ORGANIC FOOD CATEGORY RESEARCH AMONG LEADING FOOD RETAILERS IN CROATIA

In the last decade, the interest in organic agriculture has grown both within the scientific community and among general public. Organic agriculture is a new agricultural production system that tries to fully utilize farming potential and to satisfy all the social and economic needs while preserving the natural ecosystem and ensuring environmental protection. This paper gives a short overview of organic agriculture and organic food market development as well as an overview of the distribution channels for organic food in specific countries. The second part of the paper describes the research of the organic food category that was conducted on a sample of leading food retailers in the Republic of Croatia. Based on the methodology applied, it is determined that organic food is sold in Croatian supermarkets and hypermarkets. However, leading food retailers keep mostly imported organic food products. The results of the research imply that both the organic food sales volume and sales income grew in 2008 in respect to the previous year. Despite its limitations (primarily the small sample), the research is the first of its kind to have been conducted in Croatia and lays the groundwork for future research of the organic food and for a possible deeper analysis of this market.