A successful agroecological transition is not simply about sustainable food production. Guaranteeing the right to healthy foods through a just food supply system is likewise a foundational agroecology principle.
Farmer and fishers’ markets, food basket delivery services, and online stores are some of the ways that agroecology movements sell directly to consumers at fair prices. But their reach only goes so far. To scale up agroecology, commercialization networks must be strengthened.
School lunch programs, “earth markets” that link to the global Slow Food movement, and food sovereignty corridors are among the many innovative ways that civil society organizations and farmer groups are doing this, as speakers described in a recent Agroecology Fund webinar.
The third in our Agroecology Economies webinar series, this conversation with grantee partners and allies was held on July 17th, 2024, and focused on the topic of commercialization networks as a necessity for guaranteeing healthy foods. You can access a full recording of the webinar here.
Schools as a Hub
School lunch programs can create a market for agroecologically produced food while securing healthy, nutritious food for children.
Marut Jatiket, with Thailand’s The Field Alliance (TFA), said the group launched a program after studying school lunches and discovering that 90 percent of the vegetables were contaminated with organophosphate and pyrethroid pesticides.
“Most farming in Thailand, commercially done, uses quite a bit of chemical pesticide [and] schools buy their ingredients in the local or distribution market where organic food isn’t available,” he said.
The Field Alliance’s program links agroecological farmers to safe, organic school lunches via an online platform that allows schools to directly contact farmers. In the countryside, where the internet is not accessible, they promote connections between farmers and rural schools to build healthy food supply arrangements. The group’s farmer schools offer training in agroecology, often in collaboration with government extension agencies and community learning centers. Farmers learn to use mobile phones to link to a database of farmers selling agroecologically produced vegetables.
In just one year, with funding from Agroecology Fund, TFA expanded the number of farmer schools it works with from five to 23.
The group is challenged by Thailand’s limited national budget for school lunches, strict regulations that discourage schools from purchasing directly from farmers, and Thai farmers’ limited organic production, yet Jatiket is unfazed. “The solution for us is to expand agroecological training to the college level in Thailand and prepare the young generation for sustainable farming practice,” he said.
Tapping into the Global Slow Food Movement
Forming partnerships with the global Slow Food movement, which shares agroecological values, can be fruitful. Slow Food’s “Earth Markets” give local producers the opportunity to sell directly to consumers and allow consumers to access locally produced healthy food. They likewise encourage exchange among consumers, farmers, cooks, and other actors in the food chain through food and taste education workshops, cooking lessons, and teaching consumers where their food comes from.
“We believe healthy and culturally appropriate food should be a fundamental right of every global citizen,” John Kariuki, a gastronomist with Slow Food Kenya, said. “We also believe in resilient food systems through agriculture and biodiversity conservation, and that our food should be free from chemicals.”
The Slow Food collaborative supported by the Agroecology Fund in Eastern Africa created 15 Earth Markets in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. The markets are run by members of Slow Food communities, and ensure that small-scale farmers get fair compensation for the hard work they do.
Prices at these markets are very competitive with the prices at conventional markets, Kariuki added, because “we are dealing with very short supply chains, and the value chains are not complicated”.
Food Sovereignty Corridors
Food sovereignty corridors are an approach applied to assert territory rights as a place of living, culture and identity and promote exchange between small-scale farmer communities in remote regions.
In Colombia’s northern Cauca region, for instance, Grupo Semillas supports Afro-Colombian communities to establish Afro-food sovereignty and cultural heritage with a corridor that spans a 1200-hectare region inhabited by Black communities in seven municipalities.
“We’re looking to promote healthy foods because of the conflicts that we’re facing,” said Afro-Colombian Anyela Leon Gonzales of Grupo Semillas Colombia, naming mining and GMO maize production in particular.“ The management of the land has changed, and it has affected the whole environment. Twenty-eight varieties of local species have been completely lost, and 43 species are endangered, while children suffer from malnutrition and diseases,” she said.
Grupo Semillas has supported the development of seed houses, an agro-biodiversity refuge, a Farmer School, a university agricultural program, and a school lunch program operating in three schools. The Afro-Colombia Food Sovereignty Corridor includes a network of seed guardians on 18 farms and Afro-food markets that sell local agroecological products at a fair price.
