When Organic Consumption Becomes All the Rage, Why Are the Farmers Here Abandoning Certification?
“Every time I arrive in a new city, the first thing I do is ask the locals where the market is.”
This past June, I set out on a market journey in Barcelona, Spain, echoing what food writer Han Liangyi described in her book Wandering Through the World’s Markets. Of the many markets in the city, it was not the famous Boqueria Market or Sant Antoni Market that drew me most, but a small neighbourhood one — the Mercat de la Terra (literally “Earth Market”), Barcelona’s Slow Food market.
Despite studying at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Italy, often called a “Slow Food stronghold”, I always felt that the ideals of Slow Food were little more than an inconsequential notion hovering in the air. Stepping outside the campus, how many Europeans even knew about or endorsed Slow Food?
I. The Necessity of Markets
Right next to the Slow Food market is an important street art centre in Barcelona. There is a wide open square, a raised platform used for festivals and performances, and a dedicated area where children can play. The atmosphere is free and lively — ideal for buying some food at the market and sitting on a bench for an impromptu picnic.
By around 11 a.m. that day, the market’s growers had begun to set up their seasonal fruits and vegetables, organic sausages and meat, cheese, naturally leavened bread, olive oil, and more. At a speciality-produce tasting organised by the market, we sampled local varieties of white asparagus and tomatoes, and even caught a workshop on Garrotxa, a traditional goat’s cheese from Catalonia.
Garrotxa, this local goat’s cheese, had all but disappeared by the 1980s before being revived thanks to the efforts of young cheesemakers and a goat-farming cooperative. I used to recoil at the strong goaty flavour of goat’s cheese, but Garrotxa is remarkably delicate and creamy, with a rich aroma and no hint of that gaminess. The several cheeses on sale at the market each have their own character, too.
The owner of Formatgeria De Clua told us that they had tried many approaches to making a softer goat’s cheese. Because soft cheeses are so prone to mould, rather than fighting it, they introduced a specific mould strain to control the fermentation, ultimately producing a cheese with a thin protective rind and a sweet, creamy interior.
The owners of Formatgeria de Tòrrec then offered us a taste of their bestseller, Blanch de Tòrrec, a lactic curd cheese made from raw goat’s milk. It melts on the tongue with a smooth, clean finish and a hint of sour cream. The stallholder explained that this is because their goats are of the Murciana breed, considered the finest in Spain. Each goat produces around 500 litres of milk a year, with a fat content of 5.6% and a protein content of 3.6%.
I couldn’t help but marvel — a gastronomic study trip really must be spent in the market! Sitting through lectures in a classroom was just too dull.
The owner told us he had once been a barista in Australia before returning to Barcelona to open a café. After that went bust, he set up the coffee cart, which turned out to be quite popular. Regulars gather around the little cart to enjoy their coffee and chat at ease, and it has become part of their daily routine — something he has deftly woven into their everyday life.
Why do I love browsing markets? Perhaps it is because there is always a story unfolding in the present tense here. The market is a wonderful space — brimming with a raw, vivid sense of place, human warmth, and the genuine stories of the vendors. It lets me feel again, understand, and imagine the countless ways one might live.
II. “Organic” Is No Big Deal
It turned out that the Slow Food market’s most distinctive feature is that it creates a space for small producers who are shut out by the mainstream organic certification system.
Over the past few decades, as organic production and consumption have grown, so has the number of third-party organic certification bodies setting standards and auditing compliance. But organic certification standards focus solely on whether production processes comply with regulations. They do not consider whether farm labour relations are fair, whether monoculture is being checked, or how local products are protected. Small producers who excel in all these areas are therefore left outside the certification threshold.
The owner of the Apitintegral organic fruit stall told us that after three years of organic certification, he decided to drop it. The reason? The mountain of paperwork had made his work thoroughly inefficient.
“The organic label doesn’t include information we consider important — for instance, whether a product has been subjected to other technological processing or artificial additives, or what percentage of a company’s total output is actually organic. For small farmers like us, the time and effort spent on increasingly complex paperwork simply isn’t sustainable.” Having experienced Italian bureaucracy first-hand, I could empathise enormously.
Silenta, another stallholder who sells cured sausages, also opted out of organic certification because of the process and fees running into hundreds or even thousands of euros. Silenta runs a small, family-run slaughterhouse; they source meat locally and make sausages by traditional methods, following Slow Food principles to the letter.
She considers certification and labelling “no big deal” — whether organic or Protected Geographical Indication (PGI), there are rules that small producers simply cannot meet.
