Managing
Important Insight For Importing Ingredients
By Dr. Winfried
Fuchshofen
With the dramatic growth of the organic market, it’s almost an inevitable
fact that most medium- to large-sized
manufacturers will, at some point, have to import ingredients. One obvious reason for this
is the fact that there are certain ingredients
such as coffee, cocoa and tropical fruits that
just don’t grow in the United States. In addition, over the last five years a growing number
of companies have started importing ingredients that technically could be produced in the
United States. This is, in part, because the
growth of the organic market was not accompanied by a similar growth of organic agriculture in the United States, as depicted in
Table 1.
Year
the United States is imported almost exclusively from Europe.
Data on U.S. Organic Imports
Published data about U.S. organic imports
is extremely scarce due to the fact that no official statistics exist on this subject. The United
States is not alone in this regard—currently
the only country with limited import statistics
is Canada. The latest assessment of the total
value of U.S. imports by Dimitri and Ober-holtzer (USDA Economic Research Service)
relates to the year 2002; for this year, they estimate the value of organic imports between $1
billion and $1.5 billion. Organic Monitor
(2006) reports that the organic meat supply is
Growth Rate Growth Rate more and more dependent
Organic Market Organic Agriculture on imports from Latin Amer-
2002 17. 3 0.0 ica, Canada and Australasia
2003 20. 2 11. 7 (the Region of Oceania:
2004 14. 6 0.0 New Zealand, Australia,
2005 16. 2 18. 7 Papua New Guinea and
2006 20. 9 10.0* neighboring Islands in the
2007 17. 5* 10.0* Pacific Ocean). And, occa-
Table 1: Growth Rates for the U. S. Organic Markets and U.S. Organic Agriculture sionally articles such as one
Sources: OTA Manufacturer Survey 2007 (Organic Market), USDA ERS
(Organic Agriculture), = estimates by Organic Insights, Inc. titled, “Organic Food Pro-
Another explanation is simple economics: ducers Losing Ground to Imports, ” pub-imported ingredients are, in many cases, lished in the Des Moines Register, describe
cheaper and, since the retail price of organic anecdotal evidence that more and more com-products to a certain extent determines sales, panies such as White Wave, Cascadian Farm
the temptation to buy cheaper ingredients and even Organic Valley Cooperative have re-elsewhere has grown. And with this growth in sorted to importing certain organic products.
demand, availability has also grown, making More than 500 different products from
prices even more appealing. A third reason is more than 50 countries are being reported
less well known: certain products are very from staples such as rice and beans to a vari-challenging to manufacture in the United ety of vegetables and fruits such as broccoli,
States. This is true for chocolate, for example. cauliflower, blueberries, strawberries and fruit
There are very few processing facilities in the concentrates and extracts. In addition, many
United States that do smaller runs of choco- processed products are also being imported,
late, as required in the organic chocolate in- ranging from gummy bears, pasta and choco-dustry, and the consequence is that a late spread to organic beer and whiskey.
substantial part of the organic chocolate in Preliminary data from Organic Insight’s
