Ecosocioeconomies and local development: Experiences in an urban farmers market in the Brazilian Amazon

Abstract

Urban markets are a complex and unique ecosocioeconomic phenomenon, constituting micro-societies with their own social, political, and economic rationales which provide alternatives to the prevailing logic. This article analyzes the farmers market in the Amazonian city of Castanhal, Pará, Brazil from an ecosocioeconomic point of view, and is based on documentary analysis and oral statements taken from vendors. The findings show that for over three decades, this urban farmers market has functioned as a micro-society based on the emerging rationalities which result from everyday internal and external relationships; the market is a significant political and social actor within the network of urban governance and the local rural production chain. The vendors state that the market works in concert with the rules of local government are economically self-sufficient, have operational autonomy and socially constructed legitimacy, and that ecosocioeconomic relationships emerge from satisfiers which are located between the needs of work and leisure. In conclusion, this urban farmers market is socially and economically important for vendors, producers, and local residents, and its operation is linked to environmental sustainability criteria based on appropriate technologies and local knowledge.

Keywords

ecosocioeconomy rural producers small-scale family agriculture sustainability urban street markets

Introduction

The sociocultural, economic, environmental, and politico-spatial dimensions of urban street markets and fairs are strengthened by civic activities involving participation; these participatory activities have contributed to local empowerment and a sense of belonging related to generation of work and income (Zdepski et al., 2018). These characteristics are promising for understanding new prospects related to socioeconomic development (Sampaio et al., 2018) based on serving needs at the human scale (Max-Neef, 1991) which emerge from everyday relationships in different contexts and scales of territorial governance (Rezende et al., 2015; Sachs, 2015). Challenges to this effort lie in designing models for emerging development, which align with local territorial resources, dynamics, and social, economic, and environmental values.

This discussion finds foundations in the set of ideas underlying the concept of ecosocioeconomy (Kapp, 1936, 1963; Sachs, 1980, 2007; Sampaio, 2010), which is a hybrid epistemological perspective to understand reality from the observation of independent sociopolitical initiatives by local communities in an economy of socio-environmental systems complex, open to new approaches conceived under the logic of self-organized systems and assessment instruments, usually nonmonetary, to apprehend reality from the logic of everyday life (Passet, 1992; Sampaio et al., 2018; Vieira, 2009). Returning to the origins of the discussions that led to the formation of the economic, political, and environmental sciences, the etymological construction of the term “ecosocioeconomy” (“oikos” + “socio” + “oikos” + “nomos”) has the prefix “eco” (“oikos” = “household,” “home,” or “place to live” (MacDowell, 1989; Pimm, 2019)) referring to ecology—the study of the interrelationships of individuals with their environment and each other in a given population (Pimm, 2019)—and the second prefix “eco” (from the term “economy”) associated with “nomos,” with the sense of managing or administering (Singer, 1958).

Along these lines, looking for alternatives for development more adjusted to the perspective of the global south, it seems appropriate to proceed by investigating the various forms of labor and relations of sociability in urban farmers markets and their implications for daily life concerning the unique local social, economic, and environmental characteristics in Brazil. This research focuses on the Amazon region, where the forest came to be seen not as an untouchable space but rather one that could be used and occupied through social and ecological value (Lima and Pozzobon, 2005). This has allowed different levels of economic, ecological, playful, and symbolic appropriation by various social groups (Lefebvre, 1972). The context is one of hybridity in terms of ways of life, production, and knowledge, in which “settlers, prospectors, indigenous people, missionaries, colonists, and capitalists base their destinies on exploitation or solidarity, on the idea of the future or the certainty of a historic defeat” (Mélo, 2001: 264). These are places where local knowledge is valued and closely interdependent with nature, making this context unique regarding its construction from everyday life.

As an object of study to understand the formation of micro-societies that emerge from everyday relationships, organizational arrangements, and governance through local activities, the following questions emerge: How are the different forms of forest-related capital/labor interactions organized from the perspective of ecosocioeconomies? How are urban street markets constituted and institutionalized with possibilities for promoting local development? How do these possibilities interact with sustainable development? How are local products from the land sold, and how do interactions with the urban communities where these street markets are held take place? How important are the street markets for those local people who sell their wares in them? In search of answers to these questions, this article analyzes a farmers market in the Amazonian city of Castanhal, Pará, from ecosocioeconomies perspectives.

This study of this case is justified because the urban fairs of rural producers in open public spaces are centers of commercial practices and social relations that operate under different rationality compared with the other traditional Brazilian urban markets; and, more specifically, because of the urban fair of the rural producers in Castanhal—a municipality that has 82.7% of its population employed in the informal economy—have been self-sustaining for more than three decades as a self-managed space and interaction between different generations of politicians, traditional traders, rural producers, and city dwellers.

