Methodology

We develop a comparative analysis of the commons character of community-supported agriculture groups in Portugal based on the observation of internal communication practices and tools. Following an action-research approach (^{Chen et al., 2018}; ^{Lewin, 1946}) and militant ethnography methods (^{Juris, 2007}), the qualitative research combines a focus group, visual methods and brief interviews.

Case selection

The selected cases are the seven CSAs or AMAPs² (as they are most commonly known in Portugal) that form the Portuguese network Regenerar, which brings together 22 producers and roughly 300 consumers (Table 2 and Figure 1).

* An interactive version of the map is available at https://kumu.io/regenerar/rede-das-AMAP-CSA-em-portugal

Source: The author, with data from the 3rd General Assembly of Regenerar (December 2020).

Figure 1 Mapping the members of the Portuguese Network of Solidarity Agroecology, Regenerar* 

Although a systematic socio-demographic characterization of the Portuguese CSAs is yet to be done, our ethnographic work within the network in recent years allows us to outline the profile of consumers and producers in general terms. The first are mostly urban or peri-urban consumers, aged between 30 and 50, who live and work in the country’s largest cities (Lisbon and Porto), satellite cities (Almada, Vila Nova de Gaia) or wider peripheries (Setúbal, Palmela, Famalicão) -although in some cases with closer links to (neo)ruralities (Montemor-o-Novo, Alvalade do Sado, Cercal, Guimarães)-. Most of the consumers are motivated by access to organic products and healthy food, although some groups demonstrate a stronger activist and collectivist vocation (^{Faria, 2020}). The associated producers are aged between 35 and 45 years old, have higher education degrees (other than agronomy) and moved to rural areas in the last decade to farm (there are some exceptions).

Data collection methods

The research is informed by active participation of the author in both AMAP Porto and in the Regenerar network.³ Specific data for this study was collected during an online meeting on Jitsi, in December 2020. With the motto “To communicate is to put in common”, attributed to the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, the objective of the meeting was to share the communication processes and practices of the AMAPs in Portugal, enabling the sharing of knowledge among network’s members. Fifteen people participated, including five producers, four consumers, two researchers and four observers interested in creating new AMAPs in Portugal. An experienced facilitator mediated the four-hour focus group session. During the meeting participants did a “live survey” of the communication tools in use by each AMAP and shared best practices and communication needs. The session was recorded and transcribed and generated a set of documents that were used for the analysis (Table 3). Data was confirmed and updated in May 2021 through brief structured phone interviews.

Data analysis methods

Data was analyzed through the application of an adaptation of ^{Fuster Morell’s (2018)} commons balance framework, as explained in the previous section (see Table 1). The indicators incorporate the perspective of communication to assess the commoning qualities of community-supported agriculture groups. In a context in which participation and involvement of both farmers, consumers and “co-producers”⁴ is key, the analysis focuses on the internal communication mechanisms put in place by these actors for the governance of their food communities. The application of a conceptual framework centered on concrete dimensions of analysis, allowed the systematic interpretation of data to guarantee the objectivity of the study.

Commons qualities of CSAs through a communications perspective

The application of the commons balance framework reveals distinct levels of fullfilment of commons qualities by each CSA (as summarized in Table 4).

Below, we develop a comparative analysis of the seven cases for each dimension.

On governance: All groups are informal associations, except CSA Partilhar as Colheitas, which is managed by a cooperative and represents the largest group in the Regenerar network, with about 180 members. This CSA organizes monthly meetings online, has set up an online forum where all members can participate in working groups and different debates. It is also the only group with paid communications staff. Two other groups stand out in terms of commons-oriented governance: AMAP Sado/Alvalade, which adopts sociocracy for collective organizing and decision-making, and whose members actively participate in the distribution process and have well-established agreements (contracts) between producers and consumers; and AMAP Maravilha, which is organized in working groups, holds regular meetings, monthly collective working parties, and at least two annual assemblies, where decisions are made by consensus.

