“Glyphosate-free” is now one of the four top “premium” descriptions for which food companies can charge higher prices, the Hartman Group said this week.
Source: https://www.thefencepost.com/news/glyphosate-free-now-premium-food-category-as-bayer-stock-falls/
The Seattle-based research firm released a graphic and detailed report showing the top four premium labels:
▪ Glyphosate-free certification
▪ Beyond “natural flavors”
▪ Botanical flavorings
▪ “Clean meat” (plant-based or lab grown)
In the graphic above, The Hartman Group explains that “premium” status and the pricing it generates are reserved for products “that offer multiple attributes beyond any natural formulation standard.”
In an accompanying report entitled “Premium Rising: What are Insurgent Brands Doing Right” The Hartman Group wrote, “Perhaps the most important market result of the Non-GMO Project has been the increasing consumer awareness of the level of chemicals applied to conventional farm crops in the U.S.”
“In a way, rising concern over glyphosate contamination in the food supply is a reawakening of much older environmental concerns about agricultural runoff and environmental contamination,” the report says.
“The twist is that consumers now perceive this toxicity to be present in their processed foods, not just in their raw produce. It is a ‘natural’ next step in evolving consumer concerns over purity. While the science may be equivocal at present, consumers of premium distinctions have never been led by hard science findings. They are led by cultural thinking, which has its own logic.”
Meanwhile, amidst court cases over glyphosate-containing Roundup causing cancer, the stock price of Bayer has dropped as analysts have begun to question Bayer’s recent decision to acquire Monsanto, which makes the weed killing product.