From Reggio Calabria to the entire region, often crossing into the rest of Italy. For twenty years the consortium of small Calabrian producers Equosud has resisted large-scale retail trade and practiced work, dignity and solidarity, while at the same time creating solidarity networks that give strength to small production companies in Calabria and other regions.
This week, I am more willing to tell you this story than usual. Someone said, “They didn’t know it was impossible, so they did it.” This phrase has haunted me since I found it written on a wall. Here you are, those from Equosud knew it was impossible, yet they did it anyway. «The utopia we create every day consists first of all in trying to tell the beautiful stories of Calabria, those of many honest people who work, plan, create», Mimmo Tramontana repeats like a mantra.
Mimmo has always been one of the faces of Equosoud, but be careful when referring to him as “the leader”, he might get angry! And he would be right. Equosud is a consortium of small Calabrian producers that promotes a new lifestyle, economy and society, creating moments of aggregation to consolidate community bonds. And he does all this without a leader, questioning and operating collectively.
Mimmo Tramontana (left)
The consortium carefully keeps itself out of the large-scale retail supply chain, a necessity but also a choice. «It means rejecting the rules of the capitalist market, which rewards the lowest price at all costs, hitting consumers and strangling producers. In other words, deciding how to produce and determining the price of products based on justice and sustainability criteria”, explains Mimmo.
Justice and sustainability are not irreconcilable with the logic that dominates the market today, “another economy is possible!” The promoters of EquoSud remind us that they propose «sustainability for consumers, who must be able to access quality products, preventing them from being confined to luxury niches; sustainability for the environment since by avoiding industrial sophistication the authenticity of the products and the integrity of the territory are preserved; sustainability for the producer, which means obtaining from the sale what is necessary to survive and create work”.
Oranges and bergamot essences, soppressata and pecorino cheese, spices and medical herbs, books and ideas. A basket of 150 products, around twenty producers from all over Calabria and of these at least half live on this alone. Equosud consortiumizes the producers, distributes their products, ensures that they are not the result of extractive activities or based on the exploitation of labour, meets the defenders of common goods, participates in social and environmental struggles. «It’s a wonderful daily job, which allows us to embrace wonderful people and places».
For almost twenty years, the red Equosud van has left Reggio Calabria to travel all the roads of the region and beyond, often the destination is the fair trade markets and purchasing groups of the centre-north. In fact, when I meet Mimmo Tramontana, the van has just returned from Florence where we are working on the Tuscan network. Relations with Tuscany and part of Emilia Romagna are ancient and solid. «Many GKN workers are part of the Campi Bisenzio purchasing group», explains Mimmo.
«EquoSud is a reality that feeds on solidarity, so when there was a flood in Florence we managed to do our part with a pallet of oranges. And now we are trying to arrange for ten or fifteen kids, children of unpaid workers, to come down here in July for a holiday. Everything is managed by us.” It is no coincidence that the EquoSud project was born twenty years ago in Calabria, in Reggio Calabria, drawing inspiration from the experience of ancient mutual aid societies, people’s houses, the right to civic uses of uncultivated lands. On the horizon “the emancipation of the Calabrians, the abandonment of dominant models that respond to political and economic wills extraneous to our real needs and interests”.
Calabria is a land where there is work and what is missing are work rights. There is illegal, precarious, poor work, sometimes – especially near the countryside – bordering on slavery. The ideal situation for a politics based on submission and guaranteed by the state of need. Equosud products are made in Calabria and are free from any form of workforce exploitation: «The hands needed to produce them were paid regularly, down to the last cent. It is the first condition we place on suppliers.”
The original article can be read here
