Created outcomes

In speaking to participating people, they acknowledge that the initiative is possibly too small to have a recognisable effect on environmental quality such as on air quality, emissions or habitat connectivity. In fact, from a life cycle perspective the emissions could be even higher because the vegetable farmer is still in his learning phase and thus less efficient than his large-scale counterparts. However, for many family it possibly had a positive impact on their nutrition. People needed to change their diet significantly to adapt to the variability and seasonality of local food production. They never precisely know in advance what type of food they will receive and in what quantities. Consequently, families now eat less processed food from supermarkets. Regarding community cohesion, in the starting phase people shared distribution activities. Some neighbours picked up the food for each other and thereby reduced travel needs. However, over the long-term people only tend to meet at the distribution and do not share common activities apart from the distribution work.

“In our AMAP we don’t do many things together because we just live too far away from each other.” — Local AMAP participant

For the vegetable producer who diversified from sole cereals production towards also growing vegetables, the initiative created 1 1/2 full-time jobs and a number of school internships, securing the employment of the farmer and one full-time worker who is supporting the farmer. For the other farms that provide bread, eggs and others, the figures are unknown since these are much bigger and not only rely on food production for the community. As a result, the initiative strengthens the local economy in that it generates stable income that goes directly to the farmer without extra intermediaries.

6kg of vegetables cost 18€, 800g bread 5€, 4 cheeses 7€, 6 eggs 2.40€, and 1.2kg pasta 12€.

The food is organic and of high nutritional value but it is not a bargain. It is sold at typical or even slightly higher market price for organic food. Thus, the initiative hardly contributes to increased social justice as the food is yet not affordable for people with lower income. Furthermore, the vegetable producer is still not profitable when solely relying on vegetable production. Yet he is driven by his passion to expand, to share his experiences to allow others to grow locally alike and to provide more people with local food in the future.