In many cases organic food differs from conventional only in that the raw material is from organic farming. The processing might be exactly the same. However there are some important restrictions in the organic regulation due to which there are challenges in organic food development. The most notable are much shorter list of accepted additives…
Organics
In transitions, Latvia
The world is now – with the corona virus spreading all over the world – in a transition to somewhere new, but we don’t know what that “new world” will be like. But there has been transitions before. Here is a story about how some of those global transitions were behind organic potato starch from…
Organic potato starch – is there enough and where does it come from?
A growing organic market with limited supply In a growing market like organic food – which is transforming itself from a very small niche into a part of the mainstream – supply issues are a little different. The organic market has grown 10% year-on-year for several decades now and the main food trends seem to…
Ciranda: Visiting Finnamyl and Aloja Starkelsen at harvest time
We have worked together with Ciranda Inc. in the United States since 2011 and since then North America has become one of our most important markets for organic potato starch. It is because of the great work Ciranda is doing to develop the North American organic food market but also because the market trends are…
Alojas offers organic and gluten-free products to the private label market
Aloja Starkelsen Ltd in Latvia is not only a potato starch producer. The company has also extensive possibilities for packing gluten-free dry mixes. Naturally most of them can also be developed as organic products. At the moment we can offer – in addition to potato starch – certified organic Baking Powder Vanilla Sugar Soups and…
Potato starch harvest starting in Latvia
The other week I visited Latvia in order to see organic starch potato harvest and the starch production process at Aloja Starkelsen. You can find my earlier posts last year about the harvest in Finland and the production process at Finnamyl. My purpose was to see and photograph the harvest in Ledurga at Zigmars Logins’ Ozolini…
Starch potato in Estonia and Latvia
In early July on the way to the 7th Ifoam Conference in Vilnius we took the opportunity to visit a few organic farms. First in Estonia close to Rapla we visited the farmer Tõnu Kriisa who produces mainly organic beef on 300 hectares but has also a few hectares of potatoes. He has a small contract…
How is the organic starch potato growing at Satakunta jail?
In the end of May we visited Satakunta jail’s organic farm in order to photograph the planting of the potatoes. Now I visited the same place with Kai Kreuzer from organic-market.info. Unfortunately it had been recently raining so there was no machine work going on this time. Otherwise we could have seen the harrowing of…
Producing organic potato starch at Finnamyl
Last Sunday we were at Hermanni Hautala’s organic farm in Kauhava for the harvest of organic starch potato. On Thursday we saw some of those potatoes at the Finnamyl potato starch factory in Kokemäki transformed into organic potato starch. Thursday was the second organic day at Finnamyl in this years campaign and some 600 tons…
Harvesting organic starch potatoes in Kauhava, Finland
Hermanni Huhtala has over 100 hectares of organic starch potatoes cultivated on his farm in Kauhava, Western Finland. In total he has an organic farm with over 500 hectares making his farm one of the biggest organic farms in Finland. The average size of an organic farm in Finland is 48 hectares which is significantly…