The ambitious national target for the Netherlands to dedicate 15% of its agricultural land to organic farming by 2030 faces a foundational bottleneck: guaranteed offtake. As highlighted at the recent ‘Day of the Organic Breakthrough’ conference at Agrico Research, growth is fundamentally limited by sales, not just production capacity. Mark Zuidhof, Director of Agrico, starkly framed the issue: “Everything starts with sufficient sales opportunities.” This sentiment was echoed by key players, including Quirine de Weerd of Lidl, who emphasized that scaling requires bundled forces—retailers, growers, and government all have a role in strengthening demand.
The core proposal to unlock this stalemate is the industry-wide adoption of long-term agreements. Lidl’s practice of making multi-year contracts with organic growers and packers on volume and price, such as their ‘Hutspot Agreement’ with Biohuis aiming to double organic produce sales by 2026, provides a working model. These agreements de-risk investment for growers, who face significant agronomic and economic volatility. For instance, the severe Phytophthora infestans pressure in the 2024 season led to lower yields and higher prices, a sharp contrast to the more stable 2023 season. Such unpredictability makes planning area and investments extraordinarily challenging for a cooperative like BioSelect, which coordinates 120 growers across 1,000+ hectares to supply supermarkets year-round.
However, the need for these contracts underscores a broader, paradoxical market failure. Despite leading in agronomic knowledge, the Netherlands is a laggard in organic market share. Jaap Korteweg of BioPlant expressed amazement at the slow growth, pointing to a disconnect between capability and consumer uptake. Latest Eurostat data (2022) confirms this: while the EU average for organic agricultural area is 9.9%, the Netherlands sits at just 4.5%. Furthermore, global data from the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL) shows that while European organic retail sales have plateaued or declined recently due to inflation, the long-term growth trend remains positive, driven by committed retail strategies and policy frameworks like the EU’s Farm to Fork strategy.
The transition to a robust organic potato sector is a supply chain engineering challenge as much as an agronomic one. Success depends on constructing more resilient commercial architectures. Long-term offtake agreements are the critical infrastructure needed to mitigate production risks, secure fair returns for growers, and provide retail with consistent supply. For agronomists and farm owners, this means future planning must integrate commercial strategy with crop management. The call from the conference is clear: supermarkets must not only sign contracts but also give organic products primacy on shelves, while the entire chain collaborates to transform policy goals into a stable, predictable market reality.
