La Kosturica is a well-established project that’s been running for 23 years in Canovelles (Vallès Oriental). Maria Giner is one of the founders of this organic vegetable production and distribution cooperative, which aims to provide an alternative to the current agrifood model.
Can Marquès, the farmhouse that’s home to the organic farming production cooperative La Kosturica is very well connected, which may explain why it’s become a kind of logistics centre for the distribution of food grown by farmers who’ve chosen not to use fertilizers or synthetic chemical pesticides. They have a stall on their farm that enables them not only to sell their produce but also to establish direct relationships and mutual empathy with their customers. In addition, they distribute about 120 food baskets per week, loaded with organic, seasonal and local food, and they’ve been supplying several school canteens with fruit and vegetables through the Ecocentral distribution platform for more than ten years.
La Kosturica came into being as a horizontally-managed, assembly-based project. It’s currently led by three people: its founder Maria Giner (Barcelona, 1976); Jordi González, who joined about 15 years ago; and Maria Roser Ferré, who came on board more recently. The team is completed by a horse, named Menut, and two dogs: Alanis Morissette, who’s white, and Tina Turner, who’s black. The music connections can also be found in the name of the project, which evokes the identification felt by the original members of the association with Emir Kusturica, the Serbian film director and musician who composed dazzling soundtracks based on the rhythms of the Balkan gypsies.
Maria Giner is a force of nature. She’s a great communicator and gives the impression of knowing La Kosturica inside out. She welcomes us on a sunny morning and we share a healthy, organic breakfast with her. Her wish was to set up her own project and she’s managed to fulfil it. That’s why her eyes have the special shine of someone who’s happy to be where they are, satisfied with the path they’ve travelled. Getting here hasn’t been easy and she’s obviously learned a lot along the way.
Since she began her training at a tender age, Maria was clear about two things: on the one hand, she knew that she wanted to dedicate herself to working the land; and, on the other hand, she was convinced that she would do so following the principles of agroecology. Now, after 23 years of involvement in this project, she’s acquired a third certainty: the importance of creating a network, and not only her own one, which is made up of «La Kosturica family» and the loyal customers who buy baskets of produce every week. Her desire to share and diversify has led her to participate in other spaces for food producers. These include the Network of Agroecological Farmers of Catalonia, which is a group of producers who work with the Ecocentral distribution platform, supplying school canteens with organic food, and, more recently, AlterBanc, a new type of food bank which distributes fresh, local, organic produce rather than processed food from the food industry.
As we stroll around Can Marquès, listening to Maria, we realise how multifaceted she is: she’s a producer, activist, communicator and colleague. And, underpinning it all, we get a sense of the goal that motivates her: to use her patch of land, the environment in which she lives, to contribute to creating a fairer world.
There are times when attending an event and meeting a certain group of people can change our lives. This is what happened to Maria when she was just 18 years old. She took part in a talk about organic livestock farming. What she heard there had a great impact on her: «Listening to all this made me see that perhaps my path was farming.» Without giving it a second thought, she asked the livestock farmer at the event, who was from Sant Hilari Sacalm, if she could do some work experience on his farm. Despite having some initial misgivings (Maria was still quite the urbanite), he eventually agreed. It went well: the inexperienced young woman passed all the tests that the veteran famer set her!
That initial work experience in the field was the first of many for Maria, who continued to train in practical settings, away from theory. «At that time, farmers constituted just 2% of the working population. Now there are even fewer of us. I love devoting my life to ensuring that this profession doesn’t die out,» she confesses. There can be no doubt that Maria has made it her mission to take care of the land, create networks with other farmers and establish beautiful, lasting relationships with the people who eat her vegetables.
Growing up, she didn’t have many connections to farming. Her mother was an administrative assistant and her father worked in an export business. The family lived in a largely urban setting between Barberà del Vallès and Sabadell. The only connection Maria had to the land was her grandfather, who’d been a farmer in Navarre. He also had a vegetable garden in the Penedès area, but declared it off-limits to his granddaughter. Nevertheless, Maria’s family supported her decision to study agronomy. Since she already sensed that she wouldn’t find subjects on organic farming, a discipline that was in its early stages in the mid-1990s, she set up an association called L’Esbarzer (The Blackberry) with a group of university friends in order to organise talks on non-conventional farming, as well as on squatting and antimilitarism. Looking back, she says that the agronomy lecturers she had then now teach organic farming. Whenever she bumps into them, she jokingly remarks: «So it was just something for a handful of hippies, right?» Maria proudly explains how the paradigm has clearly shifted over the years. The rate of conversion from conventional to organic farming is extremely high, both for small networks and large producers.
