 Ja, hallo zu dem nächsten Stream, der diesmal über unsere Versorgung geht und zwar geht es genau um RECO, das ist eine Graswurzelbewegung aus Finnland, die Konsumenten und die Produzenten zusammenbringt auf kleiner Ebene, um dort eine Neuart von Einfluss auf den Markt zu gewähren. Julia wird gleich diesen Talk in Englisch halten. Anfließen gibt es noch ein kleines Q&A, das ist dann in dem Raum AIDA, da müsst ihr dann rüberwechseln. Das nächste Talk wird in Englisch behält. Das Talk ist um RECO, das ist eine Graswurzelbewegung aus Finnland, die Konsumenten und die Produzenten und die Konsumenten auf eine direkte Weise ohne den Niveau des Marktes zu stoppen, und ich hoffe, dass ihr viel Informationen in diesem Talk habt und jetzt starten wir mit dem Talk. So, hallo everyone, mein Name ist Julia Westbroek und ich würde gerne über die Graswurzelbewegung heute sprechen. Nämlich über, wie man sich auf kleine Graswurzelbewegungen auf den Markt zu gewähren, und das Konzept ist RECO, also schauen wir uns mal an. Very shortly about me, I'm an environmental scientist and engineer living in Sweden on a small farm, growing a few vegetables, having some chickens, and I have been organizing a RECO group for the last three years. My favorite vegetable to grow was pumpkin and eggplants, and yeah, so farming is an interest of mine, but I'm not a professional farmer or doing that full time. I will get back to that detail later. And what is RECO? Well, RECO means Rielkonsumchon or could translate to real consumption, and it is a concept that came originally from Finland, but has by now spread to almost all of Scandinavia. I have a small map there that sadly only includes the Swedish markets, I didn't find a good comprehensive map that includes Finland and Norway as well. The basic ingredients of RECO market or RECO group, how I refer to them, is the direct contact between the customer and the person that produced the food. So it is a small grassroot movement, so it started from farmers and it's basically very unrestricted, growing food, selling it directly to people that want to eat it, and there is no actual transactions or well, there is no selling at the meetings. The selling happens before online, and that is why it doesn't fall under restrictions of farmer's markets, because if you want to sell at least in Scandinavia, if you want to sell on a farmer's market, that is quite a lot of effort to meet, to get certifications and meet certain requirements, and that is hard for small scale farmers or for example for people that just have a big garden and some overproduction. So that makes RECO different and interesting. So RECO groups are self-organized and they are independent of each other, so as you can see on the map, there is quite a few, though they are independent of each other, there is a national wide community for support, so a lot of the people that help administrating those groups are then in a bigger group, where they can all talk about issues that occurred in the groups or ask how other groups handle situations, but it is important to point out that every group makes their own rules and decides how to handle things on their own. There is a bit of help, like for example there has been material, for example the graphical stuff available from people that wanted to share that, then there is of course experience from neighbour communities normally that we can turn to and ask for help, but essentially every small RECO group is a bunch of people deciding that hey, our village or our town should have something like this, let's do it. So, I mean why should you have something like this? You want something like this because you want to know where your tomato is coming from, right? Or at least I think that it is starting to get more important for people again. So for the consumer here and with the consumer, I mean that is, well, you that is wanting to buy tomatoes. It is really easy to get super fresh seasonal food because the farmers are selling what they have produced this week, maybe even that day. And you can meet the producer, like you know that loss has been growing your tomatoes and you know how loss is actually, what loss, you can ask loss what is he using for treatments on his tomato plants, is he using in pesticides. And that makes it really interesting. And you get unique products. So the farmer maybe wants to try new sorts or specializes in old sorts that are really hard to get by and so you can get really this unique products that are really interesting and make for exceptional food, but a supermarket wouldn't be able to provide you with that because then a supermarket needs to provide thousands of it. And another plus side is really short transportations. Reco is very much built on local. So hopefully the tomatoes that you're buying are just coming from the village next, well next door basically. And that also means that there's a lot less waste. You don't need to package things in plastic, you can recycle. You can recycle bags and yeah, it just makes it a lot more efficient. And why should you do it, why should you do it as a farmer? Well, as a farmer you have the, you have a, it's really, it's an easy way to get started. For example, if we stay with the tomatoes, maybe someone just has had a lot of tomatoes one year and wants to try, how is working out selling the tomatoes and not just giving them away for free. And it's, it doesn't cost anything to sell food in a Reco group. So you can just put out your tomatoes and be like, hi, I'm selling tomatoes and that can be the start. It is also quite time efficient because there's no middle man. You don't need to meet up with someone else first and then they will give it to the customer. You meet directly up with your customer and handing them the food that they have been buying from