FINLAND
I live and work on a farm for a CSA food cooperative called ‘Oma maa’ (Own Land). There 50 hectares of farmland, a greenhouse and a food forest. About 100 chickens provide us with eggs and our 4 cows help with biodiversity. We produce grains, legumes, roots and tubers, oil plants, vegetables, fruits, berries and more, through ecologically sustainable production as well as old farming techniques. We have a kitchen to process our harvest into bread, oil, pasta, falafel etc… I have a background in cooking, so this kitchen is mostly my responsibility.
Hopefully farms like ours will flourish. But it depends on the consumers demand for local sustainably produced food. And if policy makers are willing to support the systemic change of our food system. I hope more small farms with similar values will unite and cooperate like we are trying with our recently founded CSA Finland.
The challenges are lack of knowledge, access to markets, access to credit and product prices.
In our case an important policy change would be something like basic income – offering more free choice to put energy into something important. For us it would mean we could get the workforce we need.