At that time, a serious event had a huge impact on Maria: just before she started university, her father died in a car accident. «It hit me for six at the time. It was pretty tough but I managed to get over it,» she remarks, with emotion in her voice. Despite this great misfortune, she felt very lucky to have her mother and brother, with whom she became very close. Maria knows that her father would have had great respect for her life choices. Her mother did, and has always encouraged her to follow her passions, even if the path is a more precarious one from a material point of view.
When she was at university, Maria developed a strong interest in activism and in exploring new organisational models and alternatives. She travelled to France to find out about the AMAP (Association pour le Maintien d’une Agriculture Paysanne – Association for the Preservation of Small-Scale Family Farming). Meanwhile, in Spain she attended the 'Forum For a Living Rural World', organised by the Rural Platform, where she discovered the agroecological and squatter movements. One day, while taking part in a protest to prevent an eviction from a squat, Maria was arrested. She was unjustly accused of being a member of a group that vandalised the headquarters of the PP (People’s Party) in a previous protest. Although the case was then closed, the event affected her and made it difficult for her to complete her agronomy studies. Eventually, through hard work and dedication, she achieved her goal and obtained her degree.
«I love devoting my life to ensuring that this profession doesn’t die out» Maria Giner
The creation of La Kosturica came a little closer as a result of a work placement that Maria completed with Joan Relats, a farmer from Lliçà de Munt. Joan was one of the pioneers of organic farming in the area and founded the Hortec cooperative. At the end of the work placement, Maria went to live and work with her mentor. After a while, Joan offered Maria and another person the chance to take over the reins at the farm. The idea didn’t take off for several reasons, one of which was that Maria already had the itch to start up her own project with the collaboration of two friends, Killian and Jan Marc, who joined the venture.
With a small, motivated team, they decided to set up an association. Together they cleared the main hurdle: access to land. «Luckily for us, the owner of the Can Marquès estate really appreciated the fact that we wouldn’t let the farmhouse fall into disrepair and that we’d practice organic farming,» Maria explains. They started out with just over a hectare of land for irrigated crops. Over time, they were able to expand their activity to two more fields: the Pla de Can Naps plot, in Santa Eulàlia de Ronçana, which came to them through the daughters of a farmer, who wanted farming activity to continue there; and the Can Poca Roba plot, which they started farming thanks to a customer of La Kosturica who’d inherited land in Lliçà de Munt. They manage four hectares in total. No space is wasted and they grow a wide variety of crops.
Paradoxically, the two reasons that led Joan Relats to give up farming his land served as a roadmap for the young team at La Kosturica. The first reason was the difficulty of finding a work-life balance. They solved this problem by creating a horizontally managed, assembly-based project led by a team that embraced the values of cooperation and equity. There would be holidays and leave, and the burden of work would not be shouldered by a classic family structure. The second reason – the instability of the market on both a small and large scale – was addressed by establishing a direct relationship between producers and consumers, and forging a bond of commitment that would allow them to plan on the basis of sold produce, thus minimising waste and cushioning themselves against fluctuating demand. In short, they adapted the vegetable basket model of the French AMAP to the Catalan cultural reality; that is, «with less commitment», as Maria puts it. In fact, La Kosturica was the second farming operation to implement the vegetable basket model in Catalonia, the first being that of Joan Castellà, a farmer from Amposta.
Maria is a woman who’s not afraid of challenges, but she lost a lot of sleep trying to solve these two problems. Her mind buzzed incessantly as she tried to find more dignified ways of farming. In addition, there were other goals to achieve. «Personally, I made this life choice because I wanted to help people enjoy a healthier diet, to look after the environment and not pollute it,» she explains. She wonders whether she’d have managed to keep going without this motivation, because there’ve been years fraught with adversity and it’s been no easy task to deal with the tough, precarious nature of farming.
Perseverance has been a key factor. Indeed, when we delve into the ideals and practices of this farmer, we realise that she’s someone who wants the whole loaf but at the same time wants to obtain it with the help and cooperation of others. She says they’re not big on the technical side of farming at La Kosturica. Nevertheless, they’ve helped many people who’ve passed through Can Marquès to bring their projects to fruition. They’ve never hesitated to share resources, contacts, information and advice to make new initiatives a success.
«I made this life choice because I wanted to help people enjoy a healthier diet, to look after the environment and not pollute it» Maria Giner
Maria’s extremely proud of her 23-year-old project: «In this life I made a conscious decision not to become a mother because it wasn’t something I was drawn to, but I gave birth to the idea of La Kosturica,» she confides. However, not having children doesn’t mean that she doesn’t care about younger generations and the world they’ll be inheriting. The championing of farmers and the fostering of generational change are two essential actions to ensure her legacy in this respect.
