It’s that time of the year again where we get to share in numbers what our community of farmers and CrowdFarmers have been up to this past year. Together, we share a mission to create the fairest and most sustainable food supply chain in Europe. We always knew it wasn’t going to be an easy task, but 2023 presented a few extra challenges. 

During 2023, we saw heavy droughts, shorter harvests, and witnessed how supermarkets continued to create unfair power balances, but we also saw a loyal community of CrowdFarmers continue to support our farmers, a growing interest in regenerative agriculture and a couple new projects launched to fight food insecurity and waste. 

Before you dive in to the full report, here are a few highlights to give you a taste of what’s been going on at CrowdFarming this past year!

• We finished 2023 with a community of 283 farmers and 343,656 CrowdFarmers (also known as customers in other companies)
• We continue to support our farmers’ transition to organic and regenerative farming, with 3,899 hectares in the process of transition.
• Over 70% of our producers have experienced an increase in income since joining CrowdFarming, and nearly 30% have managed to keep their income stable, even in a year marked by crop reductions and cost increases.
• We launched our brand  ‘All is Good‘ as part of our goal to end food waste, preventing 52,514 kg of fruit from ending up in the bin by transforming them into delicious products like jam, hummus, and juice!
• Through CrowdGiving, an initiative to donate fresh fruit directly from the farmer to food banks across Europe, our community donated more than 45 tonnes of produce in December alone.
• We have also worked to be more sustainable in our day-to-day operations, reducing our emissions by up to 27% and collaborating with logistics providers who strive to offer increasingly sustainable solutions for our shipments.
  
  

As we continue on our journey, we can expect to face similar challenges this year, like droughts and unusual seasons, as well as some new challenges that we have yet to discover. But we also hope to get better at dealing with them. In a project like CrowdFarming, we learn to expect the unexpected and to sleep with one eye open, we understand that nature is our boss. If anything, this year has strengthened our ambition of connecting European farmers to consumers and working to make agriculture a lever for a more sustainable future.