This year, Natexpo is launching a new series of content. Its objective: to give a voice to experts in the organic sector, professionals who have been observing market developments for many years and who have valuable insights to share. This month, we welcome Bernard Ollié, founding president of theGood agency.
The organic food network is recovering well, but not necessarily the market as a whole. How can this be explained, and what risks could derail this recovery?
It can be said that “Bio” has had 2 distinct lives since 2022.
2 main distribution circuits, 2 distinct trajectories.
For example, the entire market is projected to grow by 2025: €12,6 billion, +3,6%. But two-thirds of this growth comes from the specialist channel alone. The market is indeed recovering, but… on one leg only; the specialist network is largely driving this recovery.
And what in turn is driving the specialized organic network is a conjunction – a historical one, in a way, since 2022 – of a increased competitiveness of its Fruits & Vegetables (in the face of the inflationary fever of their conventional counterparts) and the net resignation from GMS In response to the organic project, by dividing the organic product ranges and maintaining unnecessarily high prices. A complete range at lower prices.
The result is clear: the growth of the Bio network is back with unprecedented economic performance at the store, a turnover/month amounting to €6,045.
Fewer stores, more efficient.
Once the applause has died down, the real question for the Bio network is: “Will it last?”.
This leads us to question the control of this growth by the organic network. The current dynamic is indeed, at the time of the recovery and still now, linked to “exogenous” effects – more simply put: to effects that are beyond the control and will of the organic network itself – recall, the choice to restrict the supply of organic products by the supermarkets and the soaring prices of fruits and vegetables in line with the price of a barrel of oil – outside its scope of action, to say the least.
Beyond these rather uncontrollable variables, predictions for the future of “Bio”
are uncertain, torn between the upheavals of grand History.
Organic products, from their inception, have been a form of consumption that seeks or attempts to make sense. It is therefore natural that they are more quickly and intensely affected by general socio-political movements.
News to anticipate in the short to medium term.
For those most in favor:
• The “new Duplomb law” The bill, tabled by the government last April to quell the 2025 agricultural protests, grants, among other things, an exemption to allow two neonicotinoids banned in France. Yes, it's paradoxical: an anti-environmental law that favors organic farming. But that's because consumption is the end result and the ultimate goal of the economic cycle: it concentrates all the consequences of actions taken upstream. The intense media frenzy surrounding the renewed poisoning of nature (and therefore of people) by politicians—in this case, the right-wing Senate—and unions, who oppose it, triggers an instinctive shift towards a label that adheres to its prohibitions, at least that label.
• Other good news to watch for : renewed growth in the organic store network; the surge in entry-level products and private labels, which are mitigating the instinctive inflation of the network…
For the most worrying ones:
• The historic decline in the number of organic farms : 1,3% less, 61,159 farms in June
Lastly, local sourcing is a symbolic, economic, and competitive advantage for French organic farming. Losing it has cascading consequences, particularly on price.
• The political upheavals of the architecture of Bio The upcoming presidential elections will have direct effects on the management of organic farming throughout the process. The events this spring surrounding the French Agency for Organic Farming (Agence Bio) and trade unions like Synadis Bio have demonstrated the sensitivity of this sector to the political climate.
• The price, again and again Nearly 90% of French people find it too expensive. There has been progress, and some markets are benefiting (fruits and vegetables, for example), but overall, organic products still hold the upper segment of each market.
• Finally, a return of mass-market retail. The organic network won a battle while the major supermarket chains turned a blind eye. As soon as the latter stopped cutting back on their organic product range, sales volumes returned to positive territory. Carrefour stood out: it consistently invested in its private label brands. Three supermarket chain decisions, and a six-month buffer, could reverse the trend with the contribution of supermarket listings.
Health remains, by far, the primary motivation for purchasing, ahead of the environment. Why is this result so stable despite the climate emergency?
Because there is no contradiction.
These are not motivations of the same nature: The environment is an opinion, health is an emergency. The figures have remained stable for twenty years: 57% of regular organic consumers cite health as their top priority.st Intention, the environment follows at 38%, taste at 33%, and overall, 74% of French people consider organic food better for their health.
