The COVID-19 pandemic is on all of our minds these days, as we do our best to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe by respecting social distancing, handwashing and staying at home. More than ever, there are so many reasons to opt for the security of an annual subscription to a CSA (community supported agriculture) like Gradina Bio AMURTEL, and receive a basket of locally grown, fresh organic produce delivered straight from farm to table every week:
1. Price stability:
When you sign up for a season, regardless of fluctuations in prices in the market, you will be guaranteed direct access to fresh, organically certified, seasonal produce for you and your family. As the price is calculated according to annual costs, rather than by individual items, you will be only be paying the actual fair costs of production without commercial speculation.
2. Protect yourself from COVID-19:
Only our two farmworkers, Cristina and Daniela, who have been protecting their own health by staying at home when not at the farm, will have handled your vegetable basket. Indeed, the system of CSAs began in Japan, after the radiation contamination following the atomic bombs in WWII caused concerned mothers to look for a way to have a direct relationship with a local producer, that they knew and trusted so that they could have control over the source of their food. In addition, when you opt to have the vegetables delivered to your door, or simply picking them up from Vanfruct or Morningstar, you are reducing your exposure to the multiple people and transactions you face when shopping. As COVID is primarily transmitted from person to person, the more that we can avoid contact with others in the public, the safer we and our families are.
3. Support the local economy:
Given the serious disruptions to international supply chains that have yet to manifest their full impact on markets, signing up now is a proactive step that you can take for peace of mind and food security but that also supports the local, rural economy of Romania. Now is the time to strengthen resilient locally based systems, such as CSAs like Gradina Bio AMURTEL.
4. Improve your carbon footprint:
Did you know that your food travels an average of 1500 km from farm to plate when you buy from a supermarket chain? When you have vegetables delivered from AMURTEL Gradina Bio, they will travel only 120 km and they will have just been harvested the day before or that very morning!
5. Protect the environment:
When you support a local CSA, you are actually taking an active stand to promote bio-diversity, reduce unnecessary packaging, and reduce petro-chemical dependent agriculture. Although specialized monocultural farms, even if organic, may seem more efficient and cheap, they put an artificial strain on eco-systems and are not resilient long term. CSAs like Gradina Bio AMURTEL, on the other hand, must cultivate a wide range of vegetables to ensure a seasonal basket every week. We also leave certain areas uncultivated to attract greater biodiversity which helps to control pests in a natural way.
6. Get to know the people growing your food:
Cristina and Daniela are warm, hard-working, strong, very sincere women. They have been best friends and next-door neighbors since they were little girls. They do their best to bring you vegetable baskets that will keep you and your family healthy and are always listening to your feedback and trying to improve. It is great to know exactly who the people are that are cultivating your food, especially in an age when this relationship has become more remote and abstract in the age of gigantic agro-industry businesses.
7. Ensure healthy food for children in “AMURTEL Family” children’s home:
Not only will you be ensuring food safety for your own family, you will also be ensuring that the eleven children growing up in the “AMURTEL Family” residential home for abused and neglected children have nutritious food to eat! Some of our clients really enjoy finding out more about the children and some even become sponsors, or donate toys, clothes etc. to the children. Indeed, while the AMURTEL Bio Garden is a non-profit activity of our NGO rather than a for-profit business, our main motivation to cultivate vegetables is to ensure access to organic food for the children we are serving.
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