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Newsweek Polska (PL)

Newsweek Polska

A great comeback of taste and smell

Good times are coming for ecological food producers. We begin to appreciate healthy food.

In 200 shops offering healthy food in Poland, customers are tempted by traditional meat and bakery products, several types of naturally ripening cheese (including ‘oscypek’ – the hard cheese made from sheep’s milk by the Polish mountaineers in the region of Podhale), vegetables, mead, juices made from fruit untouched by any chemicals, jams and preserves or unpasteurized beer.

A fashion for natural products came to Poland from the West a few years ago but it had not been until the last month when the first Polish shop sponsored by the Slow Food association was opened the Stara Papiernia trade centre near Warsaw. Slow Food is the most prestigious organization in the world which promotes healthy food and it collects several thousand producers of natural crops and breeding.

Slow Food gives its trademark to the goods of best quality only.

- Our products enjoy success although they cost about half as much as industrial products. We do not complain about a shortage of customers. – says Jacek Szklarek, a chief of the association in Poland. Slow Food anticipates opening several shops with the association’s certificate within three years in Poland because more and more Polish people prefer to spend more money for healthy products. Our ecological farms will work to meet the needs of Slow Food shops and, now, there are about 2000 such farms in Poland. – The fact that healthy food is becoming more and more fashionable will have the effect of spurring the Polish ecological agriculture to very fast growth. – says Doctor Urszula So_tysiak from the Warsaw Agricultural University. – Our soils are not polluted with pesticides and our agriculture is dominated by minor farms which can easily switch to the ecological production.

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SymBio, a company from Lublin established five years ago by Artur Tymi_ski, a graduate of Agricultural Academy in Lublin, and Tokya E. Dammond, an American businessman. Nowadays, the company is a leading supplier of ecological frozen food to the European market. It produces about 2 000 tons of strawberries, raspberries, onions, leeks, zucchinis, carrots, broccolis and cauliflowers.

Products come from about 300 farms having the Polish and European ecological food certificate. Each lot is thoroughly examined for the presence of pesticides. If even traces of them are found, the farmer loses his certificate and the company breaks a contract concluded with him. – This business, unlike many others, is solely associated with quality. – says Artur Tymi_ski, a Vice-president of SymBio.

Thanks to a severe system of crop cleanness watching, SymBio is one of chief co-operators of a branch of Nestle, the Swiss concern, and Hipp, the German producer of baby food. SymBio supplies vegetables to those two companies for the value of more than 250 thousand euro every year. This year, SymBio has concluded a contract concerning a delivery of about 100 tons of apple concentrate to a great food producer in the USA. The company from Lublin has drawn the attention of the prestigious daily ‘Financial Times’ that has published a long article about SymBio. – It is not sales that we are currently concerned about. – says Artur Tymi_ski. – We can conclude contracts of delivery of three times more frozen food than we have concluded so far. What we are missing are farmers ready to supply unpolluted products regularly.

It probably results from the fact that such farms do not get sufficient financial aid from the state – the aid totals to 500-600 zlotys per hectare yearly. This amount is several times higher in other EU countries.

Nowadays, in Poland, ecological crops occupy only 1 per cent of all farming areas, i.e. five times less than in the EU countries. In the EU, there has been a rapid increase in a number of ecological farms for the last 5 years. Members of rich western societies buy ecological products because they have started to take care of their health more and more. In the late nineties’, ecological products had a very slight contribution to the food market (less than 1 per cent). Nowadays, almost 5 per cent out of several million farmers produce food with a green certificate. The majority of these farms are situated in Austria (10 per cent of all crops). In Switzerland, this percentage contribution is 6,3%, in Finland – 6%, in Germany – 5%.

Interest in natural food is so great that the production of such food is not influenced by the recession. In Germany, despite a general economic stagnation, a contribution of ecological farms to the food production rises by 2-3 percentage point every year.

In the USA, the country which sets new paths in the world business, ecological crops have ceased to be a domain of backward farmers and they draw the attention of the big industry. In 2001, the American giant food producer, General Mills (the owner of, among other things, Kellogs’ flakes), bought Small Planet Food, a company specializing in the natural food production from Sedro Wooley, California, for nearly 100 million dollars. During 20 years, a small farm established by Gene Kahn became a leading producer of ecological frozen food and sauces.

- The Polish ecological business is still beginning. – says Doctor Urszula So_tysiak. – Producers who are in the starting blocks now may expect considerable profits in future.

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SymBio is just setting off to conquer the healthy food market. In September, they are going to offer customers in Lublin a subscription to ecological food packages. Each package will include 5 kilos of products (mostly fruit and vegetables) and recipes. Each package will cost 50 zlotys and it will be delivered to a customer’s house within 48 hours from a moment of placing an order.


- Is this system turns out to work in Lublin, we will commence selling subscriptions in Warsaw next year and we will probably supplement them with meat products. – says Artur Tymi_ski.

In such a small country like Denmark alone, the biggest companies working in this system sell several hundred thousand tons of ecological products (vegetables, bakery and meat products, juices, and fish) yearly in a form of dispatches sent to customers in wooden packages.

Nowadays, the turnover of such trade constitutes several percent of the turnover of retail trade and, despite the economic stagnation, it is the fastest developing sector.

There is every indication that the same will happen in Poland. We will witness a great comeback of taste and smell.

Article in Newsweek Polska