Tackling the future challenges of Organic Animal Husbandry - vTI

! Agriculture and Forestry Research, Special Issue No 362 (Braunschweig, 2012) ISSN 0376-0723
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Local feed in organic animal production:
a market opportunity?
SALOME WÄGELI AND ULRICH HAMM
University Kassel, Department of Agricultural and Food Marketing, Germany
s.waegeli@uni-kassel.de, www.agrar.uni-kassel.de/alm
Key words: preferences, animal feed, consumer, discrete choice, organic animal products
Introduction
In recent years, organic animal production in Germany has been increased from year to year (AMI
2010). This growth was driven by a strong growing demand for organic animal feed which could
not be satisfied by the supply of German organic farmers, especially with regard to protein feed.
Thus a high amount of protein feed had to be imported. Due to the new EU Regulation 889/2008
(Öko-Basis-VO 2007), which from 2015 on requires the use of 100% organic feed in organic farming,
even more organic animal feed will be needed in the coming years. However, the high amount
of imported organic feed is opposed to a growing consumer demand for local food products (e.g.
Adams and Salois 2010; Bernabéu et al. 2010) Local origin is one of the most important additional
food attributes on top when buying organic food products (e.g. Zander and Hamm 2010; Sirieix et
al. 2009; Mennecke et al. 2007). Due to several food scandals in the conventional sector, many consumers
ask for more transparency (Hobbs 2003). If consumers have a preference for local feed in
organic animal production, a new market segment of local organic animal products from animals
which have been raised with local feed could be established.
Methods and materials
Discrete-Choice (DC) Tests and Computer Assisted Personal Interviews (CAPI) with 597 organic
consumers were conducted in two Germany cities in 2011 to analyse consumers’ preferences for
feed origin. Consumers were asked randomly in front of organic food shops or supermarkets. The
sample composition with regard to gender and age correspond to the German average. The DC experiment
was based on a D-efficiency design. Each participant had to choose three times organic
eggs, organic pork cutlets und organic milk. All products varied between four attributes: product
origin, feed origin, existence of the slogan “Without GMO, as organic” and price. In Table 1 all
product attributes with their characteristics are presented. The preferences were analysed with Logit
Models which were constructed using the software N-Logit 4.0. All models were estimated by simulated
maximum likelihood using Halton draws with 1.000 replications.
Two Mixed-Logit (ML) Models (I and II) were built for each product (organic eggs, organic milk
and organic pork cutlets) to analyse consumers’ preferences. The other product attributes were defined
as random parameters. In the ML-Model II, the influence of additional information about organic
feed import to Germany on the purchase decision was analysed. Half of the participants received
an information sheet about organic feed import before taking part in the DC test. So in ML-
Model II the effect of this information (INFO) on the preference for a specific labelling of feed
origin was identified. All ML-Models II had a better model fit than the ML-Models I as the Log-
Likelihood Functions reveal. All models were statistically significant. All coefficients of the attributes
were positive, expect the PRICE, and significant. The PRICE was taken as fixed parameter as
recommended in the literature (Revelt 1998).