If sales figures are any indication, Europeans are deciding in growing numbers that organic food isn’t worth the additional expense.
The organic industry in the UK – the EU’s third-largest organics market – is in the midst of a three-year-long slump, as consumers favor conventionally farmed products amid the global economic downturn. The drop in sales of organics might also reflect an increasing acceptance of modern agriculture.
分析师表示，自 2009 年以来，英国的有机食品销量一直在下滑，其他欧盟国家对该市场的兴趣也在减弱。土壤协会表示，继 2009 年下降 12.9% 之后，2010 年英国有机销售额下降近 6% 至 $27.9 亿，尽管最近几个月下降速度有所放缓。农民正在应对需求下降并放弃有机耕作：根据环境、食品和农村事务部的数据，自 2007 年以来，转向有机耕作的土地减少了三分之二。
“It’s a declining market. Not a lot of people are talking about it,” analyst Matthew Phillips of Phillips McDougall said in an interview. “You can’t get as high of a yield with an organic product as you can with a product that is protected by either chemicals or biotechnology.”
作物保护协会首席执行官多米尼克戴尔表示，瑞典等国家在有机产品的销售方面仍然表现强劲，但与德国、意大利和英国相比，它们属于利基市场。
“People are watching more carefully what they spend on food and are more inclined to question some of the values of the organic sector,” Dyer said in an interview with 农用化学品国际. “It’s going on in Germany; it’s going on in France; it’s going on in the Netherlands.”
在德国，有机食品行业的销售额从 2000 年到 2007 年翻了一番以上，但最近一直低迷，因为越来越多的消费者选择更便宜的传统养殖产品，而不是花更多的钱购买有机食品，有机食品可以收取 40% 溢价。
Bad press could be having an impact as well. This past summer, bean sprouts from an organic farm in Germany were to blame for the world’s largest E. coli outbreak to date. More than 60 people were killed, thousands more were infected, and the outbreak made headlines across the globe.
The 2009 Food Standards Agency report also played a significant role in swaying the public against organics, Dyer says. The report, which attracted heavy media attention, states flatly that there are “no independent authoritative statements on the nature and importance of differences in content of nutrients and other nutritionally relevant substances … in organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs.”
迄今为止，尚无转基因生物导致人类健康问题的案例，这是世界卫生组织支持的一项统计数据。
“I think we’ve seen a growing interest in GM technology,” Dyer says. He points to the example of BASF’s new GM potato, which is resistant to the late-blight disease that wipes out up to 20% of the global potato harvest every year.
“The organic industry, by opposing [technology] in principle, is looking like it’s putting its head in the sand and not really dealing with the problem, and I don’t think that’s helping the industry’s reputation either,” he adds.
这家德国化学巨头本周早些时候向欧盟申请了名为 Fortuna 的食用马铃薯的批准，并预计将在 2014/15 年将其推向市场。