The “1 Cent For The Future” campaign launched by Dutch organics label Nature & More is helping consumers to make a small, but relevant contribution with their supermarket purchase. For each kilogram of campaign-fruit that is sold, at least one cent goes to a social project in the grower’s region.
Hugo Sanchez, a producer of organic apples and pears in Argentina, for example, is helping to support 15 desert villages in a poor part of the country through the scheme. For each kilogram of fruit that he sells, part of the margin goes to the Patagonian Desert Project. Last year this amounted to US$6,500. Sanchez, his son Nicholas and Nicolas’ wife Josephine are closely involved in the project, that aims to improve the living conditions of the local Mapuche community, who live in tiny villages dotted around the desert to the south of the Rio Negro Valley.
Hugo and his family are working together with local priest Javier Aguirre, who started the project. “Our most important mission is to make sure that the young people of the El Cuy province receive a good education, in order to improve their chances for the future,” Sanchez explains. “If they want to continue school after their primary education, they will have to leave their birth ground and live in General Roca, which has a university. We support them in this process. We have also founded a library and organise excursions.”
Apart from improving education, the project has also been involved in planting trees, building small greenhouses and installing sanitary and electrical provisions, to name but a few of its undertakings.
In order to ensure shoppers are aware of the project and to help them get a better understanding of the social side of organic fruit farming, Nature & More has developed a range of in store point of sale materials which can be given to consumers when they purchase the fruit.
Apart from the Patagonian Desert scheme, the campaign supports a number of other projects including the installation of a water well in Burkina Faso and a school project in Mexico.
The Nature & More brand was set up by Dutch organics specialist Eosta in order to bring greater transparency to the organics industry. “Our aim is communicate the commitment and effort that individual growers make towards the planet and its people, and empower consumer to make informed purchasing decisions,” says Eosta’s CEO Volkert Engelsman. “As well as learning about the quality of certain products, retailers and consumer can easily access unique background information about the growers and their ecological and social commitment via the internet.”