Ecosocioeconomies as alternativity

The pluralism in the concept of nature combined with the prospect of socially constructed solutions to environmental issues has created challenges to developing integrated models of governance and management based on notions of ecodevelopment and sustainable development. The empirical evidence shows that human activities’ ecological impacts constantly question the usual forms of managing the relationship between society and nature and its inability to predict or prevent environmental problems (Vieira and Weber, 1997). On this point, government, governance, and management problems seem to be related mainly to the dualities of thinking based on political and economic macro-rationalities. Despite antagonism, which can be traced with some ease from the viewpoint of discourse on the macroscale, these macro-rationalities have served as the origin for much of these discussions. These discussions continue despite the difficulties in apprehending the reality socially constructed in the microscale of different contexts.

Along this line of discussions on the capitalist side’s macro-rationalities, e.g., the acute crisis of the Fordist model of accumulation (built on the assumption of a social commitment between labor and capital, motivated by Keynesian redistributive policies) began to threaten profit (Harvey, 2007). This resulted in capitalist societies seeing threats to long-term economic growth. Those communities’ natural reaction was to organize themselves politically to transform the accumulation regime and restore profit levels by more intensive use of natural resources (Carroll, 2010), without perceiving the contradiction in consciousness that emerged with relation to the environmental limits implied in projections of this growth. Green capitalism (or market ecology) then began to defend and adopt strategies in an attempt to shape environmental policy regulations in a rhetorical defense of conciliation and self-reinforcement between the environment and the economy (Bernstein, 2001), which requires ecological modernization based on economic and political structures ranging from the macro to micro scales in order to prevent environmental destruction (Dryzek, 2012). However, these discussions’ practical results do not appear to have established themselves in real life to provide prospects for effective sustainable development.

At the same time, ecosocialist currents have emerged with similarities related to the difficulties involved in everyday reality. These currents are also based on macro-rationalities and position themselves by connecting socialism to ecology. The argument is that ecological problems cannot be solved without challenging capitalism, and that socialist forms that do not respect the environment would be ineffective (Wall, 2010). This ecological socialism would emerge from a macro-rationality supported on a society built from democratic control, social equality, and the widespread value of use based on exchange value (O’Connor, 2000), providing the foundation for revolutionary transformation the social and economic level. This would require, e.g., reconfiguring collective ownership of means of production (assuming that “collective” would mean public, community, or cooperative ownership), establishing democratic planning so that society could define its objectives in terms of investment and production, and constructing a new technological structure for productive forces (Löwy, 2009).

Alongside these two dualistic and contradictory alternatives, the search for alternative approaches like ecosocioeconomies seems to make sense, particularly in Latin America and countries in the Southern Hemisphere, hence the term “southern epistemologies.” This search for innovations is justified because the various descriptions and interpretations of crises stemming from socialist and capitalist macro-rationalities do not yet seem to have produced a consensus regarding current problems, their respective diagnoses, and pathways to solutions for these regions. This has generated some confusion, mainly because our problems arise from difficulties identifying and recognizing precedents that make sense to us. As a result, we may refuse to construct means to imaginative, new, and bold solutions derived from our own reality. There is consequently a need for advances to new perspectives and the design of approaches that present alternatives to the international mainstream, by policy and academia, with their traditional and conventional prescriptions for solving our problems (Max-Neef et al., 1991a).

In the field of “new economies,” the ecosocioeconomies emerge to create specific epistemologies for regions and territories, overcoming the dependence on diagnoses based on macro theories or understanding problems based on the dominant paradigm to conceive and implement appropriate strategies locally. Naturally, the risks of incurring exaggerated ethnocentrism or the localism of emerging paradigms are recognized (Abramovay, 2012; Procopiuck and Freder, 2020; Sampaio and Alves, 2019). Despite these risks, this path seems viable to obtain solutions adapted to our reality, with development focused on satisfying basic human needs, with greater self-sufficiency and organic connection between humans, nature, and technology, without, however, dispensing the need for interaction between global and local processes; between personal and social behavior, and the relationship between civil society and the government. The convergence between these variables can occur from the emergent planning and sufficient autonomy to allow people to be active participants in their futures, transforming objects-people into subjects-people in processes to plan and act collectively (Max-Neef et al., 1991a: 8).

In this way, we assume the following: (i) development refers to people and not to objects, and as a result quality of life depends on people’s ability to meet their basic needs and (ii) essential human needs tend to be generalized among cultures and historical periods, and are finite, few, and classifiable. These needs can be met as a function of the different methods defined by social, political, and economic systems to generate satisfiers. These satisfiers are socially and culturally defined, unlike essential human needs. These needs are met with satisfiers related to the individual, the social group, and the environment. Given that these needs derive from the essence of being human, the level of dissatisfaction reveals human poverty; therefore, they are quite distant from the reductionist definition of poverty from the oversimplified and reductionist criteria of economic exclusion (Max-Neef et al., 1991b).

Ecosocioeconomies, following alongside macro-level discussions on sociopolitical organization, are based on capturing emerging experiences of daily life and rely on experiments from the world of life that come out of territories, communities, and organizations (Santos et al., 2019). There are more significant opportunities for appropriate and contextualized solutions to real and immediate problems to emerge in this territorialized context, but they are rarely systematized and qualified to an adequate extent (Alcântara and Sampaio, 2019; Sampaio, 2010; Sampaio and Alves, 2019). The prospect of ecosocioeconomies, as proposed by Karl Kapp (1963), favors an epistemological/theoretical approach that is distinct from ecodevelopment.

