In this busy week, days in which I have been exchanging views with people from many countries and almost all continents, cooperative members with different experiences and worlds, I write this chronicle in a break that I offered myself. A few minutes of silence that call me to the urgency of not giving up thinking, of not giving up curiosity, of questions that have not yet been asked, of solutions that have not yet been imagined. Minutes that also call me to concrete examples, of life running before my eyes, of the grandeur that I often see in small things, in small projects, in ideas that are born with respect for their roots.
A car trip through rural France comes to mind. I saw fast food chains, supermarkets with kids working at the cash registers. Kids who repeat words and gestures as if they were bureaucratic machines. Kids who transform themselves into the words they say. Words as artificial as the hamburgers that pass through their hands, tasteless, without identity, without life. However, on this trip I met and spoke with young people who insist on doing things differently. Young people who form companies and cooperatives, people who are in or return to the countryside and who produce cheese, wine, olive oil, pâtés and sweets. Cooperatives that sell products with high margins. Because they are unique products, because they don’t exist anywhere else, because they have and create value for them and their communities.
In a small village I went into a supermarket and looked for a pâté. To my disappointment, they looked artificial, with colors that resembled gum and the taste was no different from what I would find anywhere in the world. The service also disappointed me. No patience, tired and unable to answer the questions that occurred to me. A few more kilometers and I stopped the car again. I joined a cooperative in a distribution area, “Super U”. There was someone working at the delicatessen and I asked him for a suggestion for the pâté. Very friendly, she suggested a canard with roasted hazelnuts and local mushrooms. Then, he pointed to a cheese and asked me if I wanted to try a wine from the region’s cooperative and some bread with French wheat. The young woman genuinely smiled at me and congratulated me on my choice. I asked her why she was happy and she, disarmingly, replied that she was a member of the cooperative and was committed to helping the local economy, her land.
It is the history of cooperativism and cooperatives. And on these French roads, like in Spain or Italy, I saw large areas in decline and small businesses flourishing. I believe that the trend in the future could pass through here, growing the market based on diversity, with professional management structures in which agricultural banks and other cooperatives can and should play a role.
Sometimes what is big can be great. But there is more and more urgency, even for sustainability and our health, that the little one is recognized, valued and purchased. Small is Beautifulwrote Schumacher, in 1973. A book more current now than when it was written.
President of the Torres Vedras Mutual Agricultural Credit Bank
manuel.guerreiro@ccamtv.pt