Shortly before the harvest festival, the KDFB branch association Katholischer Frauenkreis Marktheidenfeld, in cooperation with the advanced training institute Würzburg, invited a different kind of harvest thanks to a press release from the women’s group.
Mr. Weidenhammer from the E-Center Marktheidenfeld kindly made the supermarket available for this special form of thanksgiving. A thought-provoking tour led the participants past the fruit and vegetable stand, the refrigerated counter, the egg shelf, through the aisles to the cash register.
Community officer Peter Schott raised the question of where fruits and vegetables are actually harvested. Only a few have a garden at home. So the harvest takes place in the supermarket.
In the fruit department there were fruits from Ghana, Turkey, New Zealand and Greece. “Many countries from which the fruits come are at war,” said Peter Schott, “it would never occur to any grape to start a war with the oranges. That is what the fruits have ahead of people. They lie peacefully next to each other.
When it came to the egg shelf, Peter Schott noticed that there are more and more eggs from organic production or free-range husbandry, and now even eggs from chicken farms that let the male chicks live. These eggs are more expensive, but one could ask: What is an egg worth to me?
Peter Schott named fair prices for farmers as an important aspect. Using a yoghurt jar as an example, he explained how many thousands of kilometers it takes to get it to appear on the shelf of a supermarket.
The participants were given the task of choosing a food such as coffee, rice, bread, chocolate – only with their eyes due to the corona – and explaining their decision. It was important to the speaker that the participants think about how the product is packaged, whether it is regional, organic or fairly traded. The large selection sometimes overwhelms you, many decisions have to be made, which often overwhelms people when shopping, according to the response of the participants.
At the till, Peter Schott suggested waiting. Do you wait patiently or impatiently? Take a look in your shopping cart while you wait and say thank you for this harvest. In the closing prayer, thanks were given for the rich harvest on the shelves and for the people who work from the harvest in the fields anywhere in the world to the sale in the supermarket.
By: Christina Schlembach, Catholic women’s group
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