Producing organic food does not guarantee finding a market capable of absorbing it under profitable conditions. For small farms, reaching the necessary volume to fulfill certain orders, managing logistics costs, or presenting a sufficiently broad offer can become a daunting barrier. Nearly 150 producers from Catalonia and Aragon have decided to tackle this issue together through Comer Bio, a platform that allows them to market collectively without giving up the customers and sales channels that each maintains independently.
The initiative is driven by the ADV Ecológica de Ponent / Bio Ponent, an organization established 23 years ago to provide technical assistance to farmers, which over time has expanded its activities to issues such as biodiversity, soil improvement, generational renewal, and the shared use of resources. Within this framework, the producers grouped in Comercial Bioponent collectively manage approximately 2,000 hectares of organic farming, with crops ranging from olive groves, nuts, and cereals to stone fruits, horticulture, and spirulina.
Part of the farms are located in Aragon, especially in the Franja region, which makes the project an agricultural cooperation experience that transcends administrative boundaries. Its approach stems from a common difficulty faced by many small farms: individually, they may have a good product and their own buyers, but they lack the volume, variety, or commercial structure necessary to access larger clients.
From Small Producers to Collective Catering
Comer Bio aims to fill precisely that gap. Farmers maintain their individual business relationships and come together when they need to respond to opportunities that require a larger offer. This way, they can collectively approach school cafeterias, collective catering services, supermarkets, or other channels where a single producer would struggle to guarantee sufficient quantities or a diverse range of foods.
This model becomes particularly important at a time marked by rising costs and stagnation in the consumption of organic products. Cooperation allows them to share commercial and logistical efforts while also bringing together different productions. A collective catering operator, for example, does not only demand fruits or a specific vegetable but needs a variety of products supplied continuously.
The project has also facilitated international operations. Producers have undertaken joint export experiences to the Netherlands and Belgium, markets that are more difficult to penetrate from a small-scale farm. Grouping products allows them to reach the necessary volume to offset transportation costs and have a structure capable of fulfilling orders.
The platform now aims to move toward direct sales to consumers. The strategy is to channel demand toward the associated producers closest to each area, thereby promoting local circuits. However, the organization itself acknowledges that its commercial and logistical capacity is limited and that it must selectively manage the orders it can fulfill to avoid losses on certain operations.
The goal is to progressively strengthen this structure, particularly with more resources dedicated to the commercial area, until it can meet broader demand regardless of the volume of each order. Comer Bio currently receives financial support from the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation under the «From Farm to Pantry» initiative.
Sharing Machinery and Facilitating Generational Renewal
Joint marketing is just one part of the model developed around Bio Ponent. The organization has also created a machinery bank that enables farmers to rent equipment rather than face individual investments that can be difficult to amortize in small operations.
Cooperation has even led to specific business projects. Several organic almond producers began by sharing the investment needed to acquire a sheller, and the experience ultimately resulted in the creation of a cooperative with its own brand to market their production.
Another issue the organization seeks to address is generational renewal. Bio Ponent is participating in a European project, alongside entities from France and the Basque Country, to develop so-called «test spaces,» a model aimed at individuals interested in entering the agricultural profession who do not have land or wish to avoid high initial investments.
The system proposes that a local government could lend a plot for two years where the future farmer can try out horticultural activities under the guidance of the organization’s technicians. This experience can help facilitate new entrants or seek continuity for farms whose owners are nearing retirement.
Comer Bio applies that same philosophy of cooperation to the market. Rather than opting to individually increase the size of each farm, producers seek to gain scale by sharing what is most difficult to manage separately: machinery, technical knowledge, logistics, and commercial capacity. For the small organic farms in Aragon and Catalonia participating in the initiative, scale does not necessarily come from producing more but from being able to reach collectively what they could hardly achieve individually.