In the case of AMAP Porto, which is mostly run by associate producers, there is some level of members participation, although limited to non-mandatory volunteering tasks to help organize the weekly distribution and an annual meeting to report on the evolution of the group and to discuss important issues. The remaining three groups do not hold meetings or provide any participation tools for their members -these are also the smallest groups, where usually one sole producer takes responsibility for all the management and organization-. In these cases, communication flows are top-down, from producer to consumer, without any channels for horizontal communication between members.

On economy: Concerning mechanisms for members’ participation in economic value generation, AMAPs Sado/Alvalade and Maravilha stand out again. In the first case, members have access to economic information inherent to the farming production, such as investments, hours of labor, income, and the group considers volunteer collective workdays⁵ as economic input. In 2020, the group promoted a successful crowdfunding campaign to invest in a greenhouse to improve production during the winter season.

* There is a panel in the wall of the room where distribution takes place with the fundamental principles of AMAP. A tasklist is usually available at the delivery point

Source: Sara Moreira (August 31^st, 2019).

Figure 2 AMAP’s definition and principles in Quinta Maravilha, Palmela* 

In the case of AMAP Maravilha, members are deeply involved in the discussion of the economic strategy and actively participate in ways to tackle the viability of prices versus fair income for farmers -for instance, in 2020, the group decided to pay holidays and the thirteenth month of the year to farmers-. The group also set up a “prosumers” exchange scheme, promoting the active role of consumers in providing products to the group.

In the case of CSA Partilhar as Colheitas, some economic information is available to members and the online forum has been used to make collective decisions about economic issues. Whereas regarding AMAP Porto, there is an annual economic report to inform members about the evolution of the economy of the group, and members participate in a common fund through a yearly fee. In the case of Famalicão, Gaia and Guimarães, no economic information is provided.

* On the last delivery of 2020, members of AMAP Porto shared their thoughts on diverse issues affecting the group.

Source: João Costa (December 23^rd, 2021).

Figure 3 AMAP’s barometer* 

On technology: Google-based forms and spreadsheets are the most common digital tools used by the groups to organize orders (AMAP Porto, Sado/Alvalade, Guimarães, Palmela). The cases that stand out in terms of the adoption of Free/Libre Open Source software to manage orders are: CSA Partilhar as Colheitas, which has developed its own digital platform besides the online forum based on Wordpress; and AMAP Gaia, which adopted Open Food Network’s platform Katuma.

In the case of AMAP Sado/Alvalade, the group demonstrates concerns towards the ownership of technological tools used (mentioning the move from WhatsApp to Telegram for ethical reasons), but still depends on proprietary software to organize internally, and occasionally resorts to Loomio for decision-making, besides having physical boards at the delivery point. AMAP Maravilha uses WhatsApp for urgent and brief communications and says “everything started to work better from the moment we organized ourselves with Discord, through which anyone can have access to what the other groups are working on” (personal communication, May 2021).

In the case of AMAP Famalicão, farmers organize orders through one-to-one sms and phone calls, but most of the communication happens in-person, on a weekly basis. In Porto, the group promotes participation and horizontal communication through messaging apps (one WhatsApp group for all members, another one for producers), and farmers use a unidirectional mailing-list for announcements.

On knowledge: some groups demonstrate an advanced level of knowledge exchange internal to the group, of which a study group on agroforestry for collective learning of techniques to improve the productivity of the farm in the case of AMAP Maravilha is a good example, as are the open days at CSA Partilhar as Colheitas, which also delivers a print newspaper with news from the farm every fortnight together with the food baskets. In the case of AMAP Sado/Alvalade, the sharing of knowledge on food and farming has led to the creation of a community: “people learned that they can do things together and be active in the community” (personal communication, May 2021).

Externally, members from those three groups, as well as from AMAP Porto, occasionally participate in public events, projects, seminars and other agro-food-related activities. Knowledge sharing is an especially important aspect promoted by CSA Partilhar as Colheitas in their external communications with a clear strategy for outreach. In the case of AMAPs Famalicão, Gaia and Guimarães, there do not seem to be knowledge exchange mechanisms in practice, except for day-to-day interaction in the delivery point, except in the case of AMAP Gaia, where producers are seldom present, and consumers generally do not know each other.

Source: CSA Partilhar as Colheitas (2021).

