Developing markets from the farm itself: three experiences of family farming

Abstract

There is widespread consensus on the need to strengthen family farming in order to guarantee the global food sovereignty. One of the biggest challenges in achieving this goal is that most part of the food is traded through markets handling patterns that are hardly compatible with family farming. Perhaps the key to solving this problem lies in identifying the achievements and paths followed by the same producers that have developed alternative marketing strategies. Many family farmers have developed viable entrepreneurships, building innovative markets for their products based on short circuit commercialization systems that not only increase profitability due to a cut of intermediaries, but also lower the food prices and provides the final consumer with better quality products as a consequence of the added value strategy followed by the producers. In that context, this study exposes three cases of family farms located in the irrigation area of Río Dulce, Province of Santiago del Estero (Argentina). The cases present a similar productive, economic and social logic, characterized by a strong co-production between man and nature, provided by a combination of endogenous resources, value added, generation of technological novelties and craftsmanship, among others, within a strong process of family labor intensification.