The Supply Chain of Organic Foods

Two kinds of organic food suppliers can be identified: local farms run in the family, and larger businesses that serve a larger market segment. Small farms have the support of local communities and regional governments and they usually provide the necessary items for the neighborhood. People living in the countryside will be the first to buy the products of local organic food suppliers. Eggs, dairy products, meat, fish, fruits and vegetables are the most commonly available items. Yet, if you need more exotic items that are not available in the neighborhood, you need to turn to larger organic food suppliers.

The truth is that the very concept of organic food suppliers is a bit ambiguous and it can be understood in different ways depending on the context. Thus, by organic food suppliers, one can refer to the producers, as we have seen in the previous paragraph, or one may talk about a wider category of businesses that intermediate between the final customers and the producers. For instance, hypermarkets usually buy from large companies and organic food suppliers that that are not producers but intermediaries between large stores and local farms. Only very large organic businesses get to supply food chains directly.

Another type of classification for organic food suppliers takes into consideration the business size. Consequently, we can identify organic food suppliers that operate in small shops usually belonging to a family who runs the organic farm too, medium-sized retailers and wholesalers. Businesses that intermediate for a limited amount of products usually get in the mid category; yet, wholesalers actually dominate the market. They come with the lowest prices, and the biggest discounts for bulk purchases. For instance, you’ll get a discount if you order a few hundred eggs not a dozen.

The pricing policy and the business relationships between the organic food suppliers have a direct influence on the buyers, either in terms of quality or of costs. It is one thing to buy organic tomatoes brought from a nearby farm and a totally different thing to get organic tomatoes that have traveled a few hundred miles before getting on your table. This is in fact the problem with the online organic food suppliers, because, when it comes to delivery, they are limited to a certain predetermined geographic area. If you have organic food available locally, then you can consider yourself lucky and privileged!

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When the author isn’t cooking up her own delicious organic food recipes, she’s a fan of psychic reviews, the Seattle HCG Diet & Weight Loss, and the Cadillac XLR windscreen windblocker wind deflector.