Author Description

The early start of organic farming in Germany (the early 1920s) and the higher number of consumers concerned about environmental problems, compared to the other EU countries in the 1970s and 1980s, characterise the production context as more ideologically oriented than in the other EU countries. The majority of EU countries developed an organic movement later, especially in the South of Europe but also in the Netherlands, and many producers joined the movement in the 1990s attracted by the financial incentives of the EU. A sign of this can be seen in the reluctance that organic producers showed in selling organically produced products in conventional distribution chains (supermarkets) and their preference for the dedicated shops. Also the 'dedicated distribution channels for organic' (farm shops, specialised shops, consumers clubs, box schemes) developed first in Germany in the 1970s and early 1980s, and these alternative retailing outlets were promoting an alternative and quite radical ideology of consumption. Food should be simple, unrefined and unprocessed, wholesome, environmentally and animal friendly produced, possibly unpacked, with no preservatives, no additives etc. Therefore, for the first organic shopkeepers, availability of a large selection of fresh products (e.g. fresh fruit and vegetables) was considered environmentally dangerous, the presentation of the products was largely unimportant and conventional quality attributes like aesthetics and size of the products were perceived as superfluous. Convenience foods were considered suspicious if not deliberately against an ethics of consumption informed to minimise energy use. Meat and animal products were absent from the shelf or presented in very limited quantities for the high percentage of vegetarians among the early consumers. During the 1980s and the 1990s the demand for organically produced foods in Germany has grown more than in the other EU countries but the 'alternative circuits' of producers and