The 2nd European meeting on CSA and emerging distribution systems for Food Sovereignty is scheduled to take place at La Bergerie, Villearceaux near Paris from 28th February to 2NDMarch. The aims are to establish lasting relationships between Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) activities in Europe, and continue building a common vision for the CSA movement, strengthen our alliances and advocacy strategies. Community Supported Agriculture is not only part of the Food Sovereignty movement, but also of Solidarity Economy. This is why Urgenci is committed to participating in RIPESS.

In recent years, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), Community Gardens, Grow-it-Yourself, solidarity purchasing groups/cooperatives, and allotments have been increasingly recognised in Europe as a key means of strengthening the viability of autonomous small-scale and family farmers in the food chain and providing consumers with fresh, healthy, local, organic food, and a means of building more ecologically sound food systems.

They have also been identified as a set of practices for achieving genuine Food Sovereignty, the right of people to democratically decide for themselves how food is produced and distributed.

Community Supported Agriculture and other emerging systems are definitely part of the answer: they share risks and secure fair prices, markets and cash flow for organic and agro-ecological farmers. They are generating a new type of sustainable family farming that is closely interconnected with local communities, cannot be delocalised, and fosters a solidarity-based economy and social connections between rural and urban communities.

They are thus part of a broader Food Sovereignty movement and should be considered as an everyday implementation of Axis 2 of the Nyeleni Europe Declaration, “Changing the Way Food is distributed” .

Major meetings have been decisive in consolidating this momentum, especially the Nyeleni Europe Forum on Food Sovereignty in Krems, Austria, 16th -21st August 2011, and the First European Meeting on CSA and Other Distribution Systems for Food Sovereignty held in Milan 10-12 October 2012.

See the Urgenci website.