Características hidrogeológicas

The EKO-Monitor (Organic Monitor)

In order to monitor the development of the organic market, LEI Wageningen-UR, together with the Dutch Ministry of Agricuture, started the EKO-Monitor (Organic Monitor) project three years ago. The original three year contract was renewed for another three years in 2005.

With a target set at five percent organic market share of food consumption* _{the EKO-Monitor project}

collects data on several market channels and product categories in order to monitor the development of organic products. The data collection in the Netherlands takes place primarily in two ways:

1) the Dutch ministry of Agriculture buys data on consumer spending in the retail and discounter supermarkets from commercial market research sources;

2) LEI Wageningen-UR collect data from expert sources on consumer spending in specialist shops and other points of sale such as direct sales from organic farms to consumers, sales via the internet and sales through weekly subscription of a shopping bag of organic fruits and vegetables.

Detail level in the data

If the data sources used to monitor organic development differ widely (as is almost always the case), the levels of monitoring must be very clearly defined. The depth of the output is limited by the level of detail of the most aggregated part. If one source brings you up to the level of ‘organic bananas’ and ‘organic lemons’ while another source delivers no more detail than ‘organic fruit’, then ‘fruit’ is the detail level on which you can report.

In the Netherlands we divide the organic figures into several product groups. Table 1 shows these groups alongside the Dutch market shares of organic consumer spending on 30June 2005 (*See policy document Organic Agriculture 2005 – 2007 (Biologische Landbouw 2005 – 2007).

1 Johan Bakker, LEI - Agricultural Economic Research Institute, P.O. Box 29703, NL-2502 LS The Hague

2 Arjen Vroegop, Ministry of Agriculture, Nature & Food Quality, PO Box 20401, NL- PO Box 20401 The Hague, The Netherlands

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0.00% 1.00% 2.00% 3.00% 4.00% 5.00% 6.00% 7.00% 8.00% P o ta to e s V eget abl es Fr u it s B read _Dair y E ggs F res h m eat & s u b s ti tu te s M eal s R e ma in in g food pr oduc ts To ta l Fo o d

Figure 1: Market share of product categogies, 30 June 2005. Source: EKO-Monitor 19 second quarter 2005, www.biologica.nl

Quarterly reports at the detail level shown in Table 1 are made for the media by press releases and through the internet. These figures are only aggregated for the national level and without details of different sale channels, such as retail or specialist shops. Although some data sources provide a more detailed level of information, as explained below, no further detail is presented. The reason for this is that it presents only a part of the data and has to maintain the confidentiality of the commercial parties involved.

Data sources and quality of the information

As for the collection of data and which sources to use, the primary goal of the EKO-Monitor project is to obtain information in as much depth as possible. The secondary goal is to obtain the information as close as possible to the original source. In the different sale channels mentioned above, this results in the following workflow:

The data bought from commercial market research companies is actually on a more detailed level. The sources are Information Resources (IRI) and GfK Consumer panels. Information Resources provides information about Dutch organic consumer spending from scanning data from cash registers in retail outlets in the Netherlands.

GfK Consumer panel uses data from a consumer panel source with some 4’400 households in the Netherlands who register all their purchases on a daily basis. This involves information like source of purchase, price, kind of product, total amount and whether the purchased products are organic or not. The third source of data is expert interviews. This information is obtained by interviewing several experts and companies who are involved in selling organic products through specialist shops, the internet or through organic markets in the Netherlands. This kind of information is less accurate than the information from IRI and GfK and not at a high level of detail. This is actually the reason why providing more detailed levels in the quarterly reports and media is not possible at this stage of the project.

Because the information is obtained from several different sources with overlapping data, quality checks can be made between the different sets of data. This is one of the major quality checks that take place. Another, second quality check will be explained below in the policy support section.

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Initiatives for further improvement

In this section we explain our objectives to obtain a further improvement in the quality of the data sets. In the search for further improvement we have focussed on the sources outside the supermarket chains, particularly on the specialist shops, like natural and health food shops, the farmers who sell organic products directly from their farms, and all kinds of selling initiatives though the internet. There are several reasons for this: the less detailed information we obtain from these sales channels, because it is collected through interviews instead of data sets, is of a lower quality than the IRI and GfK data, and also we would like to find sources that are closer to our two goals in the EKO-Monitor project, as described above.

Therefore we have started a project to outline the market structure of these sales channels, which should result in uniform approach for them. It also includes the introduction of aggregating information from cash register systems in the specialist shops. The aim of this project is to deliver more detailed information on the sales channels mentioned, which is to be included in the next annual report in March/April 2006.

Policy support

All the sections above are focussed on obtaining and presenting data on consumer spending on organic products. As well as calculating and presenting data on the organic market, the EKO-Monitor project also provides policy support through information exchange with experts in the market. As explained below, the Dutch government has installed an expert for every major product category to support promotions and efforts to increase the demand for organic products. The experts initiate promotion campaigns with retail outlets and in order to judge the outcome of these campaigns they need to have specific data for these periods. The EKO-Monitor project provides them with these data. In fact, every quarter there is a meeting to discuss the data from the EKO-Monitor project with all the market experts. By looking at the data and connecting them to the developing situation in the specific market, these experts provide the EKO-Monitor project with an extra quality check on the data. This is achieved by double checking the data with market actors. In this way the project supports the policy of the Dutch government and their market experts in their efforts to increase sales of organic products.

In document Mapa Geológico de España E 1:50 000 Hoja 429 NAVAS DE ORO (página 70-75)