Between January and August 2016, around 3 million kg of organic apples and 38.5 million kg of regular apples were sold by Swiss retailers. The organic portion in this period was 7.1%, which is higher than the corresponding periods of the previous two years (Jan.-Aug. 2015: 5.9% and Jan.-Aug. 2014: 6.3%).
Yearly comparison: high organic apple sales in 2015
The longer-term observation concerning the period 2010-2015, shows that the annual sales of organic apples have risen steadily since 2013. In 2015, a sales volume of 4.09 million kg was reached, which is around 5.2% above the average for the years 2010-14. Although there was a similarly high sales of organic apples in 2010, a very high volume of conventional goods was also sold that year, at around 66.9 million kg. The high sales volumes are likely to be a result of the very profitable harvest in the autumn of 2009 and the correspondingly full stocks at the beginning of 2010. This led to an unusually high number of special offers in stores in the first half of 2010 to boost the demand for apples.
In 2010, despite the extraordinarily high number of apples sold in general, 5.8% were organic, which translates to an above-average actual amount of organic apples sold that year. However, the organic share of the year 2015 was the highest in comparison to the previous five years, at 6.4%.
