Introduction and Overview › About Us › TEIKEI · 4 min read
The TEIKEI working model emerged from the practical question of how locally organized, community-supported food systems can be supplemented with products that cannot be grown locally due to climatic or seasonal constraints—without reverting to conventional market and procurement logics.
Many local community-supported agriculture (CSA) and SoLaWi structures function relatively stably as long as they focus on regional production. However, precisely at this point, many projects reach their natural capacity limits: over time, it becomes difficult to balance reliability, diversity, and continuous participation—and thus retain members in the long term. As soon as additional products are needed by CSA members, breaks in planning, responsibility, and transparency often occur because (organic) wholesale is typically relied upon.
TEIKEI addresses this exact interface: through networking, locally rooted projects can meaningfully expand their product range without losing their principles. This increases the attractiveness and stability of local structures—and strengthens projects in their regional foundation rather than undermining them through external logics.
TEIKEI builds on existing local communities. These include farms, farm collectives, food co-ops, or other groups that organize their food supply collectively.
These communities:
Organizationally, they are connected at the national level, currently, for example, via de.teikei.shop (other levels include ch.teikei.shop, se.teikei.shop). This keeps language, legal frameworks, and day-to-day organization nationally anchored. The European level emerges through connections between communities and the farms' collection hubs.
Within this structure, communities can purposefully expand their existing offerings. The expansion occurs through already existing harvest offerings from other regions in Europe.
Typical additions include:
These products come from farms or farm collectives that also operate on a community-supported basis and plan their harvests in advance. The expansion does not replace local production but extends the community's existing harvest circle.
The goal is for each community to reliably cover its basic food supply through the TEIKEI network—locally rooted, Europe-regionally networked, and transparently organized.
A central element of the model is joint planning. The platform not only displays products but also clarifies concrete framework conditions:
These parameters intentionally differ between communities. The system reflects these differences without standardizing them. Planning replaces spontaneous availability logic.
Planning is binding and secured through advance payment. This creates clear framework conditions for all participants.
Effects of this structure:
Through collective sales, risks along the interfaces between production, storage, and distribution are significantly reduced.
Since orders are organized in fixed 12-month cycles, long-term transparency regarding demand and production requirements is created.
Evaluations can include:
These evaluations enable:
In the long term, the structure is designed so that not individual products but regions become visible as actors. A region includes:
Regions can connect with other regions and align their harvests. The Agora maps these relationships and supports their coordination (information flow, goods flow, and financial flow).
The logistics model follows the existing structure of communities and regions. Currently, products from multiple source regions (e.g., the Peloponnese and Crete) are bundled, transported to a national distribution hub, and from there distributed to communities and farms in Germany, Switzerland, and Sweden.
Additionally, pallet shipping between farms and communities within a country is possible, for example, for products that are neither internally nor locally available.
Digital interfaces support:
Through collective sales, risks that typically arise at the interfaces between production, storage, and distribution are reduced. This results in adapted cultivation planning on farms and increased security in sales.
Additionally, basic cost contributions and a transparent pricing module enable the financing of reliable basic cost participation for farm structures as well as for the platform and central coordination offices. This strengthens planning security, access to healthy food, continuity, and long-term stability across the entire network.
This was the original TEIKEI page.
↑ One level up: TEIKEI
By Felix Schröder, with support from AI (ChatGPT)
Created on February 6, 2026 · Last updated on March 28, 2026
Questions or feedback? support@teikei.us