The need for a European harmonised data collection on private organic consumption – methodological and economic issues -

Summary

European markets for organic products are growing rapidly, but the market information available in most European countries is seriously limited as a basis for investment and policy decisions. The EU was therefore funding a three-year concerted action EISfOM (European Information System of Organic Markets) to analyse the current situation in 32 countries and to develop proposals to improve the quality and the volume of a European wide organic production and market data collection to support the development of a sector which offers significant potential for further growth as well as environmental and economic benefits.
One area of data collection is related to the consumption of organic food. Presently no official organic consumption and consumer price statistics exist at European level. However, there are manifold national approaches to get access to organic consumption data in terms of volumes and values mostly operated by private household panel approaches. The main barrier is related to a missing European approach to harmonise the different specifications and classifications which would be enable a cross country comparison of data. As user requirements and costs for different approaches differ as a minimum standard a European wide definition of key indicators for organic consumption and methods for national data output harmonisation should be developed.