Responsible consumption adds increasingly pressing obligations to the supermarket cart, such as the fight against climate change and other forms of social commitment. At United Way España we believe that this weight, however, is a sign of one of the citizenry’s most effective powers. That’s why we launched the Habitando Cosechas project, with which we want to contribute to a shopping list aligned with Human Rights.
Organic bread, happy chicken eggs, pesticide-free lettuce… The mere act of shopping seems like a minefield of assaults on the common good, as if controlling calories and the chemical load of what we consume weren’t concern enough. To reducing environmental impact is added, with increasing force, vigilance over social justice. “That’s all we needed,” you hear people say, “to think about who produces the food and under what conditions.” But, calm down, we’re not asking for a radical revolution, just a moment of attention.
Because it seems more serious to us to remain unmoved by the certainty that, within our borders, the labor rights of those who grow the fruit we put in our cart are being violated. Our proposal is called Habitando Cosechas and focuses on strawberry cultivation in Huelva, where the human workforce that grows the world’s largest extensions of the red fruit does so under conditions of alarming precariousness. Something many social entities have been pointing out for some time.
United Way came into contact with this reality through architect Alba Balmaseda, professor at the University of Stuttgart and lead ideologist behind Habitando Cosechas. Alba is closely familiar with the situation in the fields of Lepe and the tireless denunciations made by migrant associations in the area. Abusive workdays, days not registered on payroll for no apparent reason, non-compliance with labor law, and a form of housing that, for various reasons, results in settlements without proper electricity supply, without drinking water, far from urban centers with no transportation options, completely lacking in services. The consequences? Diseases, fires, insecurity and a level of social alienation as high as the invisible wall the population of Lepe raises when a Senegalese man, a Central American woman, a Romanian or a Moroccan woman approaches the village shop or tries to rent an apartment like anyone else, “because they’re the ones from the shantytowns.”
In March 2022, United Way presented Habitando Cosechas at the 1st Leadership Forum against Modern Slavery organized by the Spanish Foundation for Human Rights. There, the testimony of two of those shantytown residents—Seydou Diop and Haya Fosfana, two workers from Lepe—could be heard, saying things like “in Senegal I had never gone hungry, nor had I slept on the street like here” or “to make a living in Spain I found no option but to work in the fields and live in the settlements.” Both agreed on their bewilderment: how is it possible that so many people fall into extreme exclusion upon arriving at the supposed European paradise of prosperity? They also pointed out something else they consider evident: “we are essential; people in Spain don’t know we live like this, being essential.” They refer to the impact their long, difficult workdays have on our well-stocked stomachs (and on the economy as a whole).
And they complain with firsthand knowledge because they are the architects of their own associative movement; that is, they denounce problems and propose solutions. In the case of Seydou and Haya, from ASNUCI, one of the most active associations around Huelva’s strawberry fields, with which United Way is working to boost their power for change.
Habitando Cosechas‘ first mission, as Alba Balmaseda puts it, is “to understand informality from different perspectives.” In the settlements not everything is disposable; there’s a surprising array of habitability solutions (ancestral heating systems, bread ovens, surprising insulation ideas) from which lessons can be drawn as they’re improved. The idea, therefore, is not to eliminate the settlements, but to bring them to dignified conditions based on the reality and knowledge of those who inhabit them. “Informality is seen as something negative but it hides many values, the audacity of survival, the strength of everyday acts in the pursuit of wellbeing,” says Alba, who besides having done a detailed diagnosis in Lepe, has long involved students from several universities (Stuttgart, Nairobi, Politécnica de Madrid) in a series of workshops where they learn about materials, energy efficiency and structures from the antipodes of academia, “revealing how intelligent and sustainable we are when we have no resources.”
That shift in perspective, besides permeating the awareness of the students and teaching staff Alba has gathered, is also reaching the strawberry associative movement itself and, through United Way’s action, local authorities. The Lepe City Council and the Andalusian Ombudsman already know about the project to move to the next phase, which aims to bring the conclusions of the fieldwork to the real improvement of the community’s living conditions. Of the whole community.
How? By transforming the physical environment of the settlements gradually, improving them without a clean slate, involving those who inhabit those spontaneous houses and their neighbors: “We want to generate new relationships between the agricultural workforce and the host community. We can’t fix all the problems, but by intervening in something as concrete as habitability, we can spark big changes in everything else.” Words of an architect. New homes tailored to those who already know these places, built on respect and consensus. Too utopian? Harder things have been done, step by step, day by day.
Of course, for this novelty to be possible, another fundamental piece is needed: companies. United Way inhabits a sometimes unfamiliar terrain between social action and economic activity where, however, every turn of the wrench counts. Habitando Cosechas needs companies; those that produce, distribute, advertise, stock the shelves. Between the hands of Haya or Seydou and the purchasing decision there’s a chain of wills of essential value that we need to add to the cause, as Arcadis, international sustainable development consultancy, has already done by contributing corporate volunteering.
The act of harvesting is, in itself, a project, a form of strategy. We want to use that metaphor so the link between what is produced and what is bought is free of burdens; including ecological aspects, because the fields of Huelva also need a change to avoid soil overexploitation. Traceability is good news, even if it weighs on our shoulders amid the warmth of the supermarket (and we leave out of this review other areas of consumption such as clothing, while celebrating the recent news that Inditex is going to start using recycled fabrics in its production).
Faced with the demand for commitment in consumption, logical questions always arise: “Shouldn’t the authorities handle this? What do I do with this information?” To start: spread the word. To continue: choose well what you buy. Both are very concrete forms of action. Let’s not forget: at the end of the chain, the power is ours.