In 2013, the City of Zeberio proposed the creation of a land offer and a reserve for farmers, in which the members who started to work promoted a joint project of canning in collaboration with other farmers in the locality and the Arratia environment. The Maskilu Conservak project was created. “Before we had to go to Garaio or Leintz-Gatzaga to make preserves. Now we can do them here, and many baserritarras from the area are involved in the project,” explains Jon Garcia.

Surplus recovery tool

The formula chosen by the project members was the creation of a partnership. “The baserritars use space as partners and each transforms its products,” explains García. Today they are close to twenty partners, but it says that a dozen conserves meet every day. “For us it’s a conservative tool: as a farmer, the idea is to make preserves with the products that leave us.” Many members of the association make baskets and distribute them in different consumption groups, so it is important for them to be able to offer preserves and jams in the most difficult times of the orchard, between May and June. “We can transform any kind of vegetables or fruits. Marmalades, tomato, grass, green beans, acellular, guindillas in vinegar… we do everything.”

All members of the association have a food handler's card and have received various courses to learn how to handle canned equipment and machinery. In addition to partners working on their own preserves, they also serve foreign nationals. “The people who manage the area are usually in charge of conserving those from outside, because those from outside can’t do that work,” he says. All the products leave the processing centre with a health record, but only the members of the association bear the stamp of Maskilu.

Part of the movement for agroecology

“Our raison d’être is to work for agroecology and we have to do with other movements related to agriculture and food sovereignty,” García explains. Not all members of the association are in an agro-ecological model, but they all have minimal commitments. “At Arratia we are well known and it is politically important for us to have clear minimum values and fight for it,” he adds.

The members of Maskilu relate to the EHNE Bizkaia trade union, the women of Etxalde and other groups, and stress that they are open to the new farmers interested in the project. “Here we are willing to show anything to anyone who wants to do something and to help them as we can.”