We do not buy on the spot. We sign at planting.
Forty-six smallholder farms across eleven Egyptian governorates, organised by the calendar of what they grow and when. This is how the year shapes our work — and how our work shapes the year for the people who grow with us.
The reason an organic-produce trading house can exist between Egypt and the Netherlands is that the year does not run on a clock; it runs on a wheel. Strawberry opens in Egypt the same week that strawberry closes in Spain. Artichoke peaks in Wadi Natrun the same month that the last Brittany head sells. The wheel keeps turning, and we keep moving with it. What follows is how we work that wheel — month by month, signature by signature.
§ 01 · Late autumnSigning at planting
The trading year, for us, begins in October. The Beheira and Nubaria growers are choosing what to plant. Mouneer drives the loop — El-Bostan, then Salhia, then the artichoke farms above Wadi Natrun — and signs the forward contract before a single seed is in the ground. We commit to a price band, an acreage, a delivery window. The grower commits to varieties, to organic protocol, to the specific Tuesday in May we will need their crop on a reefer.
This is the spine of the work. Everything else — the cert audits, the pack-house slot, the lane booking, the buyer's call from Westland — rests on the autumn signatures. The almanac you are reading is the visible end of a year that was decided eight months ago.
The first time I went out with Mouneer in October 2024, he had a notebook with sixty-one farms in it, in three colours of pen, and a question for each grower that I did not understand for two more years. The question was: what does your wife say? — Sherif, Haarlem desk note, March 2026
§ 02 · WinterCert, audit, and the cold weeks
December and January are the audit months. Our EU Organic certificate is issued through CCPB; Demeter is held for the three Wadi Natrun artichoke farms and the El-Sherouk date project. We carry the SMETA 4-pillar for the picker-welfare side of the work, the GlobalG.A.P. IFA v6 for the field discipline, and the BRCGS v9 for the Hawamdiya processor and the El-Hammam pack-house.
The cost of carrying eight certifications is not a thing a smallholder can do alone. We share it. The way we share it is written into the autumn contract: Leena pays the audit fee, the grower pays the cost of compliance through the year. Both names sit on the certificate.
§ 03 · SpringThe strawberry wave, and what it teaches
The first sailing of the strawberry season was on Tuesday the 27th of January, the Aida-line reefer out of Damietta, with seven pallets of Fortuna from the El-Bostan co-operative. The last sailing of the strawberry season was Tuesday this week. Sixteen weeks. Three hundred and forty tonnes. Fourteen farms. One cold chain.
The strawberry wave teaches the trading house how to read a season. It teaches the difference between a peak month and a closing month. It teaches that the Friday after a heavy Tuesday loading is when the pack-house rests and the quality-and-traceability paperwork is finished. It teaches the rhythm. Every other season we run is some version of strawberry.
§ 04 · Early summerThe pivot
Then the calendar turns. The strawberry containers stop and the apricot containers begin in the same week, often on the same Tuesday. The Bani Mazar growers of Minya start sending their Hamawy. Mohamed walks the Hawamdiya cold-store to check the carry-over IQF pomegranate from last autumn. The first Siwa Medjool sort is on the desk. Mouneer is on the road to Ismailia to taste the early Zebda mango.
It is the most demanding fortnight of the year, because the seasons overlap and the lanes overlap and the certifications need to be referenced for two different crops in the same audit window. Nothing about this is glamorous. We make it work by treating it as a fixed point on the wheel — week 22, week 23, week 24 — and not pretending it is a surprise.
§ 05 · High summerThe dates, the heat, the discipline
July, August and September are when the discipline pays. The Siwa Medjool grades peak. The okra is cut every 36 hours through Beheira. The hibiscus is on the dry-van out of Aswan. The Gdansk freeze-dry route is hottest in these weeks because European buyers are ordering for the autumn shelves and the Egyptian raw material is at its lowest cost.
The discipline is this: cool the crop before midday, pack it before midnight, ship it before the heat returns. Every El-Hammam packhouse log we have shows the time the field truck arrived, the time it entered the hydro-cooler, and the time it left the dock. The audit trail is the cold chain written down.
§ 06 · Autumn, againThe other direction
The third week of August, every year, the trade reverses. The Spunta and Hermes seed potato is lifted from HZPC in Friesland. A first FCL leaves Rotterdam on the 25th. By the time it lands in Damietta on the 4th of September, the Beheira growers are preparing the ground for autumn planting. The cycle that opened in October opens again.
Greenhouse film leaves Eindhoven in November. The Twente drip-tape extruder ships in December. The Westland climate units travel through the cold months when the European demand is low. The Friesland dairy cultures move every month of the year on the air-freight line through Schiphol. The year ends and the year begins, and the desk in Haarlem writes the next round of October contracts.
§ 07 · The forty-sixWho we move with
The number is forty-six. It will grow. It grows slowly on purpose, because each new grower is the cost of a new audit, a new cold-chain inspection, and the time it takes Mouneer to know the family. The clusters are: Beheira and Nubaria (fourteen farms, mostly strawberry, artichoke and green bean), Sharqia and Salhia (eight farms, herbs, bean, molokhia), Minya and Assiut (nine farms, apricot and pomegranate), Ismailia (four farms, mango and herbs), Siwa and Wadi (six farms, dates), Aswan and Qena (six farms, hibiscus).
A trading house that names its growers is a trading house that has to mean it. If you call the desk and ask which farm a container came from, we will tell you the family name and the plot. This is not romance. It is the only thing that holds across an audit. It is the only thing that holds across a buyer's reorder. It is the only thing that holds across a year.
— Compiled at the Haarlem desk, May 2026.