Paysans Artisans

About Paysans Artisans

Paysans-Artisans is a Belgian cooperative with a social purpose, based in Floreffe and active since 2013. It brings together farmers, artisan food processors, consumers, volunteers, and cooperative members around a shared project: building a fairer food system through short supply chains, local sourcing, and direct relationships between producers and consumers.

The cooperative serves both individual shoppers and professional buyers. It sells food through neighborhood and village shops, online ordering, a small-grocer service for independent retailers and farm shops, and collective catering channels. Beyond selling products, it also works to organize production chains, support producers, and create spaces for exchange, learning, and citizen engagement.

Core Values

• Fairness and solidarity: The cooperative seeks a balance between fair remuneration for producers and accessible prices for consumers, including people with modest incomes.
• Short supply chains: It prioritizes direct, transparent relationships between producers and consumers, and rejects anonymous, industrial-style distribution.
• Agricultural autonomy: Paysans-Artisans supports a model of peasant farming and artisan processing that reduces dependence on industrial inputs, standardized products, and oversized investments.
• Quality and transparency: The cooperative values diverse, seasonal, and traceable products, with clear information about production methods and inputs.
• Citizen participation: It presents itself as a movement as much as a business, encouraging members, volunteers, and partners to take part in collective decision-making and activities.

Unique Aspects

• A cooperative movement, not just a retailer: Paysans-Artisans explicitly defines itself as a citizen movement that connects producers, consumers, and partners around a broader vision of food and agriculture.
• Strong territorial growth since 2013: The cooperative grew from a small local initiative into a multi-site network with shops, logistics, online sales, and professional channels across the Namur area.
• Producer-led pricing: Producers set their own prices, while the cooperative communicates its margins transparently across sales channels.
• Shared infrastructure with partner cooperatives: Paysans-Artisans is involved in collective tools such as the poultry slaughterhouse, the Fabrique Circuit Court, the Légumerie, and the Bocalerie, which support processing, logistics, and collective catering.
• Access-for-all initiative: Through its solidarity project, the cooperative offers reduced-price access to food for people in precarious situations while maintaining full payment to producers.
• Broad partnership ecosystem: It works with social-economy actors, public bodies, local authorities, schools, and cooperative networks such as the Collectif 5C.