Ecosocioeconomies begin from a methodological/empirical focus on social processes and technologies and products that incorporate socioenvironmental concerns as a concept experienced and felt by communities. Notable themes in this field are ongoing efforts to understand so-called hybrid organizations based on ecosocioeconomies (Sampaio, 2010). This is an alternative approach to market rationales, since it considers the ways of life, customs, and cultures of traditional populations; these groups coming to be accepted as responsible for the type of development they want (Sachs, 2007), which occurs through an encyclopedia of everyday life in these communities (Sachs, 1986). The origin of innovative perspectives for sustainable local development can be found in different empirical realities, with values and adjustments that could be measured by the capacity for these innovations to provide social inclusion and improved living conditions to local residents, regardless of the applicable political or economic macro-rationalities.

Table 1 shows a summary of these three traditions of studies on political action in general, with the first two focusing more on globalizing ontology while the last one turns to the origins of studies of local political and economic relations to understand the construction of realities and the systematization of experiences on local development possibilities based on people’s daily lives.

Table 1.

Theoretical-practical perspectives to understand and act in local development.

Ontology	Perspective	Approaches	Macro-rationalities focus	Axiological perspectives	Implicit sociopolitical intentionality	Implicit propositions	Practical outcome trends
Globalizing	Capitalist	Green capitalism or market ecology	Search for forms of political organization to transform the accumulation regime and restore profit levels from natural resources.	The need to eliminate deprivation of access to the consumer goods market, increase profits, and set environmental limits in economic growth projections.	Ecological modernization of economic and political structures from the macroscale to the microscale to avoid environmental destruction.	Solutions based on the rhetoric of major macro-regulatory strategies for environmental policies to reconcile the self-reinforcing relationship between the environment and the economy.	The logic of accumulation and development reduced to economic inclusion has generated little practical results for local communities, especially in the least economically privileged countries.
Globalizing	Socialist	Ecosocialism	Search for a project to link the communitarian ideals of socialism to ecology.	The need to change political structures to release community action, challenging capitalism, and opposing socialist forms that do not respect the environment.	Construction of a new political, organizational, and technological macrostructure of productive forces to operate in harmony with the natural environment.	Macro-political action to collectivize production ownership means, with the “collective” meaning public, community, or cooperative property, with the objectives of investment, production, and environmental protection in society’s planning.	Practical limitations for reconfiguring the collective ownership of the means of production and forming a society based on democratic control of the means of production, social equality, and the preponderance of use value over exchange value.
Particularizing	Alternative	Ecosocioeconomies	Search for local practices and epistemologies and recognize social, political, economic, and environmental modes of action from the daily “encyclopedia” of places, regions, and territories.	Development focused on meeting fundamental human needs—e.g., based on the intersection of the existential categories Being, Having, Doing and Interacting with the axiological categories Subsistence, Protection, Affection, Understanding, Participation, Idleness, Creation, Identity, and Freedom (Max-Neef et al., 1991b)—considering the growing self-dependence and the organic articulation of the human-nature-technology relationship.	Emerging and autonomous planning and action so that people are protagonists of their future, self-organization that reinforces environmental values and the person-subject concept of local planning and action.	Overcoming the dependence on diagnoses based on macro theories, paradigms, and dominant values, prioritizing solutions adjusted to the territory to obtain a development more focused on people than on things and extra-local interests; and quality of life levels based on existential and axiological needs in line with local values and resources.	Identification of existential and axiological satisfiers based on local knowledge and resources, considering that human needs originate from the daily relationship with the local environment, expanding the understanding that the level of satisfaction or dissatisfaction would reveal different and more comprehensive human wealth or poverty than it is allowed by the reductionist vision of wealth or poverty by simple economic inclusion or exclusion.

Adopting the perspective of the ecosocioeconomy, the goal of this research is to move forward beyond a situation in which “the texts appear unfocused to us, an amorphous sea of letters, leading us to lose ourselves and drown in theory” (Santander, 2011: 9). With this in mind, we set off to understand the specific details of daily life for the farmers, vendors, and city dwellers via the epistemological viewpoints of ecosocioeconomies. This research is structurally and relationally defined within a context of territorial and societal governance, which is ecologically, socially, and economically located in the Brazilian Amazon region. These are the stages for everyday micro-society activities comprised of individuals who produce, update, and replicate an atmosphere of interaction within business relationships intermeshed in an urban reality that is subject to the influences of economic and environmental policies.

Urban street markets as places of sociality for exchanging urban–rural values

Urban street markets have been present since time immemorial. They are spaces for interactions, close relationships and friendship, and simultaneously take on the logistic and commercial functions of supplying cities. Currently, these urban contextual spaces formed by a high diversity of commercial activities, intense levels of sociability, functioning with a repository of traditional practices and of local cultural diffusion, accommodating different political and economic rationalities—which can keep them or eliminate them from the centers urban—usually have rich daily life to be captured, understood, and systematized based on ecosocioeconomy.