There are two main reasons for this:
First, health is a private, immediate benefit that is attributable to me: I pay, I receive.
Climate change is a collective and delayed phenomenon, and nothing in my shopping cart proves that I contributed to it. We accept an extra cost when we can capture the benefit, and this benefit is vital.
Next, the budget…
36% of French people say they are cutting back on their food spending, compared to 39% last year — and this loosening of restrictions partly explains the artificial resurgence in organic consumption. Organic food isn't declining when environmental awareness weakens, but when purchasing power decreases. People then prioritize their own needs.
Let's not conclude that the environment is fading into the background: this year, it's once again taking precedence over taste. This isn't a lack of interest; it's a hierarchy of needs that's established in three seconds in stores, the time it takes to make a choice on the shelf…
Faced with simple scores like Nutri-Score or Eco-score, how can the AB label express its value without becoming just another logo?
It is important to remember that a score and a label do not answer the same question.
A score gives a result (obtained by a product), whereas a label guarantees a method of production and its control.
A rating is calculated, a guarantee is audited.
Behind AB, there is a European regulation, a certification body, a mandatory annual audit and sanctions.
No score has that.
But the danger of destabilizing AB's image is real: 62% of French people already see the organic label as a marketing tool rather than a guarantee.
And the subject is before us… the environmental labeling method was presented on May 13, 2026, E. Leclerc has been displaying an Ecobalyse score since April, Carrefour followed, Picard and Monoprix chose Planet-score, and the first mock-ups are aimed at the shelves at the beginning of 2027.
Three answers can be considered.
1. Don't fight over the grade : simply state who controls, what, and how many times a year.
2. Accept being graded, but monitor the method closely : a calculation focused on yield penalizes organic farming, a calculation integrating pesticides and biodiversity enhances it — this battle is won in technical working groups, not in the countryside.
3. And to embrace the double meaning An organic biscuit can have a Nutri-Score of D; hiding it costs more to erode trust than acknowledging it. If the organic label is treated like a (display) logo, it will lose to the scores. If it acts as a standard—a guarantee—it has no competition.
What widely held idea about organic products seems completely wrong to you today?
That the organic consumer would be a loyal activist.
Even if loyalty is the hallmark of these famous “followers”, convinced conservatives of the next Bio and of their youth at the same time, for 70% of consumers in the Bio network, loyalty is an intention.
By 2025, 74% of French people had bought at least one organic product during the year, but only 42% did so regularly, and Nearly one in three consumers has become a kind of “mixer” who alternates between organic and conventional depending on price, department or health concerns.
Organic is a matter of careful consideration, aisle by aisle. You buy organic eggs but not biscuits, or vice versa. This is reflected in the 2025 performance figures: eggs up 9,5%, fruits and vegetables up 7,3%, while other categories are stagnating – this is particularly noticeable in supermarkets (organic).
The consequence is concrete: we no longer gain a consumer, we gain a category.
A brand that relies on the loyalty of a convinced audience is working for a customer who no longer exists.
A hidden talent or an unrecognized passion?
An obsession that is not hidden; there are worse perversions: systems of proof.
I have developed labels to be able to answer this question that has plagued consumers from the start: How can we trust something we cannot verify?
My conviction is that trust is precisely the primary condition for mass consumption. And trust has gone through several crises in the last 20 years which have changed its nature for the consumer – to such an extent that from absolute, it has gradually become a relative object – we have: “moderate trust”, a heresy.
The famous "boulevard theatre" has made this its stock-in-trade: trust is an absolute value; it's when it becomes relative that trouble begins. Yet all human relationships, and in this case economic ones, rest on this framework, which is generally entrusted to a trusted third party: a label, a panel, or an auditor.
A label or a panel essentially does the same job — serving as a benchmark for trust.
Players in a market like organic, based on a unique and sophisticated approach, should be obsessed with the degree of connection and trust given by consumers.
Because, a priori, they are the best positioned.
This is the challenge for the years to come.
Thank you Bernard Ollié!
