Increasing operational value creation is central to the survival of small farms. The "OnFarm" project is addressing precisely this issue. The project consortium met in Granada (Spain) on October 19 and 20. In addition to organizational in substantive issues of project implementation, the concrete question was what good examples exist and what can be learned from them. Specifically, the project consortium visited the logistics center of the Valle & Vega producers' cooperative.
From an association of a few farms that wanted to market their products together, a cooperative has emerged that offers its customers a wide range of processed and fresh foods as well as some natural cosmetics and drugstore items. While the initial focus was on building the product assortment, storage and logistics, and developing the customer base, the cooperative sees the optimization of logistics and the stronger integration of orders from the online store and the merchandise management system to the point of ordering from the producing farm. As an interface between farms and customers, the cooperative continues to develop in close coordination and tries to meet the interests of the farms for simple logistics and the interests of customers for flexibility and speed.
Within the framework of the project, the situation of direct marketing in the Czech Republic, Italy, Spain and Germany will be described and substantiated with a selection of case studies. In addition, information and learning materials will be created and illustrated by a podcast series. The project results will be published on www.onfarm.eu towards the end of the project.
Contact persons at the IfLS: Ulrich Gehrlein (gehrlein[at]ifls.de) and Christoph Mathias (mathias[at]ifls.de)
