imagining the unimaginable

We just joined Copenhagen Food Corporation (Københavns Fødevarefællesskab) and this is the content of this weeks bag with fresh, locally produced, organic vegetables. It’s DKK 100 (€14) a week for the bag with 6-8 kg and pure logic: Supermarkets are making money on offering out-of-season-tasteless fruits and vegetables transported from polluting and destructive farming industries all over the world. Why not set up a corporation of people who want to do it differently, buy our groceries directly from local organic farmers and distribute it ourselves? Copenhagen Food Corporation is inspired by Park Slope Food Coop (which I visited myself a couple of years ago) and in three years has grown from 15 people to more than 2000. 

To take care of the practical matters, apart from paying for your groceries, you have to work 3 hours a month in your local department of the corporation, which adds to the logic that it is actually creating new communities around food, work and sustainable living in the city. The economical logic in this makes sense too, as you actually pay for the products with money and contribute to the practical matters with your own work which gives you absolute transparency in the transactions and illustrates how local, personal actions can have an effect when they take place within systems and economies of scale.