Figure 4 Bulletin of CSA Partilhar as Colheitas (April 2021) 

On social responsibility: AMAP Sado/Alvalade and Maravilha are more aligned with a social justice approach as they discuss and put in practice ways to democratize access to organic food for activists and people with less economic possibilities, for instance through work exchange and other collaborations. In the case of CSA Partilhar as Colheitas, the cooperative employs about 20 people in a rural area suffering from depopulation. Whereas in the case of Famalicão, Gaia, Guimarães and Porto there is no known policy or initiative concerning social inclusion, in Porto there has been an initiative of food donation to charity during the Covid-19 confinement in 2020. Concerning the ecological dimension, all associate producers from AMAPs Porto, Famalicão, Gaia, Guimarães and CSA Partilhar as Colheitas are third party organic certified. The latter promotes some degree of participatory certification through frequent open days at the farm. In the case of AMAP Sado/Alvalade and Maravilha, producers are not organic certified but they have mechanisms in place for participatory certification by members.

Communication needs

In a focus group session in December 2020, participants highlighted the lack of communication governance and the low involvement of members of the different AMAPs in the internal communication of the network. Additionally, knowledge about tools, processes and the use of communication technologies seems to be unevenly distributed. The heterogeneous literacy of the different AMAPs regarding the use of digital communication tools unveils the need for specific training on how to use and benefit from digital platform-supported communication before attempting to implement and manage collective decision-making methodologies through these means. Overall, participants agree that these instruments are supposed to facilitate the interactions and aim to bring AMAP members together. As such, some suggested it would be helpful to have an instruction guide on “how to” apply participatory decision-making methodologies, its etiquette and ethics, with the expectation that, through more “intuitive” and agile tools it would be possible to prevent information losses.

Additionally, the need for face-to-face training to introduce these digital communication tools appears as a condition to accelerate the understanding and agile development of operational competence for effective internal communication among the CSAs members. Moreover, participants in the focus group highlighted the need for a common repository with shared documentation -including information about best practices and the array of communication tools in use by the CSAs, and what they are used for-. Besides knowing how to use the communication tools available, the need to create a specific working group for internal communication was raised, which would be responsible for the dissemination of communications and for promoting interactions. Participants suggested a member of each AMAP should integrate the communication group to improve the network’s communication flow.

Other than the content of the communication, the way of transmitting it appears as an influencing factor for its assimilation. The participants agree that the experience on how to disseminate content should be adapted according to the audiences, to “be joyful and easy to relate”, which could happen during the tasting of products, “to please various audiences”. The group acknowledged that it should be left to the discretion of each of the different AMAPs to choose the terms and uses of their communication tools, as well as the way they should document their initiatives and share their practices with other AMAPs and the general public.

Although this focus group aimed at identifying (internal) communication needs for the self-management of the groups, participants voiced some concerns regarding the external communication of the AMAPs. The group believes that it is necessary to define a common identity for the AMAPs to better communicate their objectives, activities and initiatives through its own language, describing the movement and its members to external audiences. Decisions about what and how to communicate would also encompass audiences: to whom is each message intended, which information would be shared with everyone and which would be directed to specific groups. Therefore, the communicative needs of the network raise additional questions about the governance of communication, the roles and responsibilities concerning the channels for dissemination and which communication tools to use.

Communication for peer governance

Instead of looking at the type of organizations as an indicator of commons governance per se, we propose to look at the way these organizations develop and negotiate their peer governance systems (^{Bollier & Helfrich, 2019}) in practice through communicative action, independently of being co-ops, informal associations, private companies or public administrations. The adoption of open tools for participation and mechanisms for horizontal communication allows one to assess their commons-based character as to whether information flows top-down or horizontally; the virtual or face-to-face nature of communication spaces for collective consensus or consent-based decisions; the existence of decision-making by imposition or notification. What is shared, how it is shared, and who it is shared with, has implications in the quality of what is understood as a community. All groups refer to different ways of communicating in the collective, with a greater or lesser degree of participation and horizontality, and point out various tools, such as online discussion forums, collaborative documents or messaging applications to facilitate communication and decision-making among members. The definition of etiquette rules about the use of these tools and the decentralization of processes in multiple groups/ layers of discussion and work are in line with ^{Ostrom’s (1990)} classic principles for governing a commons. The study highlighted some concerns about hermetic communication processes (^{Ostrom & Walker, 1991}), such as the creation of silos in which information does not circulate (or only reaches a few), and ways of fighting against them so that coordination is transparent and participatory, as in the case where the groups adopt sociocracy as a dynamic governance methodology (^{Christian, 2016}). This allows streamlining the mechanisms for internal communication and decision-making, even if an imbalanced expertise on tools and techniques by different members seems to generate tensions and fragilities.

