The Agriculture Centre Galicia, located on the site of the International Fair of Galicia and managed by the Green Week Foundation, consists of pricing boards and a cattle auction, the only one that is computerised in Spain.

The central cattle auction has a marketing model based on public bidding system that excludes the middleman, ensuring transaction transparency between buyers and sellers, thus, avoiding bargaining and allowing both parties to establish their own economic conditions and so allow transactions to be carried out.

This cattle market of the Galician Agriculture Exchange (original name of the Central) was born mid-1981 to provide an outlet for agricultural products, as it was necessary to encourage more  encounters between supply and demand and, especially, to replace traditional modes  of purchase-sale to systems more in line with the new directions of the market. So, it was decided to enable a building in which sellers and buyers could do their transactions, although it wasn’t until 1994 that its computerized management system was up and running.

Since then, with the implemented system, each buyer values ​​the animal they wish to purchase and presents their offer, to which only the workers of the Galicia Agriculture Centre have access. Once the bids are known by the market staff, they computerise and disclose the highest price for each animal on a screen, allowing the seller to decide whether or not to accept the price. It is a process with clear advantages for both the buyer and seller.

As for the pricing board, the Agriculture Centre tabulates the weekly prices for fattened pigs, piglets, eggs and slaughtered chickens (every Tuesday) and rabbit (every Friday).

These pricing boards, without the physical presence of the animals, bring together producers and industry from each sector and establish a forum for dialogue between supply and demand for livestock products and the establishment of reference prices which are used by operators for their weekly transactions. Thus, each sector represented in the various boards have Specific Operating Regulations, which in the case of strong disagreements, establishes a single reference price.

Fuente: turismosilleda.es