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1. Investigating Scotland's Organic Supply Network
1.0. Aims and objectives
The aim of the project is to investigate the level of market penetration of organic food produced in Scotland, and identify strategies for increasing sales of Scottish organic food. The report also contains information that will enable the Scottish Executive and key stakeholders to develop strategies to continue their role of supporting the organic industry in Scotland.
In order to investigate the market penetration of Scottish organic produce the project team used actor network theory * ( ANT) to aid the conceptualisation of the research subject, the Scottish Organic Supply Network ( SOSN). ANT does away with simplistic notions of supply chains and has increasingly attracted the interests of researchers investigating agri-food networks with different authors choosing to emphasise different aspects of the approach 9. For the purposes of this project, ANT informed the methodology to ensure that all of the actors, whether they are producers, processors, distributors, retailers or consumers, who play a role in determining the size and value of the SOSN are included in the research. Additionally, whilst the final report differs little from a more traditional 'supply chain' focussed project, the term supply network is maintained to highlight the interconnectedness of all the actors (producers, processors, retailers and consumers) irrespective of which sector (red meat, poultry, dairy etc) they are involved in.
1.1. Methodology
The project involved secondary research in the form of a desk based literature review and three distinct areas of primary research including a postal survey of all producers, a telephone interview survey of processors and retailers and finally, consumer focussed research by Taylor Nelson Sofres Ltd. ( for full methodology see Appendix I). The research was conducted between March and August 2005.
1.1.1. Surveys
The research team identified 632 producers. However 26 were new entrants and they would not have had any organic produce for sale during the 12-month period preceding the survey. Consequently, 606 questionnaires were posted to Scottish organic producers ( see appendix II).
Organic processors and retailers were interviewed over the telephone. Over a ten-week period, approximately 150 processing businesses, 32 independent retailers and all of the multiple retailers project were contacted ( see appendix III)
In order to gain complete coverage of the SOSN, Taylor Nelson Sofres ( TNS) were contracted to investigate the retail and consumption of organic food in Scotland. They investigated consumer trends using their Superpanel data and 6 questions were included as part of an omnibus survey.
1.2. Report structure
The report is divided into 5 chapters. After the introductory chapter, chapter 2 presents a review of a number of studies and reports that summarise the current market for organic food in Europe, the UK and Scotland. Chapter 3 presents the results from the producer questionnaire and processor telephone surveys. Chapter 4 presents the results from the retailer survey, TNS's superpanel data and the results from their consumer focussed omnibus survey. Chapter 5 brings together the results from the previous chapters to calculate an overall market penetration figure for indigenous organic produce in Scotland.
1.3. Project limitations
As with all research projects of this nature, its successful completion is dependent upon the co-operation of the populations being surveyed and the accuracy and level of detail provided by the respondents. The nature of the data needed by the research team was deemed to be commercially sensitive by a significant number of producers and processors who subsequently refused to divulge the information required. This was especially apparent when investigating the producer - processor relationship with both parties being particularly reticent to reveal the quantities and range of products being traded and the nature of the agreement between them. This made it difficult to follow Scottish organic produce/crops from production through to retail and therefore impossible to develop precise market penetration figures. Consequently, levels of market penetration were calculated using information from each of the different strands of research and where necessary, by speaking with a range of stakeholders to check the research teams calculations.
This general reticence to divulge information and the limited time available for the project resulted in the research team not being able to map out Scotland's organic food supply networks as originally intended. Additionally, this also meant that it was not possible to fully investigate the nature of the relationships between different actors thus preventing ANT to be fully used in the way intended.
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