Netherlands: Number of organic products in supermarkets increased

The supermarket chain Plus offers the largest organic choice in supermarkets in the Netherlands with an average of 356 products, the Dutch environmental organisation Milieu Defensie reports. Plus increased their organic offer by 100 products this year. The chain is followed by Hoogvliet with 294 organic items and Jumbo with 264 articles. The chain Albert Heijn, which is much praised for its strong organic commitment, lists about 203 organic products.

While the average number of organics in Dutch supermarkets had been at 78 in 2009, it increased to 141 this summer. Single stores have a much higher potential, however, as a graph by Milieu Defensie shows. A Jumbo market in Groningen carries 1,280 organic products and Plus in Amersfoort offers 1,182 of those items. Milieu Defensie has been creating statistics for organic products for fifteenth years. This year’s count included 532 supermarkets from 26 chains.

Since 2006, Milieu Defensie has also included fair trade products in their statistics. The availability of those items in chain stores has also increased. This year, there were on average 35 Fairtrade products on the supermarket shelves, up from 28 in the past year. Plus was the chain with the largest offer (102 fair trade products), followed by Jumbo and Em-Té with 61 products respectively. Two Jumbo markets in Groningen offered the biggest fair trade choice with 287 and 272 fair trade products respectively.
 

The Monitor of Sustainable Food for the first half of 2012 has recently shown that there is a significant growth in segment of "sustainable", "fair" and "species-appropriate kept" goods (23.4%). Almost half of those (11.8%) are certified organic. More information (in Dutch) is available here: Bionext