At 89 years old, Gerarda Campos Bolaño, from Lima, is one of the thousands of people from Ourense who grows some of the food she will consume throughout the year in her small garden in Xinzo.
Pumpkins, zucchini, beans, leeks, tomatoes, apples and peppers are some of the foods that this woman collects from her small plot next to her home. Unlike others, he does not have chickens or raise pigs.
He affirms that “this year I was not so good that I only had maces. I was a boa tempted in zucchini and cabazos.” Every year his family receives dozens of kilos of food from neighbors and relatives, also self-consumers, which, in some cases, freezes or stores in glass containers. “These months they make a few jars of mace compote, and I have enough of them for the winter,” he says.
The advantages of self-consumption in rural Ourense and Galicia are many. The main one is savings when going to the supermarket; especially in fruit and vegetable products, eggs and chicken. Furthermore, the quality and reliability of the food is assured.
The latest estimates from the Xunta are that more than 66,659 households in Ourense resort to self-consumption of food, more than 50% of the total in the province. An important fact when we talk about pollution and the carbon footprint. Of the four Galician provinces, it is estimated that Ourense is the one where self-consumption of food occurs most. Chickens and eggs are the king products of Galician rural self-consumption; clearly above the pig.
The number of pig slaughters has been falling little by little for some time in Galicia. At the Galician level, the latest official evaluations reflect that a quarter of the country’s households use sacho and seeds to obtain the food they have to taste.
The level of food self-consumption is also increasing throughout the world. Local products and the commitment to organic farming do not stop growing on all five continents. Author: RM