Czech organic food awards promote tiny but growing market

The annual awards ceremony for the best organic product of the year was held in Prague on Friday. The awards were presented in a recently opened organic restaurant, which is still something of a novelty in the Czech Republic. The event aims to promote the organic food industry, which is still in its infancy in this country.

Czech organic food awards promote tiny but growing market

The organic food market has been well established in the West ever since people began taking an interest in natural products in the 1970s. In recent years, there has been a further upsurge in the popularity of organic foods in the wake of scandals such as the BSE crisis in Britain.

In the Czech Republic, however, the industry is still only getting started. Organic foods were non-existent under communism, and they have fared little better here since 1989.

Tom Vaclavik owns Green Marketing a consultancy firm which is striving to promote organic products in this country. He says that the organic food market suffers here due to a lack of awareness among Czechs about the advantages of natural foods.

Restaurant Albio

"People are not aware at all. There hasn't been an information or education campaign from the government on organic foods. So people are unaware of the advantages. Czech people are [also] sceptical about new things. We didn't have a BSE crisis like the UK had. We didn't have to slaughter millions of cows, but only sixteen. That's too small a number for the organic market to really get going."

Mr Vaclavik feels the organic food industry here is also hampered by the relative weakness of the Czech Republic's transformational economy.

"We don't have the buying power of the EU countries. It's a real problem because the organic products are naturally a little bit more expensive, and the buying power is simply not here yet, except in the bigger cities like Ostrava, Brno or Prague, where the [organic food] market is developing most quickly."

Mr Vaclavik's company helps run an annual competition for the best natural food product. It is now in its fourth year and there was a lot of interest in this year's awards ceremony on Friday when the top prize was for an organically produced salami.

Although events like this help promote the natural food industry here, Mr Vaclavik feels it will still take quite a lot of work and some time before the organic market becomes firmly established here:

"I would say it will be five years before we could be speaking about an established market. Today, in the European Union, an average of about 2-3% of total food consumption comprises organic products. In the Czech Republic it's still less than 0.1%"