Sustain Public Show

This article was greatfully supplied by Australian Certified Organic Magazine. The article came from Winter 2010 Issue.

By John Paull, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University

A challenge for the organics sector is how to raise awareness of the value of the organic ‘brand’ for the youth demographic? How to get a health message across to the demographic least challenged by health issues? How to sell an added-value message across to the demographic with the least disposable income? And how to spruik the attraction of a voluntary consumer eco- services food ‘tax’ to a generation exposed to a steady diet of junk-food advertisements?
Certified Organic food is premium priced and each sale relies on the organic labeling being valued by consumers. A recent study finds that the perceived value of organic certification is a function of the age of the consumer.
The view of youth towards organic food appears to be “Organic food, like, yeah, whatever”. The value of ‘Certified Organic’ increases with age, starting at a low 2.1% premium for consumers aged 20 years and under, peaking at 18.1% for those in the aged 41 to 60 years, and declining thereafter (Figure 1).
The risk for the organics sector of not engaging the ‘youth vote’, and countering its
‘yeah, whatever’ attitude to organics, is that this apparent age effect can become entrenched and evolve to become a generational effect. If that were to happen, and a generation is lost to organics, then the organics market risks becoming atrophied. A diminishing niche market would be a sad
fate to envisage for an organics sector built and grown largely by the baby-boomer generation.
Tobacco companies long ago realized that their future is in the high schools. It is a lesson that appears to have been missed by
the organics sector. Servicing a clientele base is a short term marketing strategy, and any concentration of effort there must be supplemented by addressing the issue of market replenishment, of recruiting fresh clients, and of growing the market.
Recently, Italy has been actively and successfully pursuing the growing presence of organic food in school lunches (Morgan and Sonnino 2008). If the organics sector is going to achieve the ambitious goals of expansion that would serve future generations well, there is a need to recruit young people into the vision of an Otopia; a world converted to organic food, farming and fibre.
The recruitment of youthful consumers serves both the organics sector and the recruit. For the organics sector, the youth demographic is the market sector with the longest projected longevity as consumers. For individuals, the current youth demographic faces food and nutritional challenges and unsound meal choices that have been unseen by prior generations. Organics advocacy to youth and the conversion to awareness and consumption of organic produce can serve both the organics sector and the youthful consumer.
As early as the 1940s, the Living Soil Association of Tasmania (LSAT) and its president, Henry Shoobridge, pioneered a programme advocating organics into schools. The LSAT developed a world-first school- student membership programme with its own distinctive objectives, separate from the parent organization (Paull 2009b).
The 2010 BFA Organic School Gardens project (www.organicschools.com.au) is the latest Australian organics sector endorsement of growing and consuming organic produce within schools.

References
• Morgan, K. and R. Sonnino (2008). The School
Food Revolution: Public Food and the Challenge of
Sustainable Development. London, Earthscan.
• Paull, J. (2009a). The Value of Eco-Labelling: Price premiums & consumer valuations of organic, natural, and place of origin food labels. Saarbrücken, Germany, VDM Verlag.
• Paull, J. (2009b). “The Living Soil Association: Pioneering Organic Farming and Innovating Social inclusion.” Journal of Organic Systems 4(1): 15-33

(Due to formatting issues Fig. 1 was not able to be supplied. If you would like to find out more please head to the Australian Certified Organic Website. Sorry for the inconvienience.)