Meeting of European specialist organic magazines at BioFach

An international and meeting of specialist journalists from seven countries – open to the public - took place for the first time at BioFach in 2015. With some well prepared Powerpoint presentations, they introduced their print an online magazines. The common factor was that they all specialized in the theme of organic. The target group in the case of some of the speakers is predominantly consumers, for others it is specialists in the organic industry. Several of them have more than one publication and address both groups. The meeting on 11.2.2015 was organized by Kai Kreuzer on behalf of Bio Verlag.

Picture: there were more editors of organic media in the audience

Representatives from Russia, Poland, Sweden, Belgium, Spain and Germany

“I’m very pleased that you’ve succeeded in bringing together at BioFach a wide spectrum of the specialist organic press and that this is a topic of interest for many visitors,” said Barbara Böck at the launch of the event. She is responsible for PR at BioFach and Vivaness. It was on Wednesday during BioFach that a good 40 visitors and participants gathered in a room in the Congress Centre at Nürnbergmesse.   
“It was very interesting for me and also a challenge to present my online portals,” explained Tatiana Lebedeva (picture) from Look.bio in Moscow. “It was great to get to know other journalists and their projects,” said the delighted 37 year old Russian. Since 2013, this specialist journalist has been the publisher of an internet magazine for consumers called Lookbio.ru and, since the beginning of December 2014, portals for organic professionals (internet address www.Look.bio). The start-up company now employs four people. Via the consumer portal, Tatiana Lebedeva already reaches 30,000 readers a month. A  Lookbio digest, a magazine with a print-run of 3,000 copies, is distributed twice a year in five organic stores in Moscow and at trade fairs.

Before becoming involved in organic publishing, the graduate journalist created her own advertising agency and became familiar with the themes of cosmetics and healthy food. This alerted her to the fact that that there were no regular publications on these topics in Russia. So, using only her own financial resources and with a great deal of drive, she set up her own media. She started with a blog on natural cosmetics, organic food and ecological household products and, within just one year, this developed into a fully-fledged specialist magazine. Tanya Lebedeva is now in the process of creating a database of organic firms in Russia. It is scheduled to launch in March 2015 in Russian and in the summer in English.

Picture: a database of organic firms in Russia is planed

The Spanish magazine Bio Eco Actual with copies and a website

Enric Urrutia and Montse Mulé (Picture on the right side) too have only recently become organic publishers. Since April 2013, they have been publishing the magazine Bio Eco Actual, with approximately 27,000 copies in Spanish and Catalan. This monthly publication is distributed to organic consumers via over 4,000 wholefood shops, health food shops and trade fairs. Its contents are not restricted to healthy food but also cover themes like eco-building, textiles, shoes, horticulture and renewable energy. The publishing house is domiciled in the bastion of organic, Barcelona. What incentivized the former music event organizer and music retailer to become involved in the organic sector was a video film on the subject of meat consumption called The Barbecue that the pair produced.
Bio Eco Actual combines close cooperation with the international specialist magazine The Ecologist and the trade fair Cultura, that is held at regular intervals in Barcelona, Valencia, Madrid and Bilbao. Every week, a newsletter is dispatched for the online version of Bio Eco Actual, that records over 17,000 visits to the website each month.

Poland: BioKurier and Eko-Arka

The magazines BioKurier and Eko-Arka are a duo supporting the organic sector in Poland. Biokurier is both an online publication and a 32-page version that appears four times a year with a print-run of around 15,000 copies. The magazine is disseminated in organic shops and health food stores and is aimed at consumers, retailers and organic processors. BioKurier is administered by the journalist Karol Przybylak. 25 years ago, his father founded the specialist organic farming magazine Eko-Arka, and for the last ten years Karol and his sister have been working in the publishing company. Eko-Arka (32 pages) appears four times a year and is sent to subscribers, who are mostly organic farmers, processors and advisers.

Ekoweb is send out to all 78,000 farmers in Sweden

“We send our magazine Ekoweb to all 78,000 farmers in Sweden,” editor Cecilia Ryegard (Picture) tells the astounded audience in the Nuremberg Congress Center. One member of the audience wanted to know how she got the addresses of all the farmers. “We don’t have the addresses ourselves but we hand over our magazines to the Swedish postal service and, with their own database,  they deliver them to the farmers.” In this way all farmers in Sweden can be kept up-to-date with the latest developments in the organic sector. The print edition of Ekoweb appears nine times a year, and it is supplemented by a newsletter sent to 2,000 subscribers and the online journal Ekoweb. Cecilia Ryegard, who works together with her husband, has been an organic journalist for 17 years. Once a year, they publish an organic market report on Sweden. To lend more weight to disseminating this market development data, the report is presented every year  to the specialist public during an organic gala, which this year was held in January with 240 guest in the Grand Hotel in Stockholm.

The Flemish part of Belgium is where the organic association Bioforum Vlanderen operates. Sabrina Proserpio (Picture) told us about the news portal bioforum vlanderen that is updated several times a week, and about the specialist magazine Bio-Actief. This magazine has a print-run of 2,200 copies and targets organic farmers and organizations. Processors and retailers are kept up-to-date via a newsletter that goes to around 1000 subscribers.

Karin Heinze reported on the online magazine Bio-Markt.Info that recorded a steadily rising number of readers over the last twelve years and recently became a part of Bio Verlag. Rolf Mütze and Natascha Becker from Bio Verlag  presented the products of this traditional publishing house. The monthly print edition of Biohandel and the internet portal Biohandel-online is aimed at specialist readers. With Schrot&Korn (more than 800,000 copies) and magazine for natural cosmetics Cosmia the target group is consumers interested in all things organic. The online portal Naturkost.de is particularly successful and well used. Bio Verlag, founded in 1979, recently produced the fourth edition of its information booklet Vegan & bio.

“I found this get-together great,” said Adriana Michael (Picture) from Organic Wellness News at the end of the nearly two-hour event, reflecting the feelings of many speakers and participants. She added that when she launched her international print magazine a good ten years ago - it appears four times a year – she had been looking for contact with professional colleagues at BioFach. Organic Wellness News sees itself primarily as a trade fair magazine that will be distributed this spring at Expo West in the USA, Natural & Organic Products Europe in London, and SIAL in Toronto/Canada. In the summer, Adriana Michael will be present at Fancy Foods in New York,  Natural Products Asia in Hong Kong and Expoalimentaria in Peru. The team of the English language specialist magazine, that has correspondents in Australia, the USA, Eastern Europe and South America, takes part in a dozen trade fairs every year.
 

Please add contact:
barbara.boeck@nuernbergmesse.de
Karol  redakcja@biokurier.pl
natascha.becker@bioverlag.de
kh@bio-markt.info
sabrina.proserpio@bioforumvl.be
Tanya Lebedeva  tanyabrikos@gmail.com
bio@bioecoactual.com
Cecilia@agroide.se
amichael@organicwellnessnews.com