Consumer behaviour and organic food purchases - Essay Example

Present scenario is marked by an increasing requirement as well as craving for organic food by the consumers. This is so because they find organic food qualifying their parameters of quality and safety. Also the agricultural principles and practices of organic food are not harmful for the environment. The graph of this requirement may touch new heights in the future. Not all the countries have a uniform and same picture regarding the nature, standard and figure of production ,yet there is a remarkable swell in the number of organic farms in all European Union (EU) Member States since the 1992 reform of the common agricultural policy (CAP) However, in total just under 2 per cent of all agricultural area is devoted to organic farming, on more than 1 per cent of all agricultural holding (Hau and Joaris, 2000) .

Study reveals that (Hau and Joaris, 2000).Producers provide two causes behind this growing inclination towards organic farming. The first impetus was given by the embracement of the 1992 Mac Sharry reform that maintained the 'principle of decoupling' that formed the disassociation between market price and income support. EC Regulation 2078/92 administers it thereby compensating those farmers who are dedicated to agricultural means that are least unhealthy for the environment and are practicing moderate and mild agriculture not severe one.

Council regulation 2078/92 brought into practice some agri-environmental ways that will boost up the sustention and conservation of organic farming. One such way is financially assisting organic farmers by paying up if they suffer any income failure during the conversion. The second reason accounting for the increasing interest in organic farming is situated in financial context-bigger financial benefits of the farmers in a saturated agricultural market. The production of organic food has seemed to have formed a distinct and important part of market.

Small farmers, mostly conventional, who are unable to extract large gains in agricultural productions dominated by progressive technologies, are specially inclined toward organic food production (Shifferstein and Oude Ophius, 1998). So for the causes that are environmental and ethical both there is a certain political enthusiasm and appeal to raise the percentage of organic food production. Some agricultural catastrophes as pig plagues, mad cow disease and the foot and mouth disease acted as catalyst in providing a positive impulse to the interest in organic food production.

But there are few impediments too in the way of enlarging the size of production. One major obstacle is that consumers find organic food a little more costly as compared to normal food. So, certain reluctance is visible in