“Organic milk is becoming a market of significant value, so there’s a danger supermarkets will pressure conventional milk suppliers to produce organic milk.”Supermarkets have improved their standing by helping drive organic forward, but a responsibility comes with that. There’s a danger the pioneers who really helped grow the thing get trampled underfoot.” There is a problem of scale; Asda for instance will source its new organic range from abroad, and any subsequent downward push on prices will harm smaller UK producers.The northern supermarket chain Morrison’s was an early backer. Mr Stacey now also supplies organic milk to sandwich chain Pret A Manger, which introduced OM’s milk into its hot drinks in December. “There are pressures on supermarkets to keep costs down, and supply chain management means they want various category partners to supply all goods and manage headaches,” he says. “Something forward-looking, that would leap off the shelf and incorporate this idea that we are living it, and it’s not just a business opportunity.”As a small player, Mr Stacey found it hard to get footholds. Mr Stacey says: “I looked at the developing market and we decided to do something that would enable us to share this enthusiasm with the consumer.” They did a feasibility study, and with Ms Mayall and three other organic farmers set up a company called Organic Matters.Each farmer put in a similar amount of capital, and that, with a grant from a European rural regeneration initiative, enabled Mr Stacey to become OM’s full-time director in November 1998, with distributionthrough the Organic Milk Suppliers’ Co-operative.Mr Stacey went to the London design consultancy Newell & Sorrell.

“We wanted a design that reflected what we were trying to achieve – ‘farmer meets consumer’,” he says (they came up with a simple ‘O’ in primary colours). We couldn’t afford to keep using expensive grain to feed the cows.”But the organic surge caused by BSE started Mr Stacey and Mr Goff discussing a collective for production and sales of milk and cheese. Another Shropshire organic farmer, Ginny Mayall, had to revert to conventional production when milk prices dropped in 1991. She says: “We came out of organic milk because we couldn’t afford to do it with a high-cost system and no premium. David Stacey is typical of the city downshifter looking for a more satisfying career; now in his early forties, he studied land agency and inherited his grandfather’s 350-acre Shropshire farm in 1982, but then spent 15 years as a film producer. Three years ago, he left London with his wife and two children to become a farmer, an occupation he saw as “fundamentally worthwhile”.

And they called on Edward Goff, a committee chairman for the Soil Association, for advice on conversion to organic.Mr Goff was an enthusiastic organic farmer, but had difficulty finding a market for his organic milk, so he sold it as conventional. And Asda will launch a range of own-brand organic foods at the end of February. After the BSE problems and debate about genetically modified foods, the total UK market for “naturally grown” produce has expanded from less than £400m two years ago to one which could be worth £1bn next year. Sainsbury plans to convert large areas of agricultural production on the Caribbean island of Grenada to supply us with organic fruit.The explosive growth has spurred increasing numbers of conventional farmers to consider going organic.

Nearly three-quarters of organic produce is foreign and only 1.5 per cent of UK farmland is farmed organically. Eradication of pesticides, herbicides and insecticides from the land, a process regulated by the Soil Association, takes up to three years.That gap in the market presents an intriguing opportunity for organic entrepreneurs. The label has been applied to everything from gin to baby food.
In the mid-Eighties, Sainsbury stocked a handful of organically grown products; now it has more than 500 lines Tesco expects to sell £150m of organic products this year. The label has been applied to everything from gin to baby food

If it’s organic, it must be good for you.

It’s good for big food retailers, with sales of organic food in supermarkets mushrooming to about 5 per cent of the total market, and predicted to double in five years. If it’s organic, it must be good for you. It’s good for big food retailers, with sales of organic food in supermarkets mushrooming to about 5 per cent of the total market, and predicted to double in five years. And its fringe role means many funds are not allowed to invest in its constituents.Although they may regard a share as one they would like to have in their portfolio they cannot stray into such tertiary investment territory.So confirmation by Motion Media of my suggestion it was moving to a full listing is one reason the shares have been dialling new highs with Ofex followers anticipating an institutional buying rush.. MILs, which developed underfloor lighting to aid emergency evacuations from confined areas such as aircraft and leisure centres, was picked at 41.5p and is now 57.5p.Cardington, an events and exhibitions organisation which has the Public Record Office at Kew among its clients, is 72.5p against 30.5p. Both shares have been higher; MILS this year reached 71.5p and Cardington 122.5pI am not suggesting investors should sell part of their shareholding to achieve the laudable aim of a cost-free investment, but I repeat that it is never wrong to take a profit and I would not attempt to deter any investor who feels the urge to retire with some or all of his winnings.One fact to bear in mind about Ofex is that it is not strictly a share market – it calls itself a trading facility. When it disappeared from the market, following a takeover by the AIM-listed Hartford restaurant business, they asked for more Ofex offerings.I suggested three shares as possible replacements for Montana which was recommended at 182.5p; the take-out price was around 270p although the bid at one time valued the shares at 340p.Besides Motion Media, they were MILs Technology and Cardington Both have prospered.