Examples of this debate about different rationales include street markets in large and developed urban centers such as New York, where they are built upon interactive ethnic and cultural relationships within humanized urbanism perspectives. Local residents see these spaces as alternatives for enjoying food and products which are not available in traditional stores, and as tourist destinations to experience the community environment. Urban markets, whether they are on streets, in public spaces, or in dedicated market spaces, are taking on increasing importance because they are relational (or even better, interactive) places where people can get to know each other and relate to each other with naturalness and spontaneity that are practically impossible to recreate on the Internet or in formal environments. Additionally, urban street markets are seen as platforms where small local businesses can trade and provide services in the cities, and where artists, craftsmen, cooks, and others can ply their trades. These markets even serve as a proving ground for amateur entrepreneurs interested in starting their own businesses one day. Urban street markets should consequently be organized by the local government, which can be based on control (as in the case of the United States) or more democratic relations (as in France) (Center for an Urban Future, 2010).

Meanwhile, in cities in underdeveloped countries (such as Luanda in Angola), street markets tend to be interpreted in dualist economic theory as an informal sector contrasting with formal economic activity. From this perspective, urban street markets and fairs are considered to be occupied by economically vulnerable people as a means of survival, and are usually associated with poverty (Mendelsohn, 2015); in this interpretation, poverty is limited to the borders of the consumer society, and does not necessarily extend to other types of human poverty (Max-Neef, 2017). From an economic perspective, people work in this informal sector because of needs arising from the lack of formal economic opportunities. Legalistic thought, which is also relevant in this context, focuses on ownership, namely formal ownership as a fundamental prerequisite for generating capital. From this view, informal work in the market only provides subsistence, and these workers are only part of the informal economy because they cannot obtain formal ownership in urban street markets. For these reasons, governments have prohibited this type of trade because it creates commercial, aesthetic, and functional problems that run counter to visions of what a modern, civilized city should be (Mendelsohn, 2015). This view is similar to Freder’s (2019) observations in his research on street markets in Warsaw, Poland.

These perspectives on street markets also differ from Brazil’s cases, which have emerged to represent possible hybrid and coexisting economies (e.g., combining market and ecosocioeconomic economies). These cases are typified by domestic and family rationales’ coexistence, which align with solidarity, popular, agroecological, and other types of economies (Sampaio and Alves, 2019). In Brazil, substantial but still nascent research addresses interactions between producers, market vendors, and urban dwellers in these markets. From this viewpoint, street markets do not just sell products; they become a space for the struggle to reproduce a resistance collective through counter-rationalities in relation to market logic, to overcome submission to networks of circulation and distribution of goods and services in urban and regional contexts, and permanence in the context of the internal organization of cities. Counter-rationality is seen in socio-spatial diversity, in other words, from the formation of social and commercial spaces that represent alternatives to those defined by the rational logic which has been imposed by modernization (Amaral, 2016), embodied in open and urbanistically sophisticated shopping centers such as those resulting from interventions to revitalize streets and regions of cities, or closed spaces such as malls.

The analyzed literature on urban free markets can be synthesized to show, although in an incipient way, some general trends depending on the development of different countries, regions, or cities, as shown in Table 2.

Table 2.

General trends in urban street fairs depending on the level of development.

Levels of development	Insertion in urban centers	Nature of the occupied space	Urban functions	Social relevance	Government positioning
High	Urban street fairs tend to be assessed socially and politically in centers developed as commercial and sociability spaces constituted from ethnic and cultural relations fundamental to humanized urbanism’s perspectives.	Spaces for socializing, allowing people to get to know each other, build relationships, negotiate products, and exchange experiences in a natural, free, and spontaneous way.	Platforms for commerce and service provision in cities by small local businesses and artists, artisans, and other freelance professionals.	Serve as proving grounds for amateur entrepreneurs interested in opening their businesses, as spaces for artists and artisans to develop their skills, and as leisure centers for residents and tourists.	Tend to be socially and politically legitimate and as an object of local government organization, which can be guided by control, as in the United States, or in more democratic relations, as in France.
Intermediate	Tend to be spaces of the struggle to reproduce resistance to market logic, against submission to the circulation and distribution networks of goods and services in urban and regional contexts, and as centers of historical and cultural permanencies essential for the city’s internal organization.	Places with functionality beyond the sale of production, emerging as emblematic due to the possibility of hybrid economies coexisting, such as the market economy and ecosocioeconomies, and serving as points of connection for local productive micro-chains and cultural exchanges between different communities.	Have a specific function in the public spaces of the commercial, supply and tourist system of cities, with different levels of acceptance by city dwellers and by traditional local commerce.	Spaces for the coexistence of domestic and family logic, which are close to the logic of solidarity economies, popular economies, agroecological economies, and other ecosocioeconomies.	In government policies, these fairs are between acceptance as alternative commercial and social spaces and rejection for being considered activities distant from modernization by urbanistically sophisticated open shopping centers, such, e.g., as those resulting from interventions to revitalize streets and regions in cities.
Low	Urban street fairs’ activities tend to be seen as generating commercial, aesthetic, and functional problems for the city, contradicting the urban views of local elites about what would be a modern and civilized city.	Tend to be seen as coming from the informal sector, opposing formal economic activities (dualistic school economic theory), as precarious informal subsistence activities that function as irregularities in the informal economy due to the impossibility of obtaining formal property in urban public spaces (legalistic thinking).	Tend to be held in spaces with precarious occupations and marketers are stigmatized as working informally or illegally, always with such work occupation motivated by the lack of opportunities in the formal economy.	Urban spaces judged socially and politically as occupied by people in a situation of economic vulnerability, generally associated with economic poverty, and as spaces of simple survival and not self-realization.	Governments tend to prohibit urban street fairs activities in “premium” spaces in the cities because this creates problems for the local formal trade, urban aesthetics, and functional for the city’s occupation and circulation, contrary to the elitist views of the city as modern and civilized.

