Innovation

The idea started in 2011 when Ms. Thao was pregnant. At that time she just liked eating raw vegetables. Worried that uncleaned vegetables would affect the baby, she found out that organic food could achieve her requirements for safe and healthy standards. Moreover, organic food is very friendly to the environment as it does not use chemicals. So she thought about opening organic food stores providing food for families and for pregnant women caring about health.

Once while travelling, she discovered an organic food market in Laos organized twice a week, and she was very interested. Could Vietnam produce organic food like Laos instead of importing it? She met some farmers to cooperate with in organic production, but knowledge about organic farming is not as simple as not using chemicals. Farmers complained that without chemical pesticides, the plants could not live under pests’ attacks. Ms. Thao could not control the process when she could not always be at the farm. Spending a lot of money on testing products to find out whether they contained chemicals did not bring any positive consequences.

Then Ms. Thao started again with the decision to build a farm by herself in order to actively control the process of producing organic food under EU and US standards. However, things were not easy. USDA Certified Organic is very strict. All the details of seeds, lands, etc., must be recorded by book-keepers. The samples of all vegetables will be tested at many levels per year. The time for watering or fertilizing will be checked carefully to reveal any dishonesty in recording.

Inspiration

• Desire to create unique brand name that is:

- Responsible for community’s life (customer’s health, farmer’s benefit)

- Responsible for social benefit (environment, agriculture)

• Protect natural resources
• Use agriculture land resources

Overall impact

Organica creates a considerable impact on Vietnam's organic food market, especially as Vietnamese choose organic food as their lifestyle (remote communities, ethnic minorities, other vulnerable subjects=> to reach better lives).

Business benefit

• Strong brand name that gained from customers' trust
• Increase in customer demand for organic food (30% per year), opportunity to expand stores and farms and create business benefit
• Closed production process and no extra expense for other processes
• Same production process utilization but can produce variety of products and no expense for producing new products

Social and environmental benefit

Improving health for Vietnamese society is the mission of Organica. Vietnamese people are facing serious health problems related to unclean food. For instance, hydrogenated oils found in meat products are reasons for heart diseases as well as pancreatic and colon cancer. According to the Vietnam Ministry of Public Health, in 2016 Vietnam was ranked second in the world in the incidence of cancer, and one of the main reasons was because dirty food makes up more than 35%. Food quality is currently our huge societal concern. To gain illicit profits, many farmers and sellers are willing to use chemicals and additives not permitted for foods they sell, making a huge impact on the health of consumers. Therefore, as their mission, Organica tries hard to deliver clean food to Vietnamese people.

Organic food is the highest standard of food safety, and organic agriculture will bring many benefits for humans' living environment. Organic means to live well with nature with no chemical pesticides and fertilizers. According to Organica’s commitment, Organica’s products all have environmentally friendly certification (such as MSC for sustainable fisheries or UTZ Certified for sustainably farmed cocoa, coffee and tea), strictly avoiding the use of all synthetic chemicals.

Interview

Pham Phuong Thao, Managing Director