April 24, 2013

Contributor: Brussels (LP)

Workshop: Social inclusion, job creation, economics/ Innovative socially inclusive initiatives

Collective procurement of fruits and/or vegetables baskets

In 2006, a group of citizens, with the help of an association called “début des haricots”, decided to get together in order to buy fruits and/or vegetables baskets directly from a producer. Their motivations were twofold:

• To be confident about food they eat and meet the producer.

• To support the producer since they commit themselves to buy regularly a certain volume of food and order in advance to minimise waste for the producer who is able to better plan the harvest.
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Citizens took charge of the delivery aspects (find a place to distribute the individual basket contents to participating citizens, arrange with the producer the regular delivery to the city at a specific timeslot, taking turns in being present to receive and redistribute the baskets ….)

In 2009, “début des haricots” asked for financial public support, firstly, to hire a part-time employee to help other citizens in the creation of their own procurement groups and then to professionalise the system by creating “GASAP network” , a non profit organisation. This network became a recognised structure able to help other citizens to found their own GASAP.

Now, people who want to set up a GASAP in his neighbourhood can ask, for free, help from the network to be accompanied in the beginning of the process.

Since 2006, 60 such groups (involving more than 1200 families) have been created. They are purchasing from 14 vegetables and fruit producers that are growing food near Brussels. They are not all affiliated to the network. Affiliated groups keep in touch with the coordination network, can ask questions to other groups and share experiences and views … for example about the appropriate maximum price for a basket.

For the moment this procurement mainly applies to fruits and vegetables but it seems there is a consumer demand for other products such as milk, meat, eggs… The GASAP network is still thinking how best integrate this kind of products in their network.

Since 2009, financial public support has been stable and it seemed necessary to pay network operation costs (communication cost, support for new groups, website,…)

Our challenge, now, is to slowly decrease subsidies to achieve a self-sufficient system.

We are aware that this system imposes constraints (consumers cannot choose products, always the same volume of products, having to contribute personal time for the functioning of the group) and for this reason GASAP groups can not necessarily be duplicated as such at a large scale.