"Balance" - Cooperative Market

My mission in life is to help develop local economies. In a year, I articulated a network of more than 150 diversify local entrepeneurs that provides "Balance" Cooperative Market with a wide range of daily consumed products in order to strengthen the regional economy in northern patagonia.

With the Elevate Prize funding, I'd expand our local cooperative food market in order to make it more competitive with tradicional supermarkets. I'd build a process room where entrepeneurs can process their products following proper sanitary regulation. This will professionalize and boost their iniciatives and our entrepeneur-hub. With the Elevate Prize funding, I'd work with local farmers so we can help them diversify their offer and transit from tradicional agriculture to regenerative agriculture.
Last year (with all farmers market closed because of the pandemic) we distribuited the products of more than 45 farmers directly to more than 500 consumers that are now interested in feed their family with natural and local food. As consumers we need better and more diversify food channels. Planning the harvest and connecting it with the demand have enormeous potencial to make local production competitive with tradicional channels. We have seen this potencial, now we must activated it.

I grew up in northern patagonia, in a town called Puerto Varas. My grandparents and father are farmers but I studied economy in Universidad de Chile. After my studies, I worked as an social innovation consultant with the University, helping the regional goverment of my home town territory, to promote shared-value entrepeneurship. I worked with more than 150 entrepeneurs helping them to developed their projects ideas so they could apply to public fundigs.

This amazing experiencie showed me that we can collaborate with others in order to find solutions to common challanges. I needed time to think about the challange that I'd like to solve, so I took my backpack and travelled through America for 2 years. In my travel I understood that local food systems are extremly important for the economy and for the well-being of the community, it's a matter of food sovereignty. People sould be able to trade food, but we should't rely on international markets to feed ourselves. I looked for way to face this issue and I founded that Local Cooperative Markets are a great alternative to help developed a local food system, so I founded one. Future economy is collaborative. 

UN SDG N°12 "Responsible Consumption and Production" diagnoses that the way we are feeding ourselvs isn't sustainable. Agriculture is the most important source of water contamination and the responsible for more than a 1/4 of greenhouse gas emissions. More than 1/3 of international food production is wasted at the same time that more than 800 million people suffer from malnutrition worldwide acording to FAO.

In Chile, 41% of the agriculture area it's worked by family based farms, but this families only capture 22% of the food production value. The remainging 78% is captured by big companies that take the value out of the rureal areas and local economies. Furthermore, the micro, little and medium size business represent the 99% of total businesses, but they only captured 31% of total sells. The remainging 69% is captured by big companies leaving local economy with the small market share. This is the source of inequity.

The way we are addressing the problem is strengthing local food providers by linking them to local demand. We are joining them together in "Balance" Cooperative Market, where we integrated local farmers and food entrepeneurs to local consumers in a short-distribuition-channel.

Cooperatives are an old alternative of shared-value business. Most of the cooperatives are owned by producers (agricultural cooperative for example) or by consumers (Food CO-OP for example). "Balance" Cooperative Market is the first "Prosumer" Cooperative in Chile and one of the first in the world. "Balance" Cooperative Market is a grownig comunity of people that own a market where they can sell and buy local food and local daily consumed products (such as cleanign supplies, personal care items, natural cosmetics, susteinable clothing, local handcrafst and so on).

With the integration of both local consumers and producers in the same organization, we are addresing the challange of builind a more sustainable and responsible food system with a new approche. We understand that ther´s no production without people that consume it, and ther's no consumption without people that produce it. Ther´s no dichotomy between"client" and "provider" because we are part of the same relationship. By integrating them in the same organization we bring "balance" to this relationship in order to make it sustainable in a human scale. We all know eachother, we know who and where the food is produced and who and where it's consumed, making the relationship a susteinable one.

The mains impact of "Balance" Cooperative Market are:

1. Promote a local-based economy to reduce inequity, have decent work and sustein the develop of our community, rural areas and cities.

2. Give access to natural, organic and healty food and improve the local-based food system so it can feed more people with healty food. This is also a matter of reducing inequity, the inequity in acces of good food.

3. Reduce enviormental impact and re-organize the production in a regenerative way. We have the biggest zero-wasted food supply in south Chile and the biggest organic market. The food we distribuite have the minimun ecological footprint the market can provide. 

To achive this impacts, we are, first of all, building a community of conscious people that are working together in order to solve the challange of the organization. We called this process: cultivate the social field. This is a growing community of more than 150 micro, little and medium size local farmers and businesses and more than 500 consumers integrated. We are also articulating the iniciative with the local goverment, farmers organizations and NGOs. This steps have been very effective, because as I said before, future economy is collaborative.