At their breaking point with ingredients that read like a chemistry textbook, consumers are going back to the basics. Once the realm of the yogi-spiritual-hippy set, 20 years ago organic food and products were something that consumers had to trek a mountain to find, sold in small independent retail stores alongside incense and healing stones.

This may be a slight exaggeration, but the point is that for a long time, organic food was a very niche market. Its exclusivity was self-perpetuating at times; exclusive means expensive and expensive kept it on the periphery. However, increasingly in the past 10 years, consumers, more educated than ever on the science of food, preservatives and agri-business, have been shifting towards a basic approach to food—an approach that finds organic produce appealing.

Back to our roots

Take the 100-mile diet, for example, the diet that proposes one eats food found in a 100-mile radius. That diet is a direct opponent to the 21st century luxury of filling one’s plate with food flown in from four corners of the globe. To keep grapes from Guatemala fresh, for instance, pesticides are required, something that more and more consumers are finding unappetizing. Organic food is known to contain 50 per cent more nutrients, minerals and vitamins than produce that has been intensively farmed.

The organic market is proving to be lucrative. The value of organic food products sold in Canada through all retail channels was estimated at over $2 billion in 2009, a 66 per cent increase over 2006 ($1.2 billion). Overall, organic food does not have a huge piece of the retail pie—representing approximately 2.5 per cent of total food sales at the retail level according to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Nevertheless, the small amount it represents still accounts for billions, and that number is growing.

Many of Canada’s mainstream supermarkets are selling organic options besides non-certified foods. Consumers are drawn to the perceived health benefits of organic.

Organicfoodinfo.net outlines some benefits as follows:

“Organic food is known to contain 50 per cent more nutrients, minerals and vitamins than produce that has been intensively farmed.”

Consumer-driven trend

But the market is asking for organic, enough to support stores such as Whole Foods, which sells exclusively organic foods and products in high-end markets. If this trajectory continues, the organic industry will comprise of 10 per cent of the Canadian retail market by 2011, according to a government report.
“You can see that virtually everybody has large sections of produce dedicated to organic,” says John F.T. Scott, President & CEO at Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers. “If you go into Longos in Toronto and you look on the shelves, with every packaged good there is an organic alternative to it on the shelves.”

Scott sums up the retail trend towards organic succinctly: “Nobody would put anything on the shelves, whether it was a large store like a Longos or a small independent like Choices, nobody would put it there unless the consumer was looking for it.”

While Scott is of the mind that organic will reach a maximum growth shortly and see only incremental growth from that point onward, retailers who are not responding to the consumer demand for organic choices will lose a substantial amount of business.