For example, her friend’s slaughterhouse sits on the boundary between two towns. His shop is in Town A, but the farms from which he sources meat are in Town B, a ten-minute drive away. Precisely because the meat comes from a different municipality, his products cannot be certified PGI or organic, even though they comply with every other requirement.
My American classmate Clark, who joined us on the visit, told me that small farmers in the United States face similar frustrations.
Clark once ran a small organically certified farm in California. Although he only had to undergo a USDA inspection once a year, he was required to keep meticulous records of everything — from irrigation frequency to the duration of each weeding session. The more crop varieties he grew, the more complex the paperwork became, and he felt that maintaining diversity with over 100 seed varieties was already difficult enough.
III. Participatory Guarantee Systems
The Slow Food market has adopted Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS), an initiative launched by Slow Food. As long as farmers comply with the system — avoiding chemical inputs such as synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, and growing only seasonal local crops — they are welcome to bring their produce to the Slow Food market.
The market regularly organises farm visits so that consumers can learn about food production at the source. Stallholders are also happy for consumers to come to their farms in person to inspect their growing methods, work processes, and the raw materials used in processing, as well as to review supplier lists and procurement certificates.
Yet what ultimately allows them to put down roots in the Slow Food market for the long term is the trust between farmers and consumers.
Cal Sileta, a stall specialising in olive oil, almonds, and lamb, caught my eye — the counter was lined with photographs of their olive groves and oil-pressing scenes. The stallholder told us proudly that his family still tends the olive trees left to them by their ancestors a century ago, and continues to acquire abandoned groves, as young people who no longer wish to farm have all moved to the city.
Their lambs are nursed entirely by ewes, and the forage they eat comes from the olive groves and almond orchards. In summer the sheep graze on wild grass; in spring and autumn they feed on almond and olive leaves and fallen fruit. But last winter Catalonia was unusually dry, making it hard to provide the flock with enough feed. They had to buy hay from other farms, and the olive harvest dropped, too.
“The boars are desperate — they only come to the orchards because they cannot find food in the forest. Do you realise the consequences that drought brings?” I was at a loss for how to answer him.
In Europe, where organic consumption is highly visible, recognising an organic certification label is easy enough, but a label tells you nothing about the very real difficulties farmers face in production. Meeting producers face to face at the Slow Food market, I think, is as much a process of building trust as it is an opportunity for consumers to learn about food and educate themselves.
IV. Giving Back to the Community
Every stallholder is free to cook and store goods in the market’s shared kitchen. One of the market’s most popular bakeries bakes its bread right here; a ten-minute walk away and it is on the market stalls — cutting transport costs while preserving the bread’s fresh flavour.
The Slow Food market has also achieved zero waste. Consumers bring their own containers and cloth bags, while the food waste generated by stallholders is collected and delivered in bulk to the local AbonoKm0 association, whose members use it for vermicomposting before returning the finished compost to city residents for balcony gardening.
Barcelona is home to more than 200 Slow Food restaurants which, like the market, are part of the Slow Food movement — a connection that makes collaboration and mutual support all the easier.
Under Slow Food guidelines, restaurants must source at least 40% of their ingredients locally (the remaining 60% must be Slow Food–certified products), and they must buy from at least eight local producers. Produce from the Slow Food market is naturally the first choice for these restaurants.
Each Slow Food restaurant, too, has its own character. Restaurante Somorrostro specialises in little-known methods of preparing fish; its menu changes every week depending on what is in season, with the rest of the ingredients coming from the Slow Food market or their own organic vegetable garden.
That day we also visited spaimescladis. This Slow Food restaurant is dedicated to providing employment for migrants and also serves as the base for el convit/e, a magazine exploring migrants’ rights and questions of food decolonisation.
After leaving behind the Beijing drifter life of being surrounded by Meituan Waimai deliveries and Freshippo, I was surprised to find a sense of home in the Slow Food market and Slow Food restaurants. From farms and home workshops to the market, and then on to different consumers and restaurants, this network weaves together a web of distribution pathways and stories, every thread brimming with delightful surprises.
Unlike the standardised logistics and sales of supermarkets or online shopping, a small market like this is full of elasticity — soft yet resilient, much like a yoga practice that is forever adjusting its breath.
Whether it is the produce supply that shifts with the seasons, a stall that grew from a difficult beginning into a micro-community woven into local life, or the exploration of ecological farming beyond organic certification — the Slow Food market’s stallholders keep innovating and adapting, sustaining their vitality day after day. This modest little market has become a place where all kinds of imagination and possibility take root, a scene through which we can read whether a city is truly inclusive and forward-looking.
Editor: Zeen