Practical information
Description
Timeline
Stakeholders
Strengths and offer
Urban logistics
Positive impacts
Needs
Logistical challenges
Practical information
What?
The GASAP Network is a Belgian network of solidarity purchasing groups for peasant agriculture in direct sales. It is based on regular commitment from members, advance payment, local depots and an ongoing relationship with partner farms and producers.
Who?
The GASAP Network, peasant producers and other partner producers, eater-members of the groups, depot coordinators, host locations and associative partners.
Where?
Across Belgium, with a very strong presence in Brussels. In December 2025, the network counted 110 active groups: 99 in Brussels, 5 in Wallonia and 6 in Flanders.
When?
The network was born in 2006. It was structured as a non-profit organisation in 2011. In 2025, the network counted 110 active groups and continued to reach more households, eaters and partner producers.
Contact
Réseau des GASAP
coordination@gasap.be — +32 487 90 62 69
Rue Van Elewyck 35, 1050 Brussels.
Resources
gasap.be; 2021 charter; guide to creating a GASAP; activity reports; public documents from the Network; RAPAC / GASAP Network visuals — figures 12/2025.
Description
The GASAP Network forms a citizen-led infrastructure for short food chains. It organises a direct relationship between producers and eaters through local groups, neighbourhood depots, long-term commitment and collective organisation.
Members generally commit for a season or a year, pay in advance and regularly collect their products from a depot. This organisation gives farms more stability, brings food supply closer to neighbourhoods and replaces part of dispersed individual shopping with mutualised pick-ups.
The network is not a transport operator in the classical sense. It structures a social, territorialised and largely self-organised logistics system: products circulate, but coordination also relies on places, shifts, group coordinators, volunteer work and shared responsibility.
Timeline
2006
Birth of the network.
2011
The GASAP Network is structured as a non-profit organisation.
2009–2025
Growth in the number of partner producers, increasing notably from 13 in 2009 to 50 in 2025.
December 2025
The network counts 110 active groups: 99 in Brussels, 5 in Wallonia and 6 in Flanders.
2025
The network reaches 2,360 households, 6,717 eaters and 50 partner producers.
Stakeholders
Peasant producers and other partner producers, who supply the baskets and products distributed through the groups.
Eaters and group members, who commit over time, pay in advance and take part in the collective functioning.
Local GASAP groups and depot coordinators, who organise shifts, reception, distribution and collection of products.
The GASAP Network, which provides coordination, support, help with creating groups, mediation, documentation and advocacy.
Depot host locations and associative partners, which make the local anchoring of groups possible.
The P.A.N.I.E.R.S. initiative, which strengthens the dimension of solidarity-based access to food.
Strengths and offer
Direct sales, without conventional commercial intermediaries.
More stable and predictable income for producers thanks to members’ advance commitment.
Local depots distributed across many neighbourhoods, bringing food supply closer to where people live.
Mutualised pick-ups rather than individualised delivery.
A cooperative and self-organised model that creates social ties.
An experienced network for creating, supporting and consolidating local groups.
A concrete experience of small-scale logistical mutualisation.
A solidarity dimension through the P.A.N.I.E.R.S. initiative, which works on access to quality food for people in precarious situations.
A significant existing network: 110 active groups, 2,360 households, 6,717 eaters and 50 partner producers.
Urban logistics
How does it work?
Members generally commit for a season or a year, pay for their products in advance, then collect them regularly from a local depot. Products arrive at the depot, are distributed according to each group’s own organisation, and eaters then collect their share. The system relies largely on local coordination: shifts, opening the depot, welcoming members, distributing products, following up with members and maintaining the link with producers.
Why is it interesting?
Because GASAP groups show that food logistics can be organised differently from individualised delivery or mass retail. Demand is mutualised, pick-ups are concentrated in a specific place and time, conventional commercial intermediaries are reduced and the food chain becomes easier to read. Logistics is not removed: it is displaced, shared and made more visible.
Which obstacles does it respond to?
Instability of outlets for small farms, fragmentation of individual food purchases, difficulty maintaining viable short food chains without collective commitment, dependence on long and opaque supply chains, and difficulty ensuring access to quality food for all without specific solidarity mechanisms.
Identified nodes / obstacles
Upstream transport of baskets and products to depots; availability of accessible, stable and suitable depot locations; volunteer time needed for shifts and coordination; predictability of volumes, calendar and absences; logistical burden that may fall on producers; expansion depending both on a place and on a collective able to keep it alive.
Positive impacts
Environment — potential reduction of part of individualised flows thanks to mutualised pick-ups, local depots and an organisation less dependent on dispersed shopping.
Space — anchoring of food supply in neighbourhood places, with depots concentrating pick-ups instead of multiplying deliveries or separate trips.
Neighbourhood — creation of regular meeting points around food, bringing products closer to neighbourhoods and giving short food chains a concrete presence.
Social relations — very strong impact: cooperation, trust, mutual aid, shared responsibility and links between members, depot coordinators and producers.