you. So that's very practical. Another point is that you can easily sell to positive customers. And that might be not as self-explanatory as the other ones, because the positive attitude towards food, I think, is really, can be really motivative for farmers and small scale farmers that work really hard for the products. They are normally quite, yeah, driven people that really want to provide great food. And it's really amazing when you can then actually sell it to people that are equally interested. So that, yeah, that's quite cool. And you can also try out new products quite easily. So you can grow this specific kind of vegetable or you can try to make this specific kind of cheese. And then you can see, are people interested, that were actually producing that permanently or, well, didn't it really turn out that great and people didn't weren't interested. Then it's not the end of the world, because you can just, you just made a small trial run. And the last thing on, here on the slides, better product planning is important as well. Because when there are record groups, you know in advance how actually, how much you're going to sell that day. And that makes it a lot easier to plan. And on the other side, it also, the groups can help you, like I said, with overproduction. So if you have a lot more, then you can just try to sell it over the group a bit easier than other with supermarkets. So yeah, that is basically a lot of very, very positive things with the record groups. And let's have a look, so the group that I have been administrating is in a small village called Herbie. It's a lower income area, quite conservative structures. And by 2021, we have 21, yeah, 2130 members, and we started in 2019. So why did I mention a small village lower income area, conservative structures? Well, basically to tell you that if it works in Herbie, it can work almost everywhere. Because of the structures here, people are not, it's not, it's not a hip area. It's not where ecological food is driving force. It's not like that. But like I mentioned earlier, record groups make it possible to connect with people and to connect the food producers from the area. But I think that that is really important and that that has made a big impact. And when we started in 2019, there were basically, who was standing with five people that grew a bit of food and maybe 10 people that felt a bit sorry, so they came. But consistency and getting out the word, basically telling everyone that they should check out this group, and that paid off. So, that is, that's quite a success, I would say. Although there is, of course, it's not really, well, it's just easy. What was really important for this group was to get a diversity in products. And that can be a bit difficult, because, well, people want to buy more than just tomatoes. So, to get farmers interested that sell different products is really crucial for this kind of groups to work. Here's a small comparison that hopefully illustrates that despite having, well, not as well as for the parking lot in 2020, we actually hadn't gotten a lot bigger from just 2019 to 2020. I realized I didn't have a good picture from 2021, so it's needed to do. Yeah, and one of the important things here that, yeah, people talk with each other. And, like you see, the farmers are actually coming in their cars and just delivering the products. So, because there can't be any official sales on the spot, you don't need any market stands or anything like that. You just need to kind of fast meet up. Normally the meetings are around 30 minutes, sometimes an hour, exchange products. People may make sure everyone has paid, and then you're good to go. So, it's also rather, the in-person meetings are rather fast, talking a bit about challenges. Well, like I said, RECO is based on online that people make their orders. So, I have a first point accessibility, but I could also easily name that in choosing the right platform. In Sweden, most of the RECO groups are Facebook-organized, which, well, is not optimal, but it is very easy accessible for most people. And we have been trying to find a better working platform, to find a better working solution, and haven't really succeeded so far. The point is also that a lot of customers for these RECO groups, at least in the rural areas in the countryside, are like 50 upwards and not very technical interested. So, basically, yeah, the internet itself was a big step for these people, and now they have slowly understood how well this one platform works, so it's what works for them. And yeah, that's definitely a really big challenge, because it makes the movement quite dependent on this platform, which is definitely not ideal. Another challenge can be payment methods. In Sweden, we have a system that makes it very easy to transfer money between people with wireless, but I know that, for example, in Germany, that's not as easy. We have a bit of cash that people can normally pay in cash as well, but basically no one wants to do it anymore. But making sure payment works is a thing, and well, a lot is really based on trust, so upholding trust is also very important within those groups. And you need to have a good location, because when you're meeting, like I said, 25 Produzers, 25 Farmers kommen, und dann maybe 100 Leute, und an einem Tag, oder einen Abend, das ist gut, aber das braucht auch Raum. Und, ja, du musst sicher, dass du einen Ort hast, in dem es okay ist, um für eine halbe Stunde, eine Stunde zu parken, und natürlich diese Menge Menschen zu haben. Aber wir haben das einfacher gefunden, weil es viele Unternehmen oder Institutionen gibt, die sagen, wir haben einen großen Punkt, dass man das benutzen kann. So, wir fragen uns, und wenn wir uns umgehen, dann ist es auch sehr leicht zu sprechen mit den Leuten und zu