Agroecology as a bridge between the countryside and the city: the construction of direct peasant marketing alternatives in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires

Abstract

The article aims to problematize the political and economic challenges for the construction of alternative agroecological food systems in short circuits from the Peasant and Indigenous Family Agriculture (AFCI). The productive responses to the food and health crises generated by the corporate agri-food system have been increasingly visible since the implementation of agroecology by grassroots peasant organizations.

As a case study, we will present the experience of a concrete process of construction of short inter-institutional agroecological marketing channels in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires: the De la tierra a tu Mesa [From the Ground to the Table] Agroecological Fair. Municipal program that since 2019 has directly sold 20 tons of vegetables and fruits per month in 7 public parks of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, in the form of agroecological pockets, produced in the fruit and vegetable belt of La Plata, Metropolitan Region of Buenos Aires (RMBA).

The experience that articulates peasant producers, urban consumers and municipal public officials, has been generating both an alternative of direct marketing to agroecological producers and a source of healthy and economical food in the city.