Around 30 people have worked at La Kosturica in the more than two decades that they’ve been farming at Can Marquès. «That makes us feel great! By helping each other along the way and working together, we’ve created a diaspora,» explains Maria. However, this open attitude has affected them in terms of having a steady, constant team. Although for the first ten years they adopted an assembly-based management model, for some time now they’ve been running La Kosturica with people who’ve committed to the project on a stable basis. Nonetheless, they all continue to get the same pay, regardless of the number of hours they put in. Furthermore, they recently sought initial advice from the Vallès Oriental Cooperative Athenaeum with a view to becoming a cooperative. Now they’re requesting additional support in order to complete the process and consolidate the transition.
The involvement of so many people in the project and all the networking that goes on with other farmers has turned La Kosturica into a big family. Every year they organise open days, along with a calçotada (Catalan green onion feast) that’s attended by 300 people. The Can Marquès estate is perfect for hosting this type of event: the old farmhouse, surrounded by vegetable gardens, boasts a splendid, spacious porch. It’s hard to imagine a better place to share a festive meal or set up a direct sales stall.
«In this life I made a conscious decision not to become a mother because it wasn’t something I was drawn to, but I gave birth to the idea of La Kosturica» Maria Giner
Having a strong community isn’t just hugely enjoyable; it also helps to ease problems. Maria tells us that the farmhouse was burgled a while back and that a large sum of money was stolen that had been saved up to make a fence to keep out wild boars from the Can Marques estate. When she sadly shared the news of the theft in the WhatsApp group of La Kosturica, things took a turn for the better: «Everyone threw themselves into looking for ways to alleviate the pain suffered,» she recalls excitedly. As a result, a crowdfunding campaign will now be launched to obtain funding to set up anti-wild boar fencing not only at Can Marquès but also on the Santa Eulàlia de Ronçana estate, which is under even more pressure from hunting fauna.
Another challenge they’re facing is the rational and sustainable use of water. In this respect, they’ve implemented the strategy of not putting all the crops with water needs on a single estate, thus ensuring that if one of their three wells fails, all will not be lost. They also optimise irrigation, make green fertilizers and rotate crops, among other techniques. For five years, they incorporated animal traction in their farming practices, since both Maria and Jordi love animals and underwent training in natural horsemanship and special training in order for their mare, Fosca, to help them with certain tasks. The experience was highly rewarding, but after Fosca died they shelved the project. The loss has hit them hard.
Our conversation with Maria flows simply and sincerely; it’s a pleasure to follow her train of thought. She’s fascinated by agroecology and when we ask her about the strategies they implement to combat climate change, she explains, in her typical pedagogical style, that it’s necessary to go beyond the implementation of chemical-free organic farming techniques, such as those endorsed by the Catalan Council for Organic Agricultural Production or other bodies. «Agroecology is not organic farming, but rather it’s a paradigm that incorporates objectives from the Social and Solidarity Economy,» she summarises before giving examples. As she sees it, agroecology aspires to promote relationships between producers and consumers that are as direct as possible, to achieve decent working conditions for producers and to network with other farming projects that share the same philosophy. In this respect, it’s extremely important to exchange resources and knowledge, offer emotional support and place joint orders to reduce costs.
To test all these mechanisms, the creation of the Network of Agroecological Farmers of Catalonia was crucial. Maria proudly explains that they contributed to the definition of a formula to collectively guarantee the quality of the products supplied through a Participatory Guarantee System (PGS), basically consisting of annual visits to the farms of the various projects, making diagnoses and proposing improvement actions. The initiative lasted for some time and a set of criteria remains in place that the network now promotes, albeit with a simpler system for incorporating new members.
Over the years and with the proliferation of organic farming and agroecological projects, additional networks have been created in Catalonia. However, in the Vallès, Osona, Maresme and La Selva areas, the network is still based at Can Marquès. «We’re an organic Mercavallès !» says Maria, laughing. Networking, the exchange of products and mutual trust are a guarantee of high quality and good service, since if a particular crop fails on their estate due to weather conditions, a colleague from Riudecanyes (Baix Camp) will supply them, and fruit is brought up for everyone from western Catalonia. «I can vouch for my colleagues’ products because I feel like they’re my own. I know they take good care of them and that’s something to be proud of,» she states.
Maria’s life and career path has led her to truly value what she does. Although she’s not like the farmers of yesteryear, who kept chickens and cattle, etc., and she considers herself more a vegetable grower than a farmer, over time she’s overcome her early hang-ups: «I always hold my head high about being a farmer, despite the fact that I initially found it difficult because I don’t come from farming stock.»