erzählen, über dieses Grupp und versuchen, das Wort zu sparen. Und das kommt zu einem anderen Herausforderung, das ist, ja, das Ball rollen, wirklich um Informationen zu bekommen, dass Leute wissen, dass dieses Grupp existiert, dass andere Farmers wissen, dass dieses Grupp existiert, aber auch, dass die Leute, die jeden Tag, deine Eltern, deine Grandmother, deine Neighbor, deine Freundin, alle sagen, dass dieses Grupp existiert und das Wort zu sparen. Und das letzte Punkt von den Herausforderungen ist, dass der Transport effizient ist, weil die mehr das Grupp öffnet, desto mehr Farmers können, um die Produkte zu verkaufen, wenn sie ein sehr erfolgreiches Grupp, vielleicht, sagen wir, 50 Kilometer, wegkommen, vielleicht beginnt es, es interessant zu sein, um da eigentlich zu gehen. Und ich denke, es ist wichtig, dass es true zu den Werten der effizienten Transportation ist und bei dem, was du zu Emission nimmst, um sicherzustellen, dass das Transport effizient und mit so kleinen Ressourcen, wie möglich ist. Aber, ich meine, hier ist es absolut möglich, um flexible Lösungen zu finden, dass vielleicht ein paar Farmers eigentlich zusammen oder so etwas zu tun können. Und ich weiß, dass es auch, es gibt Gruppen, die Farmers, um einen bestimmten Rang um die Stadt oder die Stadt, wo sie aus ist, um sicherzustellen, dass das wirklich lokal ist. Und wenn man über die, die jemanden restriktiert, normalerweise sind diese Gruppen wirklich offen, aber natürlich ist es ein bisschen, ein bisschen schwierig, wo man die Linie für eine kleine Skaleproduktion dreht. Und ja, wenn ein Farmer vielleicht zu groß, vielleicht zu viel in die Konversation der Produktion, um wirklich noch ein Teil davon zu sein. Das ist definitiv ein Problem, das muss in der Gruppe adressiert werden. Aber normalerweise hat man einen Modellmanager in der Gruppe und wie gesagt, da ist eine Supportnet, also bist du nicht allein mit diesen Entscheidungen. Also, was ich möchte sagen, ist, bilde Moriko, vielleicht versucht es eigentlich, es in Deutschland zu bekommen, versucht es, es dort zu gehen. Es ist eigentlich ziemlich leicht zu starten. Du musst einen Blick in die Lokallösung und Regulierung haben. Ich hoffe, ich könnte das vor diesem Gespräch machen, aber ich weiß, dass meine Knowledge von deutschen Law ist, ja, nicht so effektiv für diese Aufgabe. Aber ich möchte wirklich glauben, dass es ein Weg ist, es zu machen. Und dann wähle eine Kommunikationsplattform. Wähle eine gute Plattform und sei sicher, dass die Plattform, die du wählst von Beginn, für diese Gruppe aufwärts. Wir hatten ein paar Gruppen in Sweden, die versucht, die Kommunikationsplattform zu ändern, aber das war sehr schwer für sie. Also, be mindful about it and think about it. And then, of course, you need to have farmers that are interested in being a part of it. And you need to have farmers that want to sell their goods and that are, well, motivated to be a part of really, really cool thing. And like I said before, you want to have a wide range of products and producers. So, the more diversity, the better. Of course, there is always seasonal changes. And for example, my tomato example is kind of a bad example, because there's just a so short time in the year where actually local farmers can provide tomatoes, of course. But find farmers that are interested and then talk about what products are possible. We have realized that farmers are very often just very resourceful finding alternatives what they can sell in winter and that there is a lot of innovation actually coming from that. That is really cool to see. And yeah, that's basically what you need for starting a RECA group. There would definitely be the possibility to get support from the Scandinavian communities and see how they're doing and then maybe try to start your own thing. And I realize I'm actually today super fast with this talk. So, I'm already at my sources. So, I was thinking of actually skipping a bit backwards to what's to my fifth slide and talk a bit more about the impacts for the farmers. And that is, we have noticed that a really strong, a really strong, a bit unexpected force that happened with these groups is the networking effect. Because it helps small scale farmers and people that are just hobby producers to connect. And to meet once, twice a week on this group meetings, give their product to the customer and then maybe stay five or ten more minutes and just chat with each other and be like, oh, how is this going? Oh, how do you deal with that? How are your chickens doing? And well, that sounds a bit trivial, but it actually makes a lot of difference. Because it helps people to connect with their neighbors. A bit more far away neighbors with people that have a similar interest in producing really great food. And it creates a community that is really, really resourceful, supporting and inclusive. And I found that really interesting that even in Herbie with a rather conservative population, it really worked. And that was a very, I think, very healing, almost healing process for that village to really see, like, oh, there's so many people around here by now, making amazing food, growing organic vegetables and being curious about that. So this really networking effect is super cool and something that we maybe didn't expect to happen that strongly. And of course, it works for the consumers as well. They have started, like, the people coming to the group started to see it a bit of a social event. Though, well, we all know what also happened in 2020. So the social aspect has been, no, we were in need of trying to minimize that as much as possible. But still, its networking is a very big part of the entire thing. And yeah, 2020 pandemic, I actually didn't do an extra slide about it because I assumed everyone was tired of it already. But