“BAJO EL ASFALTO ESTÁ LA HUERTA”
ORGANIC VEGETABLE CO-OP

 

· Weekly bag of fresh seasonal vegetables
· Nice price – only €8/week
· Delivered to very near your doorstep
· For more info, contact Fabio at: fba@empre.es



Introduction
We are a non-profit organization called “Bajo el Asfalto está la Huerta” (B.A.H. for short) and we grow our own organic vegetables in fields near Perales de Tajuña, a village 30 km from Madrid on the road to Valencia.

The vegetables are harvested every Monday (52 weeks a year) and they are delivered to us on the Tuesday. By ‘organic’ we mean that we don’t use pesticides, herbicides, insecticides or any other type of cides, to the benefit of both the environment and our personal health.

Organisation
The co-op is organized by groups (‘grupos de consumo’) as opposed to by individual members. In practice this means that your weekly bag of veg isn’t actually delivered individually to your doorstep – instead, the whole group’s veg is delivered in crates to a drop-off point (which could be a flat, house, school, shop, bar, etc) and it’s up to each group to divide it up into the appropriate number of bags.

At the present time there are 12 groups in the Madrid area, ranging from about 6 members in the smallest group to about 20 in the largest. Each group is autonomous and independently run and organized (‘auto-gestionado’); the members of each group choose freely how to organize themselves with regard to the tasks that have to be done for the co-op to function. There are no orders to be followed from ‘higher up’ because in this co-op there is no ‘higher up’!

So, how does it work? The whole co-op functions on the basis of a monthly assembly (‘asamblea’) which is held on the 1st Wednesday of each month. At this assembly, all matters affecting the running of the co- op are discussed and decided on. There is no other organ, body, hierarchy, president, chairman, steering committee, or anything else. The sovereignty of the co-op, as it were, resides in the monthly assembly, at which each group is equally represented.

A certain amount of involvement is therefore necessary. It’s not just a commercial transaction whereby you pay your €8 and you get a bag of vegetables. Well, actually, some members of groups do just that! And that’s OK as long as there are others in the group who don’t mind doing the tasks (or even enjoy doing them!).

What are these tasks that need to be done, then?

1. Collect your bag of vegetables, preferably on the Tuesday
2. Pay your €8/week co-op member dues . This can be done weekly, monthly, whatever – each group decides itself
These two tasks (if they can be called that!) represent the absolute minimum that a member has to be willing to do.
3. Divide up the vegetables received into the appropriate number of bags
Although this is an essential task, not everyone has to do it. As long as someone in the group does it,… Some groups have a rota system, in others it’s the same person(s) that do it all the time.
4. Go to the monthly assembly to participate in the decision making and in the running of the co-op.
This is voluntary, for those members who like to get involved in these types of activities. Again, each group is different, and some have rota systems, and some don’t. Anyone who wants to go to the assembly can go. The main thing is that at least one member has to represent the group at the assembly.
5. Someone in the group has to collect the members’ payments and keep the group’s accounts.
6. Participate in working groups (‘comisiones’) that are occasionally formed to deal with specific matters affecting the co-op as a whole.
This is also entirely voluntary, and not essential for the day-to-day running of the co-op. Again, anyone who wants to participate in these groups is free to do so.
So, as you can see, there’s room for everybody in the co-op: for people who like to participate actively and do things, and also for people who just want a nice bag of seasonal, organic vegetables with no complications. In practice, most groups have a minority of active members who like to do the above tasks (like yours truly here, writing this article!), and a majority of passive members who just collect their bags of veg and pay their dues.
Well, so much for the organizational structure of the co-op. (Actually, there’s bit more to it than that, but the above gives a fairly complete view of how the co-op works). Moving on to more practical questions, like:

“ So what exactly do I get for my €8/week?”
1) The bag of vegetables itself. The quantity and variety varies over the course of the year as the produce is seasonal (and from a village 30 km away, not imported from somewhere in the tropics, thousands of kilometres away). No cost comparison analysis has actually been carried out that I know of, but in general and averaged out over the year, I’d personally say that the cost works out about the same as your conventional, industrially produced veg from the supermarket; and of course it’s much cheaper than if you were to buy the same amount of organic veg from a health food shop.
2) A monthly news-sheet, called El Berenjenal, which contains news from the co-op and also other relevant, related, agricultural, environmental, culinary articles, etc. (Writing, printing, and distributing this news-sheet is one of the voluntary activities mentioned in Point 6 above)
3) The minutes of the monthly assembly, either on paper distributed with the weekly bag of veg, or as an attachment to an email. We have an interactive website for articles and photos, and mailing lists for the co-op groups. Members can upload/download freely. (Running this system is another one of those voluntary tasks). Check out the website here
4) Domingo Verde. On the second Sunday of each month (2nd and 4th in Summer) all members of the co-op can go out to our fields in Perales de Tajuña and help the workers with tasks that they can’t manage on their own (eg, weeding, hoeing, planting, harvesting, mending fences, having lunch, having a snooze under a tree after lunch, etc). This is entirely voluntary of course! Check out more images from out site here

These are the vegetables that we’re producing at the moment and that planned for over the Winter.
ajo/garlic, puerros/leeks, cebollas/onions, cebolleta/spring onion, zanahorias/carrots, espinacas/spinach, acelgas/chards, col/cabbage, nabo/turnip, remolacha/beetroot, borraja/borage, alcachofa/artichoke, rábano/radishes, repollo/cabbage, lombarda/red cabbage, lechuga/lettuce (several varieties), escarola/endives, patata/potato, apio/celery, calabaza/pumpkin, coliflor/cauliflower; in addition to the veg, we also get 1 kg/month of organic garbanzos/chick peas, all year round