Webbinarium
30.10.2024 kl. 08:30 - 09:15

Nätverksmorgon/verkostoaamu goes in English. HANSALIM- a South Korean concept for selling and marketing local products

Learn more about HANSALIM- a South Korean concept for selling and marketing local products. It began with a simple promise of mutual responsibility between consumers and producers. Now it is even a life movement, spread all over the country. Get inspired by researcher Jonathan Dolley and hear what Mr Reko in Finland Thomas Snellman says about this concept.

What is HANSALIM?

Introduction:

In 1986 a small rice store called Hansalim Nongsan opened for business in a central district of Seoul, South Korea. It was founded by a diverse group of organic farmers, urban consumers, educators, artists and pro-democracy activists who wanted to create an alternative to the emerging industrial food system. From that first store they operated a pre-order direct sales business between their members which included consumers in Seoul and small-scale organic farmers within easy reach of the city. They began with a simple promise of mutual responsibility between consumers and producers. 1) Consumer members would ensure that producers could make a decent and secure living while preserving and improving the health of the land and all its life. 2) Producer members would ensure the health of consumers by providing clean and healthy food. From that small beginning, what soon became known as the ’Hansalim Life Movement’ spread across the country as new member cooperatives were born and consumers and producers continued to join. Now a national Federation, Hansalim has over 900,000 consumer members and around 2,300 producer households. Its 30 consumer cooperatives operate 240 stores around the country distributing 4,000 types of raw and processed goods produced by 136 producer communities and 110 processing enterprises. The prices and production quantities of most goods are agreed annually in advance and producer communities receive around 70% of the sale price with the remaining margin covering the costs of administration, shared logistics and other supporting activities. However, not only is Hansalim an alternative food system operating in contradiction the market system, it is also a social movement for peace and mutual care between people and nature and between rural and urban communities. And as an alliance of democratically managed economic enterprises it is an independent self-sustaining movement. I describe it as a multi-stakeholder cooperative federation of producers and citizen consumers whose shared goal is to promote the transformation of society towards a sustainable future in which all life can thrive. To that end, Hansalim members have created solar energy coops, logistics worker coops, child-care and elder-care coops, educational and training institutes, a publishing company, charitable foundation, peer-to-peer funding platform, numerous environmental campaigns and a research institute to promote the broader Life Movement. My hope is that by telling some of Hansalim’s story, their successes and challenges, I can provide some inspiration and useful lessons for those in Europe and beyond who are seeking sustainability transformations in food systems.

 

About the speaker Jonathan Dolley:

He is a former Marie Sklodowska-Curie Global Fellow at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex and a Fellow of the Sussex Sustainability Research Programme (SSRP). He is from the UK but he has been living in South Korea since 2020 and from 2021-2024. He has been researching Hansalim and the Life Movement in South Korea (project website: https://livingtogether.xyz ). Currently he is an independent researcher affiliated with the Mosim and Salim Research Institute, South Korea.  His current research focus is on the role of solidarity-based food systems in sustainability transformations and he is working to develop a knowledge exchange network of practitioners and researchers in Korea and Europe to learn from the experience of Hansalim and other similar initiatives. In previous research he has studied the impacts of urbanization on peri-urban agriculture in Wuhan and Delhi and helped to design a web-based AI-powered tool for land-use change analysis in peri-urban areas (https://wearepal.ai/projects/ssrp).

 

About the commentator Thomas Snellman:

Thomas living in Pedersöre in the western part of Finland, this farmer has been working in agriculture since 1981. Initially focusing on dairy cows until 1998, the shift to solely beef cattle followed. Since 1990, the farm has been fully organic. Over the years, the farmer has been deeply involved in rural development, particularly in projects related to organic production, serving as an advisor, mentor, and licensed supervisor in the organic sector. Additionally, the farmer has worked part-time on national projects aimed at promoting organic farming.

In 2013, the farmer launched the direct-selling system REKO, which allows producers to sell directly to consumers without intermediaries.

The system rapidly gained popularity, initially in Finland and then expanding to other countries. Today, REKO has more than 800 local rings with over 3 million members in about 20 countries worldwide, including Scandinavia, the Baltics, and beyond.

For these contributions to sustainable food production and rural development, the farmer was recognized as ”The Nordic Food Entrepreneur” in 2017 and ”The Countryside Profile in Finland” in 2018​.