Bayramiç Change, Production and Marketing Cooperative

About Us

For the past fifteen years, we have been living together by engaging in agricultural production. In 2020, we took a new step by establishing the Bayramiç Change Cooperative to expand our collective way of life and the agricultural production we have created. We believe that organizing agriculture as a collective activity is the way for clean food production and a solution to food crisis. Our cooperative focuses on strengthening cooperation and solidarity through various partnerships and prioritizing the requirements of enhancing collectivism in the areas where it operates in order to find solutions to the problems we face.

We believe that the problems in agriculture are not independent of the problems of our world. We believe that the effort to find solutions to problems with a holistic approach should be carried out together with the effort to change the social and cultural climate. We are dedicated to the ecological approach to food production, striving for it to be realized in a better world.

Producing collective solutions to problems such as financing, equipment, land structure, intensity of agricultural pesticides, desertification of agricultural lands, intermediaries, and lack of organization in agriculture, as well as increasing knowledge and creating various collaborations in this field, are the fundamental objectives of our cooperative. We also emphasize the importance of strengthening collaborations and organizations between consumers and producers, in addition to organizing agricultural production through organized producers while preserving diversity.

In order to achieve a more livable world and move away from the mentality structures that destroy nature, our cooperative will prioritize social transformation and strive to act responsibly not only in agricultural but also in economic, social, and cultural fields, aiming to build the future from today.

We understand the importance of producing solutions to the problems we face through a different way of relating and thinking, and we strive to implement this necessity from today.

We use local seeds in all our agricultural activities. We share these seeds, contribute to their multiplication and spread. Both our agricultural activities and product processing processes are based on chemical-free, additive-free, preservative-free, and clean agriculture.We not only keep our own cultivated area clean but also develop relationships that promote clean agriculture for the benefit of our environment.

We value the importance of fairness for both nature and humans in our activities and strive to create a replicable model. We are aware of the importance of knowing what we consume, and we greatly value the mutual trust relationship. We make efforts to ensure that the entire production process, from the field to the fork, is transparent, participatory, and open to observation.

We derive our strength from being a community and enjoy the advantages of being innovative, dynamic, and young ☺. We bring technological solutions to traditional methods and strive to improve the efficiency and quality of our production processes while preserving our roots.

Not just in agricultural area, we are open to cooperation in all aspects of life. 

Our Activities:

- We have a vermicompost production facility within our cooperative where we produce our own fertilizers. We produce both solid and liquid vermicompost and also develop natural plant protection products, conducting various experiments in this field. Recognizing that agriculture is a cyclical and holistic process, we produce inputs such as fertilizers, seeds, and seedlings ourselves. Our [BerSol] vermicompost facility operates as part of the cooperative's claim for non-toxic and necessary agriculture.

- In our journey with medicinal and aromatic plants, we have been engaged for 15 years. We are familiar with approximately 100 kinds of plants, growing nearly half of them on a small scale, sometimes for experimental purposes. We also collect some of them sustainably from nature. We extract oils from these plants, prepare herbal teas, and produce various spices. Some of them are transformed into creams and ointments. We produce the content of our creams and ointments ourselves and obtain beeswax from our own hives.

- We have been practicing beekeeping for about 15 years. We never feed our bees with sugar and never use chemicals against bee pests. We always consider the bees' own nutrition when harvesting honey from the hive. We leave the pollen, which is the food of the bee larvae, to the bees and do not collect propolis, which is the hive's defense mechanism against bacteria and viruses. Among the limited quantities of honey we produce, you can find varieties such as mountain flower honey, linden honey, thyme honey, and heather honey. The quantity and variety of honey we have may vary seasonally.

- We have built a structure that connects the entire chain of fertilizer production, agricultural production, processing of products, and reaching consumers. We produce a wide range of products from wheat to sesame, from vegetables and fruits to medicinal plants, preserving diversity. We produce a variety of products, including tomato paste, grape molasses, tarhana (a traditional Turkish soup), bread, vegetable and fruit preserves, in a sanitary facility with a certified organic product processing area of 2200 m2. We package and deliver them directly to consumers in local markets.

- By keeping our living space open to guests and companionship, we aim to multiply a new sociality by increasing gatherings.