In Germany, an old solution is again coming to the fore: community-supported agriculture. It brings together producers and consumers, enabling organic farming.
Small farms can hardly compete, with production costs often higher than market prices. And aside from farmers, the environment also suffers: monoculture-crop farming and the use of pesticides create pollution problems and threaten biodiversity. But potential solutions are possible, as community-supported agriculture shows: When consumers and farmers team up to produce groceries collaboratively, this liberates farmers from the mass market, spreads the risk of crop shortfalls over many shoulders, and enables organic farming.
“The system is also in solidarity, because the membership fee is not set. In the bidding at the beginning of the year, everyone contributes as much as he or she can.”
[Photo by seier+seier - Flickr]