Among the different types of street markets and fairs, farmers markets represent points of distribution, trade, and social interaction in the cities, and are characterized by the nature of the actors involved and the products and their functions. These markets are essential for providing a place for local farmers to sell their products to the city dwellers directly. In these spaces, farmers obtain higher prices than they could sell to the wholesale market, while city residents benefit from fresh fruits and vegetables at lower prices (Sommer and Nelson, 1985). Furthermore, these farmers markets are a space for interaction, with a unique social atmosphere that tends to significantly better social interactions than traditional commerce. These attributes combine to make these direct sales markets a special and exclusive service for city dwellers (Lehman et al., 1998).

Farmers markets have been associated with a growing interest in obtaining local foods, since they offer flavors and cuisines from local food cultures made from products that are also produced locally (Kingsolver, 2008; Pollan, 2008). In the United States, e.g., these markets (which have always been present and historically significant in the country’s local food systems) grew 150% between 1994 and 2006 (Brown and Miller, 2008). In Brazil, farmers market-type activities are generally situated within urban markets (on streets or in dedicated market spaces) with a wide range of products and activities; these originated in the Iberian tradition of open-air markets, and came from Portugal during the colonial period. Today, these markets are home to everyday working practices within a popular setting that permits a unique sociability form (Mascarenhas and Dolzani, 2008).

In addition to being a practical alternative for the population’s food supply, urban street markets serve as points from which “a dense mesh of relations between the city and the region are generated, not only with the network of territorial proximity, but also with the network of relative proximity” (Amaral, 2016: 377). As spaces of territorial interaction (Illich, 1976), these markets are important centers for exchanges and sales in everyday life, whether these involve products (within the logic of the market economy) or assets (in the logics of other economies). When they are durable and socially constituted, urban street markets tend to form micro-societies in which groups share experiences and knowledge and build affective bonds; thus, they involve relations distinct from the essentially mercantile nature of urban commerce in other centers.

Method

This survey is qualitative and adopts the interpretive paradigm to understand how the urban farmers market in Castanhal, Pará, Brazil is organized internally and externally, through logics which are still poorly understood. The fieldwork was carried out in two phases: a bibliographic documentary study of the local context, followed by a photographic survey and structured interviews within an interactive contextual immersion in the market itself.

We randomly visited produce stalls between November 2018 and January 2019, always between Thursday and Sunday. The fieldwork covered vendors who mainly sell fresh local produce, medicinal and ornamental plants, and fish. Data collection took place based on in-depth interviews with 20 vendors to identify factors linked to the following analytical categories: satisfactory existential and axiological; the logic of coexistence between marketers and theirs with visitors, and with their traditional competing market; articulations and applications of traders’ own knowledge and organizational and commercial techniques learned; logic and rationality of the political performance of local governance arrangements; natural and productive environment, nature and quality of products sold, insertion in the context of the city, and individual and family motivations to act in that space. With this set of categories, the objective was to characterize the ecosocioeconomic context and the dynamics of the rural producer’s fair, which was complemented by the information obtained from the documentary basis formed by 24 texts (Appendix 1), and with the field record of the perceptions of researchers on “on-site” visits.

The interview with each vendor was interrupted at the point of saturation of the possibility of continuing the individual contribution. As for all respondents, the interruption of the interviews occurred when the responses became repetitive. The last five respondents practically only confirmed those obtained with the first 15. At that moment, the saturation point was reached regarding the content that could be captured based on the analytical categories used.

All interviews were recorded and transcribed, with subsequent analysis by discourse techniques, which were carried out in two stages: identifying each semi-structured interview’s central ideas and analyzing the common transversal themes manifested by the interviewees. The first step was to identify factors related to each of the analytical categories in each transcribed interview, creating a list of these factors summarizing all the interviews. This same process served to search for the information in the documented base, synthesize and organize it. The interviews, the documentary base, and the researchers’ contextual experience formed the evidence base for constructing the narrative that presented and analyzed the results. So, from a mind/world perspective, the observable empirical base data was produced from a documentary survey, transcriptions of the interviews, and field notes.

Presentation and discussion of results

The results are presented by contextualizing the regional macroenvironment where Castanhal, Brazil, is located. Next, the results are presented along with an analysis of the farmers market within this city’s urban network.

