DESAFÍOS DE LOS CIRCUITOS DE COMERCIALIZACIÓN DE ALIMENTOS PROVISTOS POR EL SECTOR DE LA ECONOMÍA SOCIAL, SOLIDARIA Y POPULAR, AGRICULTURA FAMILIAR Y LA AGROECOLOGÍA

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has become one of the most significant challenges for short-term food marketing chains supplied by family and agroecological farmers, cooperatives, associative ventures, SMEs, among others, and associative and cooperative marketing companies. These companies managed to increase their sales volume by up to 80%, being considered essential workers, expanding their demand, territories, and disputed areas. However, the reopening and a new post-pandemic scenario brings challenges to the family and agroecological farming sector, and the social, solidarity, and popular economy (SSSE), primarily in terms of market tension and disputes with individualistic forms of consumption and limiting food to being considered solely as commodities.

In the SSSE sector, territorial experiences have been developed that create exchange networks that bring producers and consumers closer together, many of them promoted by university extension projects. Among the various implemented mechanisms are community purchasing (coordinated and associated), local markets (regional fairs), marketing and consumption networks (organized nodes), and associative wholesale marketing spaces, among others.

To address these experiences, we use the approach of socioeconomic food circuits (Pastore, 2020). These circuits are understood as those in which the economic relations and flows of production-distribution-circulation-consumption-reuse seek to simultaneously benefit both small producers and consumers. In other words, they seek to improve the income, production, and working conditions of local producers, as well as the living conditions of the population associated with them in different territorial and sectoral contexts. This approach proposes three types of circuits: short circuits with local markets, public procurement, and wholesale.