Taking back the food system through the Social and Solidarity Economy in Barcelona
Sara Gonzalez, Professor of Critical Human Geography, Joint Associate Director Urban Food Systems, GFEI, University of Leeds. s.gonzalez@leeds.ac.uk
Food is a fundamental human need and yet most humans don’t have much control or power over the process of its production, distribution and selling as big corporations whose main aim is to deliver profit to their shareholders organize the majority of these processes at a planetary scale. One way to break this cycle is to shift the principles of the food system from a profit economy to a social and solidarity economy and to reduce as much as it is possible the gap between producers and consumers, organising the food system at a community scale. In this blogpost, I share some food initiatives that I have come across during my research leave while visiting Barcelona[1] that are working along these lines.
The social and solidarity economy (SEE) is defined by the Barcelona municipality as “a set of formal or informal socio-economic measures, which may be individual or collective, that put satisfying people’s needs before profit”. In reality, we are all involved in this economy, when we relate to others for kindness, solidarity or mutual benefit. International organisations increasingly recognize the SEE as a viable solution to achieve equality and environmental justice.
In my visits, I learnt about Horta Africa, a small farm run solely by Keita originally from Mali who has been growing and living in Barcelona for 16 years. His land is located in a government protected agricultural belt of Barcelona surrounded by motorways from where he sells his produce directly to consumers and once a week he drives to the centre of Barcelona to deliver. He did at one point sell his produce to Mercabarna, the gigantic wholesale market of Barcelona but this is not well set up for small farmers and it was not efficient for him to have an intermediary. I also learnt about several consumer groups, some set up as cooperatives (coops), others more informally as associations where people and families club together to buy from local growers and other coops that share their same values and pay fair prices agreed between them. La Garrofera, for example, brings together 40 members and rents a small space in Can Batló, an old factory being turned into possibly the biggest social economy space in Europe, in the Sants neighborhood. Through various subgroups and a regular assembly, they self-organize to buy and distribute the food. Members do their shopping online and sign up to rotas to sort the produce that arrives into baskets. Everyone volunteers and nobody is employed. A smaller and more informal organization, in the same neighborhood, Panxacontenta, literally translated as “Happybelly”, was set up out of three concerns: 1. We are what we eat, 2. think global act local and 3. sourcing from local farmers growing according to agroecological principles. They self-manage the food ordering and distribution and have systems to help each other if there are times when they don’t have time or enough money to contribute. Just outside of the centre of Barcelona, in Vallvidrera, I also learnt from Can Pujades, a similar consumer coop bringing together up to 70 families and working with 20 to 25 suppliers from the region. They don’t just rely on producers who have the organic stamp (as this is costly to arrange) but prioritise getting to know the producers and their growing methods. Beyond the food supply and distribution, they get involved in other projects such as recovering an abandoned allotment or organising an agricultural fair.
Food consumer groups and coops have a long tradition in Catalunya but self-organising is time consuming and according to testimonies of activists many people are not aware of the SSE and how it differs from simply buying ecological or local products from mainstream supermarkets. To reach wider audiences and be more visible, there are several initiatives of coop supermarkets, which also employ retail workers at dignified salaries as well as collectivising supply, distribution and consumption. One of these, the Economat has been functioning for 10 years and was founded by 3 workers and 20 consumers. Now there around 700 member families, and it’s the biggest cooperative supermarket in Barcelona. Their policy in the last few years has been to democratize the membership and make it more affordable, opening up to as many families as possible. There are also different levels of membership from those that take an active role in the management of the cooperative (and get a discount in the produce) to those that just shop. Another supermarket, Foodcoop, inspired directly by the FoodCoop documentary has recently opened in the centre of the city and has 400 members, but one of the organizers confessed that it is hard to maintain. They ask that members volunteer 3 hours a month and invest €90 to become, in their own words, “owner, participant and user”. I also attended a meeting to open a third social supermarket in the city, Pebre Roig, in the Poble Nou neighbourhood, traditionally a working class area now pushed to become an innovation district. They already function as a consumer coop with almost 150 members but to increase accessibility they are planning to open a shop.
There are many limits to these initiatives; chiefly that it is mainly organized by people in middle to high incomes that have the money and time to get involved and that food is not affordable for all. Small farmers are still being squeezed out and there are plenty of food banks and soup kitchens in Barcelona too but the SSE is part of a bigger movement to take back ownership and create an ecologically and socially fairer food system.
[1] Thanks to L’Idra and the IHP Food Systems school who supported me during this visit.
