Adoption as a model for buying food to avoid wasting it
By means of an adoption the consumer commits himself to the producer by reserving a quantity of food at a certain price. In this way the producer can produce on demand, knowing in advance the price and that what he/she produces will end up being consumed.
Adoption
People who want to reduce their carbon footprint know that planning is probably the most important quality to be developed in order to achieve it. The tendency to want everything "here and now" such as tomatoes or oranges all year round has a negative environmental impact.
Adopting something requires planning and accepting that you will receive the food when it is ripe, "seasonal" as it is often emphasised today.
There are adoption projects in which you receive the entire harvest in a single shipment and others in which you can gradually receive one or more boxes of the reserved harvest in several shipments.
For example, when you adopt an olive tree, as the olives are all harvested at once and the oil is produced immediately afterwards, you receive a single box with the harvest of extra virgin olive oil. In these projects the producer usually determines a single shipping date.
Another different model is when, for example, you adopt an orange tree. In this case you can use it as your natural orange pantry. From your user account, in addition to seeing a current photo of your adopted tree, you can bit by bit order the harvest you reserved at the time of adoption. The producer will pick and send you the oranges directly from the tree to your home, on the dates you choose and during the orange harvest season.
Buy single boxes
It is not an easy task for producers to calculate the harvest they expect to have each season. Here we have seen that experience is a factor and that no matter how much technology there is, "the most experienced growers" tend to adjust better.
When the weather is favourable, possible pests have been controlled and the harvest is plentiful, then producers sell single boxes that can be bought without having to adopt.
That is to say, once the producers have secured the harvest reserved for the people who have adopted, if they see that they have "harvest surplus" they put it on sale as single boxes.
If, on the other hand, the weather is unfavourable and there is not enough harvest, not even for those who have adopted, then the producer reimburses the consumers the money from the adoption.
Note: the surplus harvest also comes from people who at the time of adoption decide not to reserve the entire harvest produced by the unit they adopt. The part that is not reserved, the farmer can sell as single boxes to other people.
