Acronym : ODN
Code : Grant agreement 289376
Contract Period : 01/02/2012 - 31/12/2014
Project Webpage : http://www.organicdatanetwork.net/
Main Funder : European Commission (FP7)
ORC Staff Contact : Susanne Padel
The project aims to increase the transparency of the European organic food market through better availability of market intelligence about the sector to meet the needs of policy makers and actors involved in organic markets.
The project, European Data Network for Improved Transparency of Organic Markets (OrganicDataNetwork) aims to increase the transparency of the European organic food market through better availability of market intelligence about the sector to meet the needs of policy makers and actors involved in organic markets.
This overall objective will be broken up into key objectives:
To achieve these objectives, OrganicDataNetwork includes as partners bodies (from 10 countries) that collect, publish and analyse such data. This network will closely co-operate with the EC, Eurostat and statistical offices of Member States, using existing structures for collecting and processing data on the organic market and stimulating the development of new ones by adapting existing models. The partnership will act as co-ordinating centre between stakeholders, and will result in a proposal for the establishment of a permanent network to achieve collaboration on statistical issues regarding organic market.
ORC will be involved in all aspects of the project and will be leading two areas: inventory of organic market data collectors and case studies on improving data quality in selected country/regions.
The inventory of organic market data collectors:
An inventory of all public and private bodies as well as stakeholders that are active in the field of collection, processing and disseminating market data on organic agriculture will be compiled in order to be able to carry out further assessment of methodologies and data quality and involve relevant institutions in the dissemination activities. A survey questionnaire will be developed and distributed in electronic format to allow easy compilation of data.
Case studies on improving data quality:
The procedures for collection and publication of market data collection across Europe vary widely. Only countries with well-developed organic markets publish national market estimates or reports with variable coverage in what data are collected. Even in countries with relatively well-developed organic markets data are not nearly as detailed and reliable as in general agricultural and food industry statistics leading to a lack of transparency in the organic market. A number of problems have been reported ,such as lack of reliable estimates of the domestic market, lack of standardized categorization in retail sales data between different providers, lack of national reporting in production volume (in particular in relation to livestock) and in consumption volume and value, lack of collaboration and cross checking between different providers of data, lack of price data and lack of import and export data in volume and value and, lack of consistency in the use of control body data and inconsistencies between control body and ministry data in the context of market estimates.
The case studies proposed are aimed at facilitating national bodies to learn from each other as well as implementing data quality checking procedures developed in earlier parts of the project.
Six case studies of comprehensive data checking and limited additional data collection at the levels of retail sales, price, trade-flows, and to a lesser extend production will be carried out. These include the four well-developed organic markets (Germany, France, Italy, and UK) and one country with less developed organic markets (Czech republic) and the Mediterranean Region, which includes several Candidate and Potential Candidate countries. In all of the selected countries/regions some initiatives to regularly collect and mostly publish organic market data already exists and the organisations publishing these reports will be directly involved in these case studies. Cross checking of data in each region will be carried out using methods and equations developed in earlier parts of the project adjusted to each specific case region/country.
All project deliverables can be accessed from the project webpage
Key project deliverables and ORC’s deliverables are listed below.
Zanoli, Raffaele (2014) D7.1 Report on the synthesis of the key results and proposal for recommendations. Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy.
Zanoli, Raffaele (2014) Data Network for better European Organic Market Information – D7.1 Recommendations. Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy.
Gerrard, Catherine L; Vieweger, Anja and Padel, Susanne (2012) Inventory of data collecting and publishing institutions (Deliverable 2.1 of the OrganicDataNetwork project: Report on data collectors). OrganicDataNetwork project, c/o University of Ancona.
Gerrard, C.L.; Vieweger, A.; Alisir, L.; Bteich, M.-R.; Cottingham, M.; Feldmann, C.; Flechet, D.; Husak, J.; Losták, M.; Moreau, C.; Pugliese, P.; Rison, N.; Schaack, D.; Solfanelli, F.; Willer, H. and Padel, S. (2014) D6.7 Report on the experience of conducting the case studies. ( Deliverable 6.7 of the OrganicDataNetwork project). OrganicDataNetwork project, c/o University of Ancona.
All project publications can be accessed at Organic E-prints
Key publications and those involving ORC are listed below.
Feldmann, Corinna; Gerrard, Catherine L; Hamm, Ulrich; Home, Robert; Losták, Michal; Padel, Susanne; Schaack, Diana; Stolze, Matthias; Vairo, Daniela; Vieweger, Anja; Willer, Helga and Zanoli, Raffaele (editor): OrganicDataNetwork (Ed.) (2014) Data Network for better European Organic Market Information – Synthesis Report.
Gerrard, Catherine L; Padel, Susanne and Lampkin, Nic (2014) English Organic Producer Survey 2013. Report, no. 2/2014. Organic Research Centre, Newbury.
Gerrard, Catherine L; Home, Robert; Vieweger, Anja; Stolze, Matthias and Padel, Susanne (2014) Results of Surveys on Organic Market Data Collectors and End Users in Europe. In: Rahmann, G. and Aksoy, U. (Eds.) Building Organic Bridges, Johann Heinrich von Thünen-Institut, Braunschweig, Germany, 4, Thuenen Report, no. 20, pp. 1139-1142.
On 13th February 2014 Anja Vieweger presented our work at a workshop at the BIOFACH organic trade fair in Nuremburg, Germany. Read report on p13 of IFOAM EU group newsletter March 2014
Read article on our Survey of EU organic market data collectors here, published in ORC Bulletin 113
The second workshop of the OrganicDataNetwork project took place in Bari on July 10 and 11, 2014. Download presentations here