Description and context of the study

The Amazonian macro-context emerged from conflict starting in the 17th century. Colonization began with Portuguese settlers driven by political interests (linked to dominating the territory) and economic motives (based on the exploitation of drugs in the Sertão badlands and local labor) (Corrêa, 1987; Castro, 1999). After the 1960s, the Amazon region was viewed as a frontier by economic interests: e.g., the rivers were made to act as channels of circulation, and the forest was forced to be the foundation of the plant-based extractivist economy. Despite these externally imposed intentionalities, Amazonia continued to be a context of survival for its peoples, a place of alterity, transformation of modes of life, formation of territory, and created unique forms of work (Castro, 1999; Trindade, 2010; Trindade et al., 2008). However, these externally imposed transformations did not necessarily eradicate traditional relations inherited from predecessors; on the contrary, they can position Amazonia as a particular case of global production’s new logic (Castro, 1999; Martins, 1997).

Within this context (Figure 1) lies the municipality of Castanhal, 68 km from the capital, Belém, and part of that city’s greater metropolitan area. It has an estimated 198,294 inhabitants, the sixth largest population in Pará (IBGE, 2019), and is part of the state’s fruit processing center which concentrates 30% of its agribusiness in Belém and 22% in Castanhal. The agroindustrial activity has been driven by increased demand for natural and sustainable Amazonian products for Brazil and abroad markets, but development still offers few sustainable prospects related to social and environmental value (Silva and Vasconcellos, 2011).

Most of Castanhal’s agricultural production comes from small-scale family farming, which depends on available natural resources; these producers simultaneously face severe economic vulnerability while being held responsible for environmental preservation (Escalante, 2005). Even though small-scale producers make significant contributions to the regional economy, this situation has resulted from exogenous public policies that have been insufficiently applied to guarantee social, economic, and environmental sustainability. These small producers face problems within this arena, including unfavorable markets, limited access to environmentally appropriate technologies, low productivity, and limited skills for managing production (Escalante, 2003; IPAN-FVPP-INCRA, 2017; MDA, 2006). The family-based nature of these activities is reinforced by the fact that 75.2% of workers have kinship ties with local producers (IBGE, 2019).

Dynamics and structure of the urban farmers market

The subsections below describe the vendors in socioeconomic terms and survey both the market’s structural problems and the solutions that vendors, the government, and civil society have sought. The farmers market is also described in terms of the relationships between vendors, farmers, and city dwellers within this context. Finally, some inferences are sought regarding the general characteristics that vendors believe make the market particularly attractive to visitors and customers.

Contextual characteristics of the farmers market

The farmers market in Castanhal is closely connected to the monocentral distribution of activities in the city’s urban center; the markets are located where other trade activities and urban services concentrate. The main alternatives to traditional local supermarkets for a significant part of the local population in the city and region are the farmers market, the Abdias Bezerra Central Market, the Antonio Barros Maciel Municipal Market, and four fruit markets: Fort Fruit, Verdurão Furacão Negro, Castanhal Super Frutas, and Center Fruit (Amaral and Ribeiro, 2016).

Various municipalities in Pará have farmers markets where producers sell the goods their families produce directly to consumers and middlemen (MDA, 2006: 62). This study specifically concentrated on the farmers market known as the Feira do Produtor Rural (FPR) in the urban area of the city of Castanhal. The FPR farmers market began on 25 July 1984, and currently is held in a dedicated space on Rua Comandante Assis No. 2922, between the districts of Francisco Alves and Irmã Adelaide. The market occupies 2400 m² and is divided into 280 1.5 m² units. The market is run by the Market Association of Rural Producers in Castanhal (AFEPRUC), founded in 1987.

The modus operandi and modus faciendi at the market

The market association currently comprises 283 members and 360 people who depend on these producers; AFEPRUC’s activities indirectly involve approximately 3000 people, about 9% of the municipal population. These people reside in 26 rural communities in the municipalities of Castanhal, São Francisco do Pará, Inhangapi, São Miguel, Curuçá, Santa Izabel do Pará, Igarapé Açu, and Terra Alta. The market is an essential mechanism through which the association creates “a link between the city and the agricultural colonies/communities of the municipality itself, as well as the surrounding cities” (Amaral and Ribeiro, 2016: 97). Furthermore, its “policy is to interrupt the activities of middlemen, which are viewed negatively by the association, and to value communities” (Amaral et al., 2016: 7). The expansion of scope, longevity, and the implicit strategic intentionality of this organizational arrangement that has remained sustainable for more than three decades seem to result, as Max-Neef (1991a) argued, from an emergent and autonomous planning that has allowed enough protagonism to transform people-objects of, e.g., public policies conceived and applied externally, in person–subject of planning and action.