Communication for a commons-oriented economy

Addressing the economic dimension of the commons from the perspective of communication makes it possible to distinguish the degree of involvement and participation of members in the co-construction of a commons economy. The economic objective becomes the collective process of deciding and acting on the economy itself. Beyond making economic information accessible and transparent, it is important to understand what the community decides to do with it. As such, we found evidence of pro-commons economic practices based on communicative actions, such as crowdfunding for collective investments campaigns, information on labor needs on farms, or calls for ajudadas, whose results are also seen as economic input. In all these steps, communication is key and goes well beyond accountability and management reports: it involves calling people to deliberate and participate in the processes, favoring a solidarity economy that is worked in common.

Tech sovereignty for food commons

In Portugal, the food sovereignty movement does not yet seem to consider technological sovereignty as a relevant aspect in the construction of food commons. Only one case explicitly demonstrated concerns with proprietary software. All the others in general seemed to be focused on plain, agile and cost-free technological solutions to quickly solve problems and address group needs, such as communication between members (WhatsApp or Facebook groups) and order organization (Google forms and spreadsheets). The absence of a critical stance in relation to the origin of technological tools contrasts with the strong awareness in regards to the origin of food. There are exceptions that recognize there is a problem with the use of such tools, but do not have the time, resources or knowledge to try other solutions. On the other hand, non-digital technologies play an important role in the group’s internal interactions and serve as a way for inclusion and participation.

On knowledge as a commons

Far from the days when community practices were so ingrained in the daily lives of communities that there was no written law for their governance and knowledge was passed down orally from generation to generation (^{Illich, 1983}), today it is often in urban settings -with low communitarian memory- where groups of people are experimenting with commons-based practices. Knowledge sharing is an essential part for the development and sustenance of the CSAs we studied and happens both internally within the groups and externally to other publics. From collective groups of study on agroecological techniques, to meetings between producers to share experiences, to the participation in international projects and networks.

From social responsibility to eco-social justice

One can distinguish between actions that seek social inclusion as civic responsibility, and those that intend to bring about deeper changes and that are concerned with social justice. Communication is key because it is through it that communities discuss and arrive at new understandings about emancipatory inclusion, for instance, how to guarantee access to food for all regardless of the financial situation.

Regarding Fuster’s environmental indicator, we seek to make another distinction that is related to certain communication practices specific to groups that have agroecology as a basic principle. The most common way of ensuring that production methods are environmentally friendly is through organic certification issued by an external entity, often displayed in the form of a label assigned to producers. When we talk about commoning processes, it makes sense to take into account other ways of involving the community in the “participatory certification” of agroecological production methods. This type of certification depends on the existence of meetings, visits, discussion, evaluation, and mutual aid between members of a CSA. For that to happen, communication processes and practices need to be put in place.

Impact

A later version of the commons balance framework (^{Fuster Morell et al., 2019}) includes an impact dimension to measure the number of adopters or people involved in the economic initiative. Although this study presents the size of each group in quantitative terms, measuring impact according to the relevance of their communications would require a new round of research. In his studies on the impact of ICTs in agroecological cooperativism in Catalonia, ^{Espelt (2020)} concludes “professionalized CSA’s with better ICT adoption and constituted as agroecology platform cooperatives, have a greater impact and an increased potential for promoting a food consumption model based on agroecology” (p. 269). In fact, the largest group analyzed, with more than 180 members, is the only one that has a professional structure in the organization of the CSA and paid communication staff. In the remaining cases, communications are considered important to the maintenance and socialization of the groups, but are in no way formalized nor remunerated, since they are not recognized as a strategic pillar for strengthening and expanding the CSAs.