One Page Summary

Today, unlike ever before, human populations depend on globalized markets for their nutritional needs, rather than the local production. This lack of proximity to food, particularly in large urban centers, engenders vulnerability due to dependence on market speculation. In times of economic crisis, acutely so in Greece, it also entails nutritional insecurity and poverty beside risks of political pressure and coercion. Treating food exclusively as a commodity in globalized markets also has a major environmental impact. The ecological footprint of worldwide transportation and maintenance in food coolers is externalized by the agroindustrial complex. Adding to the health and ecological burden is the loss of the criterion of seasonality of food.
What is more, the loss of contact between producer and consumer occurs through the interference of middlemen, with financial repercussions on consumers but also on farmers. Failure to meet precisely the level of demand results in food waste and, precisely because food is treated as a commodity, moral issues such as there being hungry people in parallel to tremendous landfill dumping are easily overcome by the market.
We propose a local uninterrupted consumer and producer market that is technologically empowered with the use of a digital platform for orders & a physical space for pick ups & further sales to physical market consumers. Retail is changing, learning from the “click n collect” model, we want to implement it on one of the most critical & traditional industries in Greece; agriculture.
Fewer transport and energy requirements for maintenance but also, significantly, environmentally-friendly farming practices usually encountered in these networks (e.g. agroecology, natural farming a.o.) mean a reduced ecological footprint of the food that ends up in our dish. Apart from the care for future generations and our planet, such proximity networks nourish trust in the communities involved. Our intention is that these weekly meetings become a springboard for building a vibrant and interacting community through a series of parallel actions. These will include visiting some producers’ farms; organizing Tasting Nights; hosting educational and experiential learning activities in parallel with the consumer - producer meeting, in the municipal market of Kipseli; on-site cooking and tasting workshops by professional cooks, as well as natural food-preservation workshops e.g. pickling, salting etc. Our role will be through participatory processes to constantly bring to the surface the collective intelligence of this community and to constantly support new actions and ideas that will emerge, being the host that builds the community between consumers & producers, reaches out to more people and organizes the physical, weekly market.
Being free from middlemen in most cases, is considerably more affordable to consumers while the producer gets a fair price for their effort. Finally, the proximity and the operation via prepaid orders makes for accuracy in supply and demand, hence reduce food waste. Even if there were a surplus of food the ethics of the networks would not allow it to be thrown away but would redistribute it in collective kitchens and similar solidarity practices.
The food sold is fresh & seasonal, giving access to the consumer for affordable, high qualitative & nutritious ingredients.
Competition issues can only be raised by food business professionals who act as middlemen, such as grocery stores or department stores. We are not particularly concerned about it regarding the viability of the project, as the consumers we are addressing should be at a certain level of environmental awareness, and thus already critical of conventional food distribution models, or are transitioning in an online shopping scheme, such as young generation or people who work till late. Additionally, our work in the field since 2010, give us the benefit of having a fair trade protocol and already established relationships with a wide range of environmentally friendly producers. Also in recent years we have organized innumerable collective kitchens giving us access to a equally wide range of conscious consumers.
Finally, we note that this solution, except for the electronic platform, has already been successfully tested by our organization since we organized vegetable basket orders without middlemen and distributed them in our space in Akadimia Platonos. These orders have always been successful and consumers have been enthusiastic about them. Our partner in Spain is a member of the international network https://thefoodassembly.com/en where they make purchases for the distribution of agricultural products directly to consumers. The difference is that they make use of an online platform that is particularly user-friendly and consumer-friendly. This is the platform we wish to adapt to our domestic needs.