Each of our 32 Beacons has the opportunity to hold a ‘campfire’ to get together to reflect on their progress and challenges so far. It’s also an opportunity for them to develop the narrative that will eventually feature in our Living Library. Here, Elisa Klein, describes what happened at the campfire hosted by Adamah BioHof.
Who was there?
Four members of the core Adamah BioHof Team met with Elisa, from FIAN Austria at their farm located in Lower Austria, about half an hour away from Vienna. Adamah, which means “arable land – living earth”, was born in 1997 and is an organic farm that cooperates with about 140 other organic farmers and offers a direct delivery of food on a weekly basis to its customers. Adamah´s identity, is based on three main pillars: providing 100% organic food to its customers, having low waste production and being environmentally friendly in its deliveries. These three aspects were the starting point to our discussions during the campfire.
The main purpose of our campfire was to reflect on the real costs of organic production, the waste of food at different scales and the importance of conscious consumption.
We started by reflecting on the multiple benefits that organic food production has in order to preserve a healthy soil and biodiversity, to ensure animal well-being or to safeguard human health, including the one of consumers and harvesters. This led us to reflect on the costs that a sustainable production entails and the importance of investing those costs to ensure all the named benefits. This was perhaps the most important reflection for the project, as project partners working on the costs and margins analysis.
In this regard, we also reflected on the importance of providing the consumer with transparent information on the origin of the nutrients that are sold as an important tool for a more conscious consumption (knowing origin of food, valuing of food, conscious consumption).
As a third pillar, we talked about food waste in relation to conscious consumption, and identified that excessive food production and waste happens at different scales and chains – going from production, to gastronomy, trade and private consumer. We finished the day by identifying steps forward. “When people shop consciously, they also consume more consciously, dispose less and save costs and resources at the same time” Elisabeth Zoubek, summarising the reflections we shared during the day.
The connections and consequences of these three main themes were captured in a graphic recording by Gabriela Harmtodt, from Coop4 Kommunikationsdesign.