion people, almost all of them the rural poor in low-income countries. The solution for them is not higher production of food in wealthy countries, it is to create conditions that help them produce more food and gain more income. As more than 2/3^rd of the country population lives in rural areas of which more than half lives in small villages , so such a situation, organic methods, particularly agro-ecology could provide the best way to achieve the goal.