Work package 6: Case studies on improving data quality in selected countries/regions

The procedures for collection and publication of market data collection across Europe vary widely. Only countries with well-developed organic markets publish national market estimates or reports with variable coverage in what
data are collected.  Even in countries with relatively well-developed organic markets, data are not nearly as detailed and reliable as in general agricultural and food industry statistics, which leads to a lack of transparency in the organic market.

A number of problems have been reported in a variety of countries, such as lack of reliable estimates of the domestic market, lack of standardized categorization in retail sales data between different providers, lack of national reporting in production volume (in particular in relation to livestock), consumption volume and value, lack of collaboration and cross checking between different providers of data, lack of price data, lack of import and export data in volume and value, and lack of consistency in the use of control body data and inconsistencies between control body and ministry data in the context of market estimates. The proposed case studies are aimed at facilitating national bodies to learn from each other as well as implementing data quality checking procedures developed in work package 5.

Six case studies of comprehensive data checking and limited additional data collection at the levels of retail sales, price, trade-flows, and to a lesser extent production will be carried out. These include the four well-developed organic markets (DE, FR, IT, and UK) and one country with less developed organic markets (CZ) and the Mediterranean Region, which includes several candidate and potential candidate countries. In all of the selected countries/regions, some initiatives to regularly collect and publish organic market data already exist and the organisations publishing these reports will be directly involved in this work package. Cross checking of data in each region will be carried out using methods and equations developed in work package 5: adjusted to each specific case region/country.

Leader of work package 6 is Dr. Susanne Padel (ORC).