Vendors at the FPR market are generally young, with low levels of schooling and income, and consider that their presence at the market has improved their quality of life and family income. A survey of 40 vendors found an average age of 45 years; 55% did not complete basic education, 14% completed basic education, 4% did not complete high school, 23% completed high school, and 4% did not complete higher education. As for income, 27% of vendors’ families earn one monthly minimum wage equivalent (US$247.60), 27% earn less than this, 41% earn between two and three minimum wage equivalents, and 32% earn more than three minimum wage equivalents. In terms of their membership in the association, 45% of the vendors believed that the association made considerable improvements, and 55% described these improvements as excellent (Souza et al., 2016). As for income, 73% of market farmers obtain income above the average received by formal workers in the municipality. Speaking of the market’s benefits for vendors, Interviewee 4 stated that today “this market is important because it gives us the opportunity for a better life, to be able to earn our money” (Vendor, 60 years of age, verbal statement). Related to the discussion on existential and axiological satisfiers, this set of indicators shows that this small-scale system, self-organized and located in a fragile local economy, can generate satisfactors valued by individuals and their local social group, meeting essential human needs, such as quality of life, without, however, referring to concepts of economic exclusion or seeking insertion simply for profit.

The chain that runs from production to sales at the market depends on the vendors’ own resources, efforts, and creativity since products from “surrounding agricultural communities and municipalities essentially reach Castanhal through private contracted transport, vans but also public buses and pickup trucks” (Amaral et al., 2016: 10). Concerning vendor costs, “the largest expenses are labor and inputs [with part of] the activities carried out and sustained with resources from other sources, […] demonstrating that these activities are not profitable” (Rosal, 2014). Considering these fragilities, AFEPRUC has been fundamental in the “everyday struggle waged with the middlemen, who every day try to purchase producers’ goods in the market and later sell them at higher prices to neighboring markets” (Amaral et al., 2016: 11). At this point, the farmers market has taken on to permit direct relationships between producers and consumers. The fair has shown itself to be a collective system for organizing efforts to defend producers’ interests to maintain their margins of return that make their activities possible, namely by eliminating intermediary markets and developing a mechanism for establishing fairer prices via direct negotiations with city residents. Interviewee 1 describes the farmers market as an opportunity for closeness, survival, and the opportunity to fill needs by supplying products and services, since “it allows us to sell products that we bring from our farms and the profit margin is greater and it does not cost a lot to buy a stall here” (Vendor, age 60, verbal statement). As discussed by Sampaio et al. (2010, 2019), this territorialized context seems to exemplify the emergence of appropriate and socially contextualized solutions to solve real and immediate problems to the world of people’s lives in a specific environment, always within the limitations of local resources.

In intraorganizational relations, the farmers market exhibits characteristics that do not seem exclusive within urban street markets in Pará and other Brazilian regions. These characteristics include, e.g., deficiencies related to hygiene, the local infrastructure, and lack of external support and technical assistance (Cavalcante and Oliveira Jr Braga, 2014; Rosal, 2014), low prices, and lack of workforce and financial resources for investments in production (Rosal, 2014). Problems related to insufficient or inadequate packaging to guarantee product quality are partially resolved by the logic of relations between buyers and sellers, exploiting the products’ natural characteristics and adjusting supply and demand directly with consumers. This adjustment seems to be reflected in a situation in which “the loss of food there is minimal, due to frequent donations and the short time the market operates, three days per week” (Rosal, 2014: 9). In this sense, Interviewee 3 states: “everything we bring to sell, we sell. Thursday is the best day for sales since it is the first day of the market. We come and arrange the goods, and there are already customers waiting since they like fresh products” (Vendor, age 65 years, verbal statement). This seems to be an example of an attempt to rationalize extra-market collective processes to local social resources and technologies based on the tacit social construction of a solution that has occurred and internalized over time between farmers–marketers and urban consumers with mutual benefits with product quality and elimination of infrastructure costs for the conservation of such products.

In an attempt to overcome the unfavorable aspects of organizational and economic capacity, a study conducted by the Federal Institute of Pará, Castanhal Campus suggested the need to “organize group purchases of inputs and collective work activities in the field and at the market […]; connecting with institutions of higher education and governmental agencies (Municipal Secretary of Agriculture, EMATER, etc.) for technical assistance services and training on self-management, best practices in food production and marketing, and processing of products” (Rosal, 2014). These adverse aspects began to be addressed through interorganizational relationships, such as the Ecofeira Solidária project in 2017, which the municipal government developed to “address and develop issues related to conscious consumption and cleaning the market” (Lann, 2017). Sources of institutional support for this project included the municipal Secretaries of Agriculture and Industry and Trade, the Castanhal Cultural Foundation, the Federal Institute of Pará, Social Service for Commerce, and Mesa Brasil. The activities focused on themes such as sustainable cuisine and selling organic vegetables (Allevents, 2017). As emphasized by Sachs (2015), for the formation of stable and persistent bases of articulation, these relationships show the performance of a territorial governance arrangement on a broader scale than the group level, serving as support for the individual activities of producers, valuing its collective performance in the urban fair in public space, and reaching the level of the search for economically and environmentally more suitable solutions for the city and region.

