In Romania, one of our 6 main projects is an organic farm, called AMURTEL Bio Garden, which is set up as a Community Supported Agriculture project. We deliver a weekly basket of seasonal, organically certified vegetables to about 33 CSA members in Bucharest from April – December. The garden also produces about 5 baskets of vegetables for the children’s home and other social projects. It has been running now since 2011, and employs two very hardworking, dedicated local women – Cristina and Daniela.
It is really hard to make ends meet with organic vegetables – and we were losing money for the past two years, as we hadn’t carefully calculated the price we need to at least break even. This year, I had decided to raise the prices, as I was determined to continue only if the project could be self-sufficient. However, I started the promotions really late, because when COVID started, I wasn’t sure how we would get the baskets delivered to Bucharest, as our driver also is a caregiver in the children’s home and we were all concerned about him being exposed to many people every week and potentially exposing everyone in the home. Just as I am working on solving that, the sister that had been coordinating the garden for the past few years, suddenly drops her role, on my lap. Not very good timing, considering all the extra stresses around the kindergarten and children’s home. So I started working on some potential partnerships with other distributors to simplify the driver’s role. Then – the whole staff was pro-actively quarantined by the authorities, and that fell apart. In the end, I hired a new driver in Bucharest.
But the first delivery date came, and I only had half the number of members needed to break even. I was quite stressed. After the second delivery – things still hadn’t picked up much.
In the meantime, a volunteer suggested off-handendly – why not make a press release, sending me a list of contacts. I thought – why not, and so I did – not expecting much of it, perhaps a few online reprints of the release, as usual.
To my surprise – the next day, I had an invitation to live-streamed interview via skype. And the next day on a national program about agriculture. The article got published a few county-level papers. Then came an invitation to meet a team of journalists from Libertate – one of the biggest newspapers on the national level. They did a gorgeous piece, that appeared online with a very artistic video and an album of about 30 beautiful professional photos of not only the farm, but also the children’s home (from the gate, as the quarantine was still in place). They told me people are tired of all the reporting on the pandemic, and want to have something positive to report.
In the meantime – I get a call from a TV reporter for a national TV station – and while I am on the road for that interview, another major TV channel asks if they can come too… Here is the piece they did for Kanal D. That same day – the Libertate article appears on the front page of the newspaper. The one on TVR will air any day now.
I think we are going to fill up the membership spots this year. It is still a work in progress, but it looks like we are well on the way. I had been telling to a friend – I have such a hard time deciding what to do – because from the business point of view, it doesn’t really justify all the costs of time, energy, and money – but on the ideological level it just feels like the right thing to do. The interviews also gave me an opportunity to express some PROUTistic views on the importance of decentralization and local production.
I am still thinking though, of lightening my work-load by turning it into a worker-owned cooperative.
Ananda Devapriya
