The Strategic Turn of Organic Farming in Europe: From a Resource Based to an Entrepreneurial Approach of Organic Marketing Initiatives

Abstract

This chapter explores organic farming's development potential in Europe. It analyses the enterprise capacities to reach a workable structure of the supply chains, in order to market good products at reasonable prices. This study has been carried out in the framework of a European project (OMIaRD). This aimed to assess the impact of the Organic Marketing Initiatives (OMI) on Rural Development. The results show after a growing phase, most of the organic marketing initiatives meet a strategic turn point, linked to their ability to face logistic problems, linked to an increasing of collected, processed and marketed volumes. This strategic turn leads them to take decisions together with their stakeholders, such that the economic and ethical goals are not questioned by the changes to be implemented.

Citation

Sylvander, B. and Schieb-Bienfait, N. (2006), "The Strategic Turn of Organic Farming in Europe: From a Resource Based to an Entrepreneurial Approach of Organic Marketing Initiatives", Marsden, T. and Jonathan Murdoch†, J. (Ed.) Between the Local and the Global (Research in Rural Sociology and Development, Vol. 12), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 323-358. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1057-1922(06)12013-2