Selected characteristics of the wholefood market

Abstract

The paper deals with characteristics of branch with products of ecological agriculture in Czech Republic. Present state of crop and animal production on ecological farms is analyzed. Paper is also focused on analysing distribution channels of organic products.To the most often manufactured organic products belong according to dominate activities of producers meat processing, producing bake, confectioner and other floury products (mainly fresh pastry), milk processing, production of dairy commodities and cheese and fruit and vegetables. In the last few years the number of wine manufacturer is rising. Second important category for development of market with organic products are distributors or subjects, who set afloat wholefood or organic products including import and export without whatever further processing. In terms of marketed organic products and wholefood, sale of animal organic products dominates above crop. In terms of sharing main categories of ecologicaly cropped growns in the Czech Republic, the biggest share have legumes processed for corns and vegetables. The most important category in ecological agriculture in animal production is explicitly beef-raising. In comparison with the end of 2008 number of wholefood producers increased up of 14 percents, which means retardation in comparison with the growth between the years 2007 and 2008. Leading position on the market with offered wholefood has the drug-store chain dm. It offered more than 488 organic products in September 2010. With a big distance Globus follows this drug-store chain with 341 organic products and then are all nets of hypermarkets. According to the shares of particular suppliers dm drug-store market is found on the top, which supplies its shops with wholefood of german producer Alnatura. In the second place there is the company Pro-bio and in the third place is the supplier of infantile nutrition HiPP Czech. One possibility for launching organic products into the market are very favorite so called suppliers’ packets (in Czech Republic the term boxes is used). Consumers can order fresh fruit and vegetables directly by the producer on his web sites. The producer packs the packet according to the consumers’ needs and he supplies it once a week to the consumer’s home or to another address. The producers, who offer these supplier packets, supplement their offer of exotic fruits or products of their partner producers, for making their offer more attractive. The highest demand of boxes is in big cities. The paper is a part of solution of the research plan of FBE MENDELU in Brno, No. 6215648904.