When we favor short circuits in the shelves of a supermarket, we say to ourselves that, at best, the products come from the department. But the salads, cherry tomatoes or peppers that some customers were able to buy this summer, straight from the crates, in the Intermarché de Ramonville, near Toulouse, had grown barely 200 meters away. “Just across the road. Suffice to say that no one packed them and that no truck intervened. This was the Maraîchers du Ciel’s first harvest, which was well weighed down by the heat wave episodes.
Behind this “young shoot”, hide Clothilde Latieule, Marine Rivron and Laurie Battini, respectively agricultural engineer, architect and Insa engineer. Freshly graduated, the three young girls did not know each other before the great confinement. They set up their box by interposed screens, “70% of the food market in Occitania goes through mass distribution, explains Clothilde. We therefore thought about offering it a more sustainable consumption model, with ultra-ultra-short circuits”. Result of the brainstorming: “turnkey vegetable gardens”, ideally directly on the roof of supermarkets, or right next to it. “We plant, we maintain, we harvest. We take care of everything, ”says Marine.
And the first to say banco to this team as imaginative as “motivated” was Eric Calixte-Pur, the boss of the Intermarché de Ramonville. “The symbolic idea of the roof was impossible for security and cost reasons because we would have had to put up barriers but we had this small plot,” he recalls.
Aromatic plants and a second vegetable garden
The three market gardeners have landed with their wooden tubs and potting soil. “Not really helped by the weather”, they ended up selling their 350 kg of vegetables at the head of the gondola, “very quickly, because the quantities were minimal compared to the usual pallets”. The entrepreneur first saw the arrival of neighbors who were “curious” about the appearance of the vegetable garden, then saw customers “delighted with the initiative” leave. Especially since the prices of this ultra-local and pesticide-free production have been aligned with those charged for vegetables on the shelf. The land is still free, the Maraîchers du Ciel will therefore continue to cultivate it, in particular by planting aromatic plants – thyme, chives, dill – in high demand by customers and more difficult to obtain via traditional circuits.
In their open space in the Toulouse Market of National Interest incubator, the local Rungis, Clothilde, Marine and Laurie have developed a pyramid of pipes for growing in hydroponics. They are in contact with another brand in the Toulouse conurbation to set up a second vegetable garden. “It’s an alternative, which offers different varieties but also contributes to the brand image of the store”, insists Marine. The short-term dream of the three associates is to hire a first market gardener who would jump from roof to plot.