Austrians ask more for organic food

Food retailers in Austria generated seven percent more revenue with fresh organic food in 2019 than in the year before. The number of organic farmers has also grown.

Austria's consumers spent 580 million euros on fresh organic food last year. This is a seven percent growth on the previous year and raises the organic share to 9.3 percent of the total food sales, according to Agrarmarkt Austria Marketing (AMA), who gathered this data.

The rolling AMA market analysis (Roll-AMA) is based on the projected purchasing data of a household panel of 2,800 participants and data collected by the market research companies GfK and Key Quest. The rolling AMA covers fresh products including frozen goods and convenience foods but excludes bread and pastries.

Every fifth milk bought is organic

The highest organic share of sales was for fresh milk at 25.5 percent, natural yoghurt at 23.7 percent, and 22.1 percent for eggs. Sausage and ham had the lowest organic share of three percent. Meat and poultry were slightly better.

The sales figures show that meanwhile every fifth milk bought in Austria is organic, at an average price of 1.38 euros per litre. In quantity, bananas came in second place, even before potatoes. Average selling price of bananas: 1.86 euro per kilogram.

There was also an increase in the number of organic farms. The association “Bio-Austria” reported a total of 24,372 organic producers for 2019, making the share of organic famers 22 percent of all farmers in Austria and an increase of almost four percent on the previous year. With 665,800 hectares, more than one fifth of the agricultural area of the country is organically farmed.