Caracterização do mercado de alimentos orgânicos na Grande Vitória-ES

Abstract

The growth of the organic food market has gradually spread out in Brazil as well as in the whole world, impelled mainly by consumers increasing demand for quality food. This fact alone explains the relevance of gathering information on this emergent market, as it may help to define strategies for its promotion and expansion. This paper is an attempt to offer a partial response to this question, as it aims to characterize organic food marketing in the metropolitan area of the city of Vitória, in the State of Espírito Santo. To achieve this end, a descriptive and exploratory research project, identified as being of the transverse cut type, was developed along the year of 2019, with the participation of 50 producers/sellers and 281 consumers of organic food. The data were collected by means of semistructered questionnaires, and the respondents were randomly selected in organic markets, supermarkets and places with a high flux of people in Greater Vitória. Once gathered, the data was submitted to a descriptive statistical analysis, making use of percentual values and medians. For evaluating differences beween ratios, we made use of Fischer´s Exact test. The identification of the organic food most widely consumed by the population was followed by an investigation regarding the cost of those foods as well as their corresponding conventional costs. The comparative analysis of the prices average was performed by means of the Kruskal-Wallis test. Producers and sellers participating in the research had the following profile: male/female (76,0% male), skin color (82,0% white-skinned), civil status (70,0% married). On the other hand, 68,0% of the total of respondents were paid household net wages lower or equal to 1 minimum wage per capita, and no more than 60,0% had concluded fundamental school. Their main motivation for producing and selling organic food was motivated mainly by health and general financial needs. The greatest difficulties faced by organic food producers were due to the absence of work force (52,0%) and to government credit support (40,0%). Consumers were 75,1% female, 53,4% white- skinned, 44,5% married. The monthly household net wages of the respondents ranged between over 1 and below or equal to 3 minimum wages per capita, while 76,5% were holders of at least a graduate certificate. They were consumers of organic fruits and vegetables mainly, particularly motivated by health interests, but factors such as little access to selling places (27,8%) and price (26,7%) interfered with the increase of their consumption. In fact, the majority of food types researched revealed that the conventional kinds sold in street markets presented the lowest average prices. On the contrary, the organic food commercialized in the market had higher prices. The difference between organic and conventional food reached over 181,0%. On the whole, the prices of the organics were found to be higher than those of the convencional ones. It was yet observed that there was a significant statistical diference among the prices of the majority of the food. This points out to the need for a combined effort of public authorities, producers and consumers in favour of the growth of the organic food market in the region. It is our belief that this measure will enable those prices to become more accessible to the population, thus allowing consumers to overcome their perception of those foods as overpriced. It is therefore expected that public policies be designed to stimulate organic agriculture, implementing community and home vegetable gardening, developing strategies for promoting the organic food market, encouraging research, offering training courses for producers and encouraging people to consume organics. These are a few suggestions for effective actions to be taken in the interest of the expansion of the organic food Market.