Organic Marketing

MODULE II

CHARACTERISTICS OF ORGANICALLY-PRODUCED COMMODITIES AND ORGANIC AGRI-FOOD MARKETS
(week 3)

MODULE OVERVIEW

Introduction

One of the most discussed attributes of organically-produced commodities (OPCs) is their ability to attract price premia in the marketplace. The question is why? An ancillary question is to ask whether these premia are justified. A hypothetical answer might be to suppose that these premia stem from relative scarcities placing upward pressure on market prices. It turns out that this provides a partial answer, but one too simplistic. The purpose of this Module is to explore those characteristics of OPCs and organic agri-food markets that help to explain the origin and persistence of market price premia. We rely heavily on the published results of surveys of consumers of OPCs for the material in this module, and particularly on a review of these results by Bonti-Ankomah (2003).