Green Fields and Empty Markets

Maria Felip ready to harvest her cabbage field was excited about a good crop. Now, she is worried about finding markets before her crops rot.

Two weeks ago, Maria Felipa was excited about the healthy harvest to come from her organic vegetable fields. She participated in our workshops on organic gardening and seed saving from Jo and Kim Costin and has taken advantage of the irrigation and growing infrastructure provided by our Q'anil program. Now, The COVID-19 pandemic has replaced her sense of joy with concern about her future.

Maria Felipa has become a successful producer of organic produce after participating in seed saving and organic farming workshops delivered by Jo and Kim Costin a few years ago. She obtained a small grant to plan her value-added production business a few years ago. With the grant, she decided to focus on providing organic produce to the growing market of consumers in the city who understand the health benefits of making the shift to organic produce.

The COVID-19 epidemic has caused an unexpected new pressure on small farmers struggling with minimal margins. She first contacted us for assistance in transporting her produce to the open-air city markets. Living in the rural countryside, she was not aware that these century-old markets had become ghost towns as the government has issued a warning about purchasing items outside of the industrialized agricultural system with the food safety procedures in place for washing and handling.

When the public buses stopped running, Maria contacted us for assistance to transport her first crops to the city only to find out that there is no longer a market. Small producers have faced shrinking markets as transnational companies move into the region. Walmart and other grocery chains are quickly displacing the open-air markets and direct sales opportunities for Highland women. Increasingly, this globalization pushes farmers to become either low wage hourly labor or marginal commodity producers in vertically integrated systems that leave them disempowered.

One aspect of our new healing through food program is the development of horizontal market relationships between partnering communities, maintaining the tradition of farmer's markets, and promoting regional food sovereignty through market choices and solidarity. The foundation of community-based supply chains is the logistical coordination that supports markets to meet the needs of everyone while contributing to authentic food security for the growers as well as the consumers.