A sustainable food system for Poland

A follow-up post to a recent one in which I puzzled over why I can't buy local village produce in my local village shop.

What will it take to change that?

The model that Poland is heading towards looks like this: big, successful farmers buy up ever more land from those who can't make a decent living from it. Then they invest in machinery and logistics, and strike ever-bigger deals with the buyers from the large supermarket chains (and from the cash-and-carries that supply most independent rural grocers). The trend toward disintermediation in the food system has been removing middlemen and their margins, giving consumers lower prices in a competitive market. Farmers understand very well that they have no leverage if they are small. 

The result of this process is that village shops are selling products bought wholesale from distant distribution centres, rather than from farms close to the villages they serve. 

Strolling around Chynów, I see this. Large trucks, with trailers, are taking the apples away from the local punkty skupu, the purchase points where farmers get cash for their harvest. These trucks will take the apples to chilled warehouses, where in controlled conditions, apples last longer. Economies of scale kick in; consumers can look forward to buying perfect apples next August from this year's crop. This makes economic sense, but the process of scaling up agriculture is not wholly beneficial to society.

And yet there are around one million small Polish farms (down from 2.7 million in 1987), many of which are struggling financially. Only now are they beginning to be recognised as a national resource and an opportunity, rather than a burden and hangover from a defunct and inefficient system. In part, this is because consumers are on the lookout for fresh, tasty food that's chemical-free and affordable. And from their own neck of the woods, rather than trucked in from some distant province. Buying from your neighbours is good for your community. The pandemic is fuelling demand, but small farmers haven't yet been able to take advantage, focusing on their own immediate needs.

Unlike the UK, where unemployment is highest in inner cities, well over half of Poland's long-term unemployed are rural (not even small-town). If you're an energetic, able farmer, understanding market trends, investing wisely and growing your business, you have an asset that your children may well be interested in taking on. If your abilities to manage are less good, chances are your children will leave for the city or emigrate in search of a better life and  consider your hectares as a millstone rather than as an investment asset.

And so the spiral accelerates; elderly farmers sell their land to ever-greater consolidated holdings, and big agribusiness changes the rural landscape and rural society. This process has, however, slowed down as a result of the Polish government making it harder for foreigners - and non-farmers - to buy agricultural land. This has led an increasing areas of farmland not being farmed at all. But it's also giving birth to a new interest in shortening food supply-chains. Herein lie the seeds for a different vision. And not just here in Poland, but across the EU.

But here's another vision of a more sustainable food system.

Small farmers get together online to share equipment. A tractor not in use for a week or two need not sit idle - it can be earning its owner money working another field. A barn not in use to store one crop between harvests can be rented out to a neighbouring farm as its crops are gathered. This may smack of collectivisation and equipment-sharing schemes from communist times - but it isn't. 

This is because tech is helping us decentralise, bringing autonomy to the individual, enabling joint action. It's not top-down diktat from the party. Consumers increasingly want to know who produced each product and how they did so. We are no longer happy with anonymous, centralised industrial-scale food production and distribution. Generating new value that seeks to make better use of existing resources through networks where no one is in charge. That’s what local markets for locally-produced food are all about.

New software solutions will drive this decentralisation revolution. This is because software solutions, once developed, are infinitely scaleable, with zero marginal costs. Distributed-ledger technology, for example, offers consumers the ability to trace the provenance of the products they are buying. This is important; many local butchers in the UK, for example, have blackboards on which the names of the farms from which this week's meats come from are written down. This has a strong effect of bringing consumer and producer closer together. Apps can to the job of such blackboards, with far greater reach.

The technology exists - it's tech that drives the sharing economy (like Bla Bla Car, AirB&B or Uber). 

I know, I know - it's difficult in rural Poland, where distrust of neighbours is the default. But innovations catch on and when proven to be beneficial, tend to be habit forming. Learning that win-win and not zero-sum thinking leads to progress, which in turn hard-wires win-win thinking into people's mentality.

New technology can generate new streams of income, as well as new value, to those participating in a decentralised prosumer (producer/consumer) food system. Online such prosumer initiatives that already bring together farmers and consumers, such as Koszyk lisiecki ('Liszki Basket') near Krakow are booming, proving the concept. But these are still outside the mainstream, often operating informally.

The new value comes with consumers accessing fresh, tasty food products that they simply cannot buy in supermarkets, and farmers gaining regular clients who value what they produce. Cost effectiveness and streams of income come from shortening the social, economic and geographical distance between food producer and food consumer by replacing intermediaries with software solutions. Logistics will no longer require an expensive, centralised distribution system, but a way of making use of the barns, vehicles and storage facilities of the producers and consumers involved, by tracking and trading what is available. Producers and consumers with a vehicle or storage space can provide a service, and so generate additional income. The same is true for settling purchases and extending loans. Banks will no longer be needed to act as trusted intermediaries, if transactions can be settled directly. 

If rural livelihoods come to depend on participation in a sharing economy, rather than on government subsidies, then our food system will transform to accommodate the small-scale, geographically dispersed, food producer. In such a world, trust is built by a software solution that can settle many-to-many transactions. Producers and consumers will come to trust that solution, if it generates the value and income upon which their livelihoods depend.

And so local markets could be built and serviced using apps. Sitting here on my działka, I would be able to order a box of seasonal organic potatoes, leeks, tomatoes, spinach, broad beans, corn-on-the-cob, peas and carrots, all sourced from local farms, which I could pick up from a dispensing machine at my local petrol station forecourt or the local school, which could also act as a collection point for produce.

Cloud-based, and using machine learning to optimise collection and delivery, such apps could create new networks that bring communities closer together. Making unused resources usable is the way forward (as I wrote here, and here). Apps would not only allow me to order my weekly shop of fresh, tasty vegetables and fruit on-line, but also offer storage space and pick-up services for neighbours, earning me a few extra zlotys.

'Community' and 'market' were once upon a time entirely congruous; economies of scale have pulled the two apart, making them adversaries. Technology has the potential to bring them back together at the local level. The goal - to make small-holdings profitable by connecting them to consumers who seek quality, value and authenticity from the products they eat.

New communities that generate new value and new income for all involved is within our grasp, if we can bring together the potential of small farms and tech. It’s happening with energy, with transport and with finances. Food is next. For those who are concerned about sustaining access to healthy, tasty food that is chemical free and affordable, this tech-driven, decentralised food economy is no longer a ‘nice-to-have’ but a must-have.

If you wish to help realise this vision, you may wish to help Rafał Serafin, my old friend from West London,  make a documentary film about the opportunities of Poland’s small farms and part-time farms. The project requires the raising of €55,000 through crowdfunding; 5,000 people each donating €10 could make it happen (link to Zrzutka.pl here and below).

Here are three of Rafał's films that set out the vision:

Short food chains in Poland explained:

Some best practice from Austria and Slovakia:

How collaborative logistics could function:

To contribute to Rafał's project to make this vision a reality, click here.

This time last year:
Sifting through a life

This time three years ago:
Throwing It All Away

This time four| years ago:
Hammer of Darkness falls on us again

This time five years ago:
The working week with the clocks gone back

This time seven years:
Slowly on the mend after calf injury

This time eight years ago:
Thorunium the Gothick

This time nine years ago:
Łódź Widzew or Widź Łódzew 

This time 11 years ago:
A touch of frost in the garden