APLICACIÓN DE LA ESTRATEGIA EN EL ESTUDIO DE VIABILIDAD

All CSAs in Greece are currently operating informally without any legal status. During the Greek CSA meeting in October 2015, we had with us an accountant and a lawyer to address the issue. The conclusion was that there is no legal form at present beneficial to such endeavours. We are waiting for the new bill on agricultural coops (due this summer) to see if it will be helpful. This is a major drawback as it stops the expansion of existing teams and prohibits the creation of new ones. It also makes it next to impossible to have other types, for example consumer-owned or -rented land CSAs.

Interaction with public bodies

Understandably, and especially due to the above mentioned legislative gap, there is little interaction between CSAs and other public bodies. Neighbourhoods In Action, a group of activists that got elected as a member of the Thessaloniki Local Government Council in 2014 made a formal proposal to the municipality regarding the issues of CSA, food policy councils and farmers’ markets which was received with great interest. Subsequently, Thessaloniki is one of the 116 cities that signed the Milan Urban Food Policy Act on 15 October 2015. This leads us to believe that some greater collaboration and interaction will be seen in the near future.

Agroecological practices

It goes without saying that all farmers operate with agroecological principles. Most of them do not do conventional organic farming but go a step further and use alternative agriculture practices like permaculture, biodynamics, homodynamic, no-till and natural farming principles. They use heirloom, traditional varieties and many try to breed their own seeds. Most are small scale and non-intensive farmers who share a special bond with nature and it shows in their work.

Outlook

The existing projects seem to be doing better every year, and most are keen on coming closer to the CSA principles of solidarity and sharing of risk, responsibility and reward.

CSA’s future in Greece looks very promising. Despite the uncertainty around legal forms and related issues, the continued harsh austerity forces both consumers and producers to look for other solutions.

Having said that, it is clear that much effort will need to be placed on educating consumers, i.e. citizens, in more participatory models of procuring their food while farmers, on the other hand, will need training and new skills when it comes to being CSA farmers.

The matter of mutual trust and commitment will have to be addressed. Consumers find it hard to trust uncertified bio- farmers. Farmers feel uneasy with the idea of pre-payment, thinking that it will create pressure and unreasonable demands from the consumer. This has been said to me by farmers but is also documented (Partalidou).

Clearly this means that emphasis has to be placed not just on promoting the CSA model, but on clearly stating the benefits for each side and probing them into creating new types of relationships.

Providing aspiring CSAs with a range of tools can prove critical to their success; from CSA management (things like costing, and calculation of number of shares, or achieving transparency) to personal relations, participatory systems, conflict resolution etc.

Experience sharing and know-how exchange are key factors.

We also foresee greater collaboration between existing CSA groups, and with other types of Alternative Food Systems.

The way forward is Food Sovereignty.

References

Unemployment records: http://www.zougla.gr/greece/article/stixia-sok-gia-tin-anergia- stin-elada-1256421

General statistics and demographics: http://www.statistics.gr/el/home

Situation in Greek Agriculture: http://www.bankofgreece.gr/BoGDocuments/Η%20 επιδραση%20της%20κλ.μεταβολης%20στη%20γεωργια%20και%20τα%20γεωργ.%20 εδαφη.pdf

Eurostat#newsrelease 206/2015 – 26 November 2015, Farm Structure Survey 2013 Koutsou, Stavriani, Maria Partalidou and Michael Petrou (2011) ‘Present or Absent Heads?

A Contemporary Reading of Family Farming in Greece’ Sociologia Ruralis Vol.51, No.4, October 2011. European Society for Rural Sociology, Blackwell Publishing. Partalidou, Maria (2015) ‘Food miles and future scenario for local food systems in a

peri-urban area in Greece’ Outlook on Agriculture Vol.44, No.2, 2015, pp. 1-00 dol: 10.5367/oa.2015.0207

Author

Jenny Gkiougki, a business consultant by trade, returned to Greece in the time of crisis to assist the bringing about of change in the country. She is an activist on many fronts ranging from social justice to ethical and solidarity economy. She is a social entrepreneurship advisor and mentor on a voluntary basis. Her main focus is on Food Sovereignty and all things related as she strongly believes this to be the way out of the present situation. In 2011 she co-organised the Greek Conference on Food Sovereignty and in 2014 the Permaculture Caravan. She is part of Neighbourhoods In Action, a group of activists – focusing mainly on ecology and environment, human and urban rights, social ethical business – who ran for the local government elections for the municipality of Thessaloniki (1 million inhabitants, the second largest city of Greece) and won one seat at the council. In the last two years, she has instigated the creation of two CSA projects.

Native name

Közösség által támogatoss mezögazdaság (community supported agriculture) or short version: Közösségi mezögazdaság (community agriculture)

Common definition

The Hungarian CSA Network, established in 2014, created a document laying out this common definition and these shared values:

”Community Supported Agriculture

(CSA) is a system based on trust, solidarity,

mutual commitment and personal contact

between a group of consumers and one

or several producer(s). It is a local food

system, based on the principles of organic

farming (whether certified as organic or

not), initiated by individual farmer(s) or

NGOs, with the consumer members making

a commitment to the farm(s) for a given

period of agricultural production. Under the

terms of such an arrangement, consumer

members can share the food produced

without a price tag attached, but pay a

flat fee, thereby financing the functioning

of the farm by regular contributions.”

Country context

General information

In Hungary approximately 10 million people live on an area of 93,036km² (about 93 people per km²). In 2013, on average, people in Hungary spent 24.8% (approximately €55) of their monthly expenditure1 _{or 16.6% of their monthly}

income2 _{(approximately €276 per month per capita) on food}

and non-alcoholic beverages.

Agricultural information

Agriculture has traditionally been an important sector in Hungary’s national economy. In 2010, 5.3 million hectares3

(60% of the territory) were used for agriculture. Of this, 77% arable land, 18% meadow and pastures and 1.5% permanent crops. The ratio of agricultural land supply per hundred people exceeds the European average of 45ha by 35%. Regarding arable land per agricultural employee, Hungary is the fourth in Europe. There were 182,000 people primarily employed (5%) in the agricultural sector in 2010 of the 3.7 million people employed in the country. The average farm size is 29ha and is constantly increasing. In 2010, there were 576,000 agricultural holdings in the country and 1.1 million households were involved in some kind of agricultural activity for family consumption through home gardens and holiday home backyards; this data indicates that very low values were defined for the minimum farm size. The number of agricultural holdings has been constantly decreasing in the last fifteen years while the average farm size has been increasing. Approximately 130 thousand hectares (less than 3% of the total agricultural area) were under organic agriculture in 20144_.

History and characteristics

of CSA

How did CSA develop? Dynamics?

The first attempts at organising CSA farms in Hungary and probably the first one in the Central Eastern European (CEE) region is closely linked with the Open Garden Foundation (in Hungarian: Nyitott Kert Alapítvány) which was registered in 1999 with the aim of promoting sustainable agriculture and community supported local food systems5_{. Since its}

establishment, the Open Garden Foundation has been successfully managing an organic market garden and a local food delivery system. The Foundation has also been running education and training programs for consumers as well as producers and defined itself as a bottom-up initiative with the vision and mission of establishing a local food system by bringing together producers and consumers based on the adaptation of the principles of CSA in the CEE region (ibid.). They state that in the 1990’s the socio-economic context was not supportive of such radical and creative solutions like a CSA scheme (ibid.). Although the number of customers in the CSA scheme grew every year, they had main struggles relating with economic viability and high membership turnover they could

ungary