from a RECA group perspective, it actually did not that much damage. We were never in a situation in Sweden where the regulations would have forbidden to have our meetings to exchange the products. So it was more like people realized, oh, this is outside. Oh, here, it's really easy to keep your distance because there's not so many people. And oh, I can still buy super fresh food, even if I don't dare to go into a supermarket. So actually, the pandemic has brought more customers to the RECA groups, which was a bit unexpected in the beginning, but really, really fun and really cool. And now we will see, it's always a bit like a seasonal thing because winter here is not at least in southern Sweden, not as snowy as one wants to believe. It's sadly a lot of rain and windy, and people are not that motivated to actually go out and pick up their food. So in winter normally, it's a bit of less activity and then picking up in spring with, yeah, about the peak in summer and then early autumn, when there is such a wide range of products available. So there is always a bit of seasonal flotation in how many people are attending, but that's just the way it is, I would say. Yeah, so there was a lot of good reasons why to actually have these RECA groups. And I would really, it would be really interesting if there would happen to appear groups in Germany. When I did this talk the last time, I got a question if it was comparable to Solavi Solidarische Landwirtschaft, which I thought I could talk a few shortly about. It has some similarities, but I would say that RECA groups are a lot easier accessible for farmers than the Solavi. So it's basically everyone can participate. There is not a lot of limitations to what you need to be able to do to sell food on the market. I mean, of course, you need to follow guidelines about food safety and so on, but you don't need to be able to promise to be able to deliver, for example, eggs all year round. It's totally okay to be there just three or four times per year, and the rest of the years you just don't have enough eggs. And for the customer, I think different to Solavi, how I've understood it. You don't need to have a contract and guaranteeing how much you're buying every month. So you can stay flexible if it's the end of the month and there's really more month left than money on your bank account, than you just don't buy from the group maybe just that time. But next time you're very welcome to. So in my eyes, Solavi is maybe for a far more long-term solution, a bit more stable income situation, but the RECA groups would allow for a lot more money. RECA groups would allow for a lot more flexibility, and it's easier to get started. Yeah, I only took with me the positive points, then I sometimes get asked, oh, but isn't it really expensive to buy so well produced food? And the answer is yes and no. A lot of products will be more expensive than in the supermarket. But because you buy directly from the farmer, the farmers are still able to make good prices for really amazing products. So they actually get the money they need to work, to make a living from it, and it's still affordable. And because there is exchange between the groups, there's also a bit of a control about costs, because the farmers basically need to kind of keep an even level if there's someone selling eggs for a certain price. And there's three other people selling a lot cheaper eggs than there will be a discussion between the farmers to actually come to an agreement on a fair price for the eggs. And that self-regulatory procedure is really a great thing. So from an administrative point of view, well, my group, we were never in need of telling someone like you should change your prices or something that is normally taken care of more or less by itself and by the people in it. So, like, yeah, like most grassroots movement, it really is living from the people and it needs some engagement, of course. But once that is rolling, it's a really, really great construct, I would say, and a really great thing to do. Yes, let's see, yep. Yeah, I have some sources. And there one is called Who's Holding Cellscope, which is an organization in Sweden that is basically something between a club and some kind of political, how to say that, political ministry. I'm actually not really sure about the translation there, but they had gotten some money from a European Union fund to look into these groups and to see how that could support the rural areas and countryside in Sweden and how farmers could benefit. So they were helping out a bit, like I mentioned earlier, with graphic material and, yeah, provided some information. 2020, that money ran out and I think they're no longer providing any kind of help, but since their help was very little from the beginning, it doesn't seem to affect the groups at all, I would say. So it was definitely, it was nice that it was there, but I wouldn't say that some kind of support from governmental support is definitely not necessary to be successful with these groups. Yeah, and that was my talk for today. I hope I will see everyone later for the Q&A and would be really great to chat about this. So, have a good evening and see you later. Thank you for watching. That was a very interesting talk about how to influence as a consumer. If you have any further questions, you can visit the chat in Events Hexen, the awesome ADA-HGM. You can also use the QR code in this window here down at the right side to get into the room where you can place your questions. Also, wenn ihr noch weitere Fragen habt, dann kommt in den Raum eventshexen.org slash aives awesome unterstrich ADA-HGM. Da werden jetzt auch noch die weiteren Fragen beantwortet. So I say thank you to Julia and hopefully see you in the Q&A section. Getting over there, thank you.