Maria’s a farmer who works magic with time. Indeed, she confides that she’s obsessed with optimising it. In addition to vegetable growing, she carries out technical labour management, marketing and communication tasks. She’s normally involved in the planting and harvesting of crops, but she no longer does weeding. She likes being in charge of the overall management of La Kosturica, but has no hesitation in confessing where her heart really belongs: «I love being out in the vegetable garden and seeing the day begin, observing the light on the different shades of green of the vegetables, being outdoors, seeing these agricultural landscapes... All of this fills my soul. Sometimes I see a drop of water on a cabbage and think to myself: «What a beautiful image!» On stressful days, which we also get, I practice breathing techniques or go for walks with the dogs».
As a farmer and woman, Maria feels that there’s more and more female empowerment in the countryside: she sees many women putting themselves forward, networking in organisations or doing interviews like this one. Nevertheless, she feels it’s still necessary to continue to highlight all the tasks that women farmers perform, such as paperwork, marketing or other activities that are less conspicuous than driving a tractor or removing grass.
On meeting Maria, it becomes clear that La Kosturica is a project for social and political transformation. However, over time they’ve also learned to be flexible enough to adapt to changing contexts. Half of the production at La Kosturica is distributed in the form of vegetable baskets, a significant amount is sold directly at the stall on the farm, and the rest goes to school canteens. The canteen project began at a time when several similar initiatives were emerging and the company decided to diversify its sales channels. First they worked with the Ecomenja company and then with Ecocentral, an organic food purchasing centre that supplies school canteens in Barcelona and the surrounding area. In fact, La Kosturica actively participates in the Ecocentral assembly, where prices are agreed for products and the organised growing of crops is programmed. These meetings enable closer relationships to be established between people working in a sector that needs stability and long-term commitment in order to grow.
«It makes all the sense in the world for children to eat vegetables like ours from a very young age and recognise their flavours. It’s really important for school canteens to work on the values of sustainable food,» explains Maria. In order to facilitate this transition, the need arose to create an umbrella entity, the Agroecological Network of School Canteens of Catalonia (XAMEC), in which La Kosturica participates, together with five school canteen managers, an agroecological purchasing centre, a restaurant association and an NGO.
At La Kosturica, together with Ecocentral, they also find time to enrich another initiative, AlterBanc, an agroecological food bank where neighbourhood movements and entities working in the field of the Social and Solidarity Economy and food sovereignty converge. With the aim of shifting away from welfare food banks, they aspire to provide disadvantaged families with fresh, high-quality food, resulting from the efforts of agroecological farmers who receive a decent price for the products they grow.
Maria believes that striving to put food at the centre of educational curricula could be a way to raise awareness among future farmers, but she also wonders what else can be done to encourage young people to make a life choice that’s «so precious and tough». After ruminating a little, she believes that the solution involves the verb «facilitate». On the one hand, in the case of those who want to follow their parents into farming, the switch should be facilitated towards more sustainable, organic and viable production models. Meanwhile, access to farming should also be facilitated for new generations of people like her. «Land banks are necessary, but there still aren’t enough users for the amount of land that’s around,» says Maria. In other words, although promoting land banks is an important and powerful initiative, more people must be encouraged to devote themselves to farming.
«Administrative bodies and producers know that they have to bring environmentalism, feminism and the social economy into their discourse, but when it comes to actually implementing these things, they don’t do it,» she complains. As she sees it, one of the reasons that causes people to have second thoughts and opt against entering the farming sector is all the red tape involved. She believes that public funds could be allocated to create a body of technical professionals to advise farmers on management, marketing and production channels, etc. She also highlights another issue: the size of projects. Maria believes that it’s crucial to favour small networked operations: «Over time, they’re much more resilient and sustainable… If a small farm folds, it won’t be like Casa Ametller going under.»
Maria hasn’t finalised the recipe, but she’s sure what the basic ingredients should be. Her clarity of thought and deed, together with the collective strength of her project, might explain why La Kosturica has been in operation for so many years.
Taking stock, Maria explains that freedom and contact with nature are two additional incentives of her routine. «I feel enormously privileged to be doing what I enjoy rather than something that’s imposed on me,» she says. Another thing that has motivated her ever since she was very young is the feeling of contributing to a better world, «a world with more respect for nature and people, a healthier world,» she concludes. Of the various Marias we’ve met today, the farmer and activist always has the last word.
— BCN Smart Rural Editorial —
BCN Smart Rural Stories: 'Let's Eat Local'
Short film produced by BCN Smart Rural | Barcelona Provincial Council
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