Agri-Food Markets towards Agroecology: Tensions and Compromises Faced by Small-Scale Farmers in Brazil and Chile

Estevan Felipe Pizarro Muñoz,Paulo André Niederle,Bernardo Corrado De Gennaro,Luigi Roselli

doi:10.3390/su13063096

Abstract

One of the main dilemmas faced by small-scale farmers’ movements advocating for agroecology in Latin America lies in the trade-offs between the economic opportunities arising from the organic food market expansion, and the political principles at the core of their action. To provide insights on this issue, a survey was performed in Brazil and Chile. Between March 2016 and December 2018, data were collected through direct and participant observation, documentary analysis, and interviews conducted to peasant organizations’ leaders, technicians and policymakers. In Brazil, the research focused on the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (The Landless Movement); while in Chile, due to the absence of such a national social movement, it considered a wider set of actors, including the Instituto Nacional de Desarrollo Agropecuario (National Institute for Agricultural Development). The results show how social movements are navigating between the mainstreaming pressures of the conventional markets, dominated by the leading agri-food corporations, and the political efforts they have been doing to build civic food markets as alternatives to conventionalization patterns. Finally, we argue that social scientists should better explain the tensions and compromises the social movements go through in order to coordinate different and complementary marketing strategies.

Highlights

All over the world, issues relating to food quality, public health, and farmers’ social conditions are increasingly important to what kind of food arrives on the domestic table [1].The abuse of pesticides has jeopardized food safety and industrial ultra-processing has caused a worrying growth of obesity and associated diseases [2]
Technical Advisory Program in business and marketing to improve the supply of products in view of market opportunities [67]. Considering this scenario and following the classification of family farming markets proposed by [55], we identify four types of food markets built through the actions of the MST in Brazil and Instituto Nacional de Desarrollo Agropecuario (INDAP) in Chile
According to the considered theoretical construct [55], the comparison was focused on four types of food markets—proximity markets; local and territorial markets, conventional markets; and public and institutional markets, which are dependent on the institutional trajectories of each country

Summary

Introduction

The abuse of pesticides has jeopardized food safety and industrial ultra-processing has caused a worrying growth of obesity and associated diseases (heart disease, hypertension and diabetes) [2] Features such as designation of origin, ecological footprint, toxicity, and animal welfare are weighed in the individual selection of the food to be consumed, as well as in the agenda of public policies, as clearly stated in the European “Farm to Fork Strategy” [3,4,5]. In Latin America, agroecology, food sovereignty and food security have become prominent in both academic debate and political initiatives to foster collective action among peasant movements [8] In their broader struggle against the dominant agri-food regime [9,10], studies highlight how these actors have both denounced the effects of the corporate food regime on environment and public health [11] and built more autonomous

Results

Discussion

Conclusion