An open-minded food supply chain
CrowdFarming is an agri-social revolution waged by young producers in the orange fields of Valencia. Disappointed by the lack of transparency from traditional food supply chains, they decided to reinvent the food supply chain.
It is a new and alive concept that we are still tweaking thanks to the feedback of other producers and the people that order our products. In this article, we share our ideas explaining how we envisage this new food supply chain.
In the first brainstorming sessions that the team had, we had to define how we imagined this new food supply chain to be. Before we tell you what went through our minds, we have to introduce the people: we are a team constituted by more than 10 nationalities, the youngest was born on 26.06.1997 (who had to combine his work with us and his studies in physics) and the oldest was born on 07.03.1954 (farmer by profession and poet by passion). We share the common goal to build a new way of acquiring food directly from growers but our hobbies and passions are very varied: from singing in a choir to dismantling computer processors.
A few of the original ideas we had...📜
- "We want all farmers of our new supply chain to have organic certifications"
- "We only want people living close to the farmer to be able to adopt trees/plant"
- "We believe that it is not a good thing to have CrowdFarming projects involving the adoption of animals as this could hurt people's sensitivity."
Ethics and freedom
We had often been thinking about where we would draw the line. Each option seemed very complex and always had exceptions involved:
- "There are farmers who don't have the organic certification but they have a mentality far more ecological than others who have such certification"
- "Why would we forbid people from other countries to be able to order our oranges?"
- "There are members of our team who are vegetarians and we know that the subject of animals is a sensitive one. But there are many cultures and farmers who live from it, why wouldn't we let people choose?"
We then came to the following conclusion: we need to avoid prejudices and create an open food supply chain. A place where the consumer has all the necessary information (verified) in order to make an informed decision. A place where the farmers could explain his farming techniques beyond a simple label.
We encourage our farmers to think more about ethical methods respecting the environment, giving them the assurance there is a team of people that will support them in their efforts. Also we encourage them NOT to use plastic for packaging, to hire labour and pay them decent wages...
Of course there is a line we don't want to cross ✋ as much as we want CrowdFarming to be open. Farmers with whom we simply don't share similar values and thus we cannot help.
As we said at the beginning of the article: CrowdFarming is a concept in progress, so any feedback you want to share with us... we are all ears. 👂
