REKO is an alternative local food network (Leipämaa-Leskinen, 2021). But what is REKO an alternative to? This is a question that has puzzled us since we started exploring REKO in 2013 and revisited it in 2023. In this blog text, we reflect on the question through our past and current ethnographic research.
Hanna has been following REKO since its beginning in year 2013. The first pick-ups in Vaasa, a city on the west coast of Finland, took place in 2014. At that time, consumers and producers made official agreements in which consumers committed to purchasing specific food products from particular producers (Leipämaa-Leskinen et al., 2022). This procedure was designed to ensure that there are enough paying customers for each producer, providing a safeguard to producers’ economic livelihood and reducing their financial risks. It was soon noted that written agreements were not needed, as the number of consumer members started to grow exponentially and organically. Since then, food ordering is organized using the pre-ordering system, which helps producers to optimize their production in a sustainable way. Based on these notions, REKO appeared to be an alternative to the dominant food retail system, but there maybe something more?
When Evianna started her research around REKO in year 2023, REKO has been active for 10 years in Finland. Notably, the daily operations have remained quite similar over the years. REKO has also overcome several difficulties along its journey, such as the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic and periods when the number of paying customers was very low. Based on the latest fieldwork, with fresh academic perspectives, we have observed that REKO is an alternative marketplace with the potential to reimagine the dominant food system. This is significant, considering the ongoing environmental issues caused by our current economic system.
Today, REKO has successfully operated for 11 years, establishing itself as a prominent alternative marketplace for food. It has evolved from a local food network into a marketplace characterized by unique production and consumption practices. REKO has grown into an entity that ensures sufficient availability of products and their local seasonality. Moreover, it nurtures the professionalism of producers and the quality of products. These findings have inspired us to reimagine REKO as a post-growth marketplace. A key concept enabling us to draw such conclusions is that of craft-orientation which consists of three dimensions: (1) activity guided by the desire to do a job well for its own sake, (2) prioritization of human engagement over machine control, standardization and efficiency, (3) epistemic, rather than an instrumental relationship with objects of production (Rennstam & Paulsson, 2024, p.5). We argue that through the materialization of craft-orientation REKO enables a future imagination for an economic system that is better balanced with our planetary resources (Bell, et al., 2021; Rennstam & Paulsson, 2024).
One thing is sure – REKO is a marketplace where a researcher truly gets to explore many types of questions. It provides an exceptional avenue for promoting alternative ways to organize the current marketplace system.
By, Hanna Leipämaa-Leskinen and Evianna Pehkonen
REFERENCES
Bell, E., Dacin, M. T., & Toraldo, M. L. (2021). Craft Imaginaries – Past, Present and Future. Organization Theory, 2(1).
Leipämaa-Leskinen, H. (2021). Practicing mundane consumer resistance in the REKO local food system. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 24(3), 341-357.
Leipämaa-Leskinen, H., Närvänen, E., & Makkonen, H. (2022). The rise of collaborative engagement platforms. European Journal of Marketing, 56(13), 26-49.
Rennstam, J., & Paulsson, A. (2024). Craft-orientation as a mode of organizing for postgrowth society. Organization.