Free to roam
Demand for organic foodstuffs in Finland is on a climbing curve. The Kivi family’s Piggy Bank Farm raises pigs organically, and customers are convinced that their pork tastes better.
The first obvious difference from outside is that this pig farm doesn’t smell of pigs. In fact it doesn’t smell bad at all, even right inside the pig sty. The farm’s organically raised pigs trot over to sniff inquisitively at their visitors, who still have no need to hold their noses.“It’s because of the peat we put on the ground that there’s no smell,” explains farm manager Reetta Kivi.
The Kivi family’s Piggy Bank Farm, in Karkkila, about 60 kilometres northwest of Helsinki, is one of about a dozen organic pig farms around Finland. Reetta took over the farm in 2004 from her parents, who went organic on the rest of the farm from the 1980s, and then with their pigs about a decade ago. Reetta is happy to follow in her parents’ footsteps.
Bright-eyed organic pigs
Piggy Bank Farm is home to about 200−300 porkers, and 20 breeding sows. Kivi also sometimes buys in pigs from another organic farm. She does the slaughtering and butchering work with help from her father, and pork is sold to consumers straight from the farm. The farm sells about ten pigs worth of meat every week.
In addition to running the pig farm, Kivi helps her husband Timo Koli to farm 35 hectares of land, growing crops including cereals, broad beans and peas, all used as fodder for the pigs. They prefer to grow fodder themselves, since there are strict controls over the feeding regimes of pigs sold as organic. At least 90 per cent of their diet must consist of organically produced fodder.
Organic food production and sales are clearly rising in Finland. About seven percent of the country’s farmland, an area of around 160,000 hectares, is cultivated organically. About one in ten of Finland’s 5,000 organic farms also raise livestock organically.
In 2007, sales of organic foods increased by ten percent, and they now account for about 0.9 per cent of all foodstuff sales. About four percent of consumers routinely opt for organic alternatives, while a further 16 per cent buy organic products regularly.
In spite of a slight increase in sales, organic pork has not made a commercial breakthrough in Finland as yet. Meat products account for just over 6 per cent of all sales of organic foodstuffs. Organic pork is scarce in ordinary supermarkets, as most organic pig farms operate like Piggy Bank Farm, selling direct to customers.
“Producers aren’t in contact with consumers. There are no middle men around,” says Kivi. “If we were located near Hamburg, for instance, we’d be doing a roaring trade.”
By Tiia Lappalainen
Photos Kreetta Järvenpää
