Farm work was never easy. Since the dawn of time, farmers have faced numerous challenges. Anyone could imagine that, with the passage of time and their respective advances, this would be a situation of the past. But the truth is that many of these problems have persisted until 2022 itself. Some of them are related to taxes, the supply chain that is full of intermediaries that leaves farmers with practically no benefits, or the lack of consideration and respect for this profession.
But that is changing, it is a fact. Today’s consumers are increasingly aware of their environment. Or, at least, they pretend to be, because according to the latest report published by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Foodonly in 2020, 1,363 million kilos of food were wasted, which means that each Spaniard throws away 31 kilos of food in the trash per year. This has prompted part of the agricultural sector to consider the need to change the way it interacts with the market. They seek a strategy that looks after their interests, among which economic stability stands out, while at the same time trying to bring sustainability to society and the environment.
One of those companies is HarBest Marketa platform that connects restaurants with farmers, which its CEO and Co-Founder, Álvaro Pérez Redondo, has explained to us. they are achieving minimize food waste and have already reduced it by 25%. In addition, they help reduce the carbon footprint: “By eliminating the transportation of all these intermediaries and the stock of the product in cold storage or logistics platforms, we reduce the carbon footprint by 28% compared to the traditional supply chain.”
However, reaching the figures of companies such as Perez it is not available to everyone. The agricultural sector faces two major challenges. On the one hand, the economic instability to which farmers are exposed, including the excessive number of intermediaries between seller and buyer that leave the supplier with little benefit. And, on the other hand, how unsustainable the criteria are, which require that the product be in perfect condition so that it can be sold in local stores, large supermarkets or in the hotel industry.
How do you change the functioning of an already established market? Well, it’s not an easy task, but it’s not impossible either. The world can be changed by dreamers, visionaries, and I have had the pleasure of speaking with some of them.
TALKUAL
“Feed the change!” That is one of the slogans of TALKUAL, a delivery service for boxes of imperfect seasonal fruit and vegetables. The company was born from the idea of two friends. Oriol regularly visited Marc at his apple and pear company, and saw that many of these were thrown away for certain aesthetic reasons. That, together with Marc’s idea, who received a basket of fresh produce from the garden of a farmer friend every week, were the basis on which TALKUAL was founded.
The fundamental pillars of the company as shared with us Aurora Beatrici, Community Manager and Content Creator of TALKUALare “The sustainability and fight against food waste. They also have among their objectives to pay a fair price to the farmer and sell it to their customers at affordable prices..
beatrice explains what kind of consumers they have: “Our customer profile is 80% women and 20% men, mostly around 30-50 years old. It is a profile that cares about the environment, about eating healthy and taking care of yourself. We believe that the client bets on us for the main mission: food waste.”. He also added: “We consider that 60% (of customers) are motivated by sustainability, for example, and 40% by the convenience of receiving products at home. Our customers care about farmers, about food, and about taking care of themselves. They like our philosophy because in our social networks we try to give voice to other issues that are not just food or food, but injustices in general and related issues. We offer them relevant information for them and we believe that they like it and are interested in it.”
How do they work? For now they operate in almost the entire Peninsula, with a view to expanding nationally and internationally in the future. Thanks to the contracting of different logistics companies, they can give their clients a choice in which time slots to make deliveries, which in turn take place in between 24 and 48 hours.
HarBest Market
Just a year ago, from the hand of three lifelong friends, HarBest Market was born, another of the projects that has come to revolutionize the agricultural sector. It is a platform that connects restaurants with farmers to buy fruit and vegetables directly from the garden, without going through intermediaries. They offer a national product at a fair price, collected and delivered in less than 24 hours.
In their short life they have managed to operate in Madrid and Barcelona, achieving a turnover of €600,000 and capturing more than 600 clients. Álvaro Pérez Redondo, CEO and Co-Founder of HarBest Markettold us with much appreciation how the company had come about: “HarBest Market was born in the midst of a pandemic. Its origin came from seeing farmers demanding fair prices, with tractors in the middle of the streets or even throwing away their own harvest because it was not profitable for them. That’s when we realized there was a root problem and we didn’t know what it was. We began to analyze the supply chain and we saw that the price of origin was multiplied by four to reach the destination.”
Knowing what the problem was, what in the future would become the HarBest Market team got down to work. Seeing that there was an average of four intermediaries between the farmer and the hotelier, they saw a market opportunity. If they cut out those middlemen and did their work themselves, getting a somewhat higher commission than each farmer or middleman gets, they could offer greater value. In this way, some can buy cheaper and others sell more expensive.
In this way, value proposals are offered to hoteliers, reducing their purchase costs between 20% and 40%, giving them fresher products, which go from the garden to the restaurant. The hotelier is also offered all the information about the product, so that he knows where it comes from and what his journey has been until he reaches the establishment. And finally, they offer something of vital importance: cost stability. A price is set with the farmer that will be maintained throughout the campaign to deal with market volatility. In this way, farmers can maximize their profits by 50% compared to more traditional sales channels. The CEO and Co-Founder of HarBest Market explained why this is possible: “Putting technology and coordinating logistics. In other words, putting both ends of the supply chain in the same marketplace so that they can transact directly. We manage part of the logistics, but we work with external operators to deliver the products.”
At HarBest Market, depending on the distribution phase, origin and destination, they work with a different logistics distributor. They have logistics hubs located in rural areas throughout Spain. Every day, when an order is placed, the farmers have from one to seven in the afternoon to collect the products and take them to their respective hubs or collection points where they will be sent. In this way, restaurants are allowed to have fresh products one day after placing your order.
