Students from the UAB's University School of Tourism and Hotel Management design an agro-food cooperative.

The expert on agro-food consumption Ricard Espelt, with support from the FAS and the UAB's University School of Tourism and Hotel Management, is setting up an agro-food cooperative at the UAB.

28/09/2015

Agro-Food Consumers' Cooperatives are organisations that promote circuits for the consumption of agro-food products, and are formed by the consumers themselves. They foster the values of the Social Solidarity-Based Economy: proximity, fair trade, transparency and gender equality. In addition, they set up horizontal instruments of participation and seek to strengthen social ties between members.

Ricard Espelt is an expert in this field and is currently engaged in a doctoral research project on the ways in which ICT is transforming the agro-food consumption model in today's Network Society. To put the knowledge acquired on this project into practice, he has approached the UAB's School of Tourism and Hotel Management to propose setting up an Agro-Food Consumers' Cooperative based at the university.

Two stages are envisaged. The first of these – design of the Cooperative – is to be carried out by a group of students on the course Fundamentals of the Tourism and Hospitality Sector, taught by Carmen Ruíz Aguado. This is scheduled for the first semester this year.

Depending on how this stage develops, the second stage would be the creation and implementation of a UAB Cooperative aimed at the university community.

This second stage would involve a volunteer project, managed by the Fundació Autònoma Solidaria (FAS), and open to a broader range of students.

Catalonia currently has two functioning university-based agro-food cooperatives: ETSAB Orchards in Action (UPC) and the UB Biology Consumers' Group. Both of these are examples of student-run organisations that have outlasted their initial founding group.