“We want to keep the land in the hands of the farmers. We’re recovering the territory so that people can become more aware of the importance of the local traditions and practices,” Gonzales said.
Meanwhile, in Argentina, the Unión de Trabajadores de la Tierra (UTT) developed a sovereignty food supply corridor to link its more than 20,000 farmer families to each other and to markets and to guarantee its members and consumers a healthy product at the fairest price.
Argentina’s vast expanse stretches 5,500 kilometers from the tropical north to its cool southern tip. UTT’s members in the south, where the growing season lasts just 45 days, are especially isolated. Half the food consumed there comes from outside the region and is very costly.
“It is a huge challenge to transport food around the country without intermediaries or speculators who add high logistical costs,” Josefina Galan and Agustin Mavar of UTT said. “We’ve been working to strengthen commercialization networks and to give farmers direct channels to sell and commercialize their products.”
Agustin Mavar, a small-scale cattle producer in Patagonia and member of UTT, said they began developing the corridor seven years ago by “just jumping on a truck” and mapping out the routes. Eventually UTT bought a vehicle that enables them to carry products to the furthest reaches of the country, but they must still often rent private vehicles that can be costly.
“It’s a huge change, because it allows farmers to be able to plan,” Mavar said. The UTT can now facilitate access for a producer to bring 50 crates of apples to market 100 km away from the main routes, which they otherwise wouldn’t be able to access without their own transportation. “It has allowed us to think and develop other models, such as focusing on value-added products,” he added. UTT also created five storage areas and points of sale for families.
Currently, the Sovereign Corridor stretches across six provinces, with additional corridors being planned.
Enabling Public Policies
Strengthening commercialization networks requires enabling policies; Brazil’s Food Procurement Program, or PAA, offers an excellent model. The PAA was created in 2003 to boost family producers’ income and food security for vulnerable populations.
“We’re trying to encourage family farming, promote access to food for people with food insecurity, stimulate cooperativism … and strengthen local and regional commercial circuits,” said Silvio Porto, a professor who works with Companhia Nacional de Abastecimento (CONAB), a Brazilian food supply company which manages the PAA.
From 2019-2022, the past government reduced the PAA budgets drastically. Since 2023, the new government has been working to revive the program and is also implementing innovations to improve it. An important achievement so far is the better outreach to the Amazon region, reaching Indigenous Communities and Afro-Brazilian communities (Quilombolas, in Portuguese), as well as food insecure families in the Northeast of Brazil.
The Brazilian Government has also allocated a budget to school food programs, which reaches 47 millions students daily. Since 2009, the law requires that at least 30 percent of school food be sourced from family farmers. In 2022, 45% of the resources for food purchases of the National School Feeding Programme (PNAE) were allocated to family farmers. Priority is given to Indigenous peoples, local and traditional communities, land reform beneficiaries, and youth groups. Also, at least 50 percent of the food purchased for PNAE must come from women farmers.
In 2023, the PAA funded 2,280 projects in more than 1,000 municipalities, spending 12 million real ($2.13 million) to purchase and distribute 94,000 tons of food. Eighty percent of the 380 types of food it distributed was fresh fruit and vegetables. All of PAA’s distribution programs are managed autonomously by civil society organizations.
“It shows the value we give to our food culture and the public markets to traditional foods, regional foods,” Porto said.
The revival of the program by the current government has been accompanied by important innovations. Since 2023, government purchases support solidarity community kitchens, which are “almost the only public program that can reach unhoused people living in the streets, a major issue for most Brazilian big cities” said Porto.
The webinar demonstrated that strengthened and equitable commercialization networks are fundamental to producers’ organizations to scale up agroecology and to ensure the right to healthy food for all people. It also demonstrates the role that public policies and programs must play in reshaping food systems. These initiatives, most with support from Agroecology Fund, show their power to weave a social fabric and strengthen territorial identity, generating creative solutions for resilient supply chains and healthy food.
Learn more about Agroecology Fund grantee partners who participated in this conversation at the links below:
Learn more about Food Policies in Brazil and the role the PAA plays in fighting hunger.
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