These socio-technical activities are among food banks’ national efforts to combat hunger and waste, promoting citizenship and better quality of life among people living in poverty. The movement involves organizations that work in municipal management, teaching and research, and connections with active people in the market. These organizational initiatives seem to align with the vendors’ vision that the market’s contributions extend beyond the purely productive and commercial aspects linked to individual interests. In this sense, one vendor maintained that “the market is crucial for us. It guarantees trade, knowledge exchange, and helps us improve our economy, our products, our life” (SEBRAE, 2018: 29).

In terms of support for multilevel arrangements of intersectoral relationships to drive local activities, in 2015, the market participated in an effort by the Brazilian Support Service for Micro and Small Businesses (SEBRAE) entitled “Buy from Small Businesses.” In 2017, the fair was one of nine in Pará to receive the project “Energizing Street Markets,” which offered marketing and organization activities for market producers, providing them with kits and training for direct sales in the field and consulting services on sectorization and organization. SEBRAE also monitored its revenues for support in marketing and sales activities. Concerning these measures and prospects for other infrastructural improvements, the farmers market representative stated that “it was a gift for us farmers, who are usually left in the background by public policies.” This led to demands for a project to renovate and enlarge the space to hold more farmers: “We hope that the proposed amendment for this project will be approved” (Rose, 2017).

These initiatives’ results to improve organizational and business skills among farmers market vendors can be perceived in one vendor and produce farmer’s opinion, saying that “the location of my stall makes sales difficult since I am far from the main corridor. The SEBRAE course showed me that many of my ideas for growth could work; I hurried to do the things that I wanted to do previously but had been afraid to do, like, e.g., improving the structure to catch more attention from the clientele” (Rose, 2017). As a result, in 2018, “this activity provided farmers market vendors with more than R$174,000 (US$53,778.39) in business, growth of 49% compared to 2017” (SEBRAE, 2018: 28).

In a context of social and commercial interactions to improve the quality of regional production and boost economic returns, the market has hosted local institutions (as was the case on 11 February 2019) such as representatives from the Pará State Supply Centers “to strengthen ties between the institution and rural producers, as well as highlight the importance of agricultural activity in local commerce and generation of employment and income for the municipality, [ … With the main motive being] the quality of the food that reaches the final consumer and services provided to the population” (CEASA/PA, 2019). This is one way to try to reverse the “low quantity of vegetables sold (by farmers) and a large variety of crops grown (among farmers)” [ … and the] “difficulties faced by members and [contribute to] economic viability for the productive and commercial practices which are carried out” (Rosal, 2014: 9).

In terms of sociability, as discussed by Illich (1976), the farmers market is a territory in which professions are passed from generation to generation through relationships of trust. These relationships are institutionalized in production and trade relations, in the farmers market’s modus vivendi and modus faciendi. It is a sociability context between different generations of vendors and city dwellers, which seek satisfiers on both sides of the negotiating relationship beyond the mere utilitarianism typical of commercial relations. Interviewee 2 commented, “I have been a vendor ever since I can remember [laughs]. My father was a vendor, and I helped him selling. I inherited his profession. I like being a vendor because here at the farmers market, we know many people, we make many friends. The customers come right here to my stall because they already are familiar with our products, they have been our clients for more than twenty years. I raised my children with just my income from the farmers market” (Vendor, age 68, verbal statement). Here, another interesting aspect of social relations is how the sale point goes beyond the individual. This can be seen as the discourse moves from the first person singular to the plural, including others who contribute, whether relatives, family, or friends.

As a field for producing, updating, and reproducing social relations connected with well-being and expanding the subjects’ vision of beyond, in the words of Interviewee 4, the farmers market is “also a leisure option for us, since here we have fun, we know many people, people from everywhere. And we have our money since every week we come with our fresh produce, and our clients are faithful. They come right here to us because they already are familiar with our products and our prices are affordable, much cheaper than in the supermarket” (Vendor, age 57, verbal statement). Here, the language expresses the connection between the subject–vendor–producer who refers to other spaces–territories of “other people” in interactions between “comings and goings”; therefore, the farmers market is not only a place of shared leisure and mutual economic returns but also is a reference in expressing understanding of different territories, expertise, and knowledge.

The motivations and attractions of the farmers market, from the vendors’ perspective

Vendors’ views of why consumers purchase produce at farmers markets seem related to satisfiers associated with confidence in economic relations, product quality, and mutual pleasure resulting from the interactions between visitors and vendors within the market. Interviewee 5, e.g., states: “I believe that what leads people to buy here at the farmers market is the price because here we sell our products at lower prices than the supermarkets. Another thing is the quality of our products, which are fresh and young … we grow them. Many customers who come here have known us for a long time. They also chat with us, get out of their everyday routine a little” (Vendor, age 30, verbal statement). Notable here are the descriptions of vitality and that the products have been harvested recently; in Portuguese, this is reinforced by the diminutives “fresquinhos” [“fresh”] and “novinhos” [“young”], which are used in Brazil to reinforce these qualities in a friendly tone.

The trust established in long-standing relationships, along with the ability to maximize their interests by obtaining better quality products and broader selection, can be seen as satisfiers, and are perceptible in a statement by Interviewee 6: “Most of our customers already know us. They are already waiting for us to arrive to make their purchases on the farmers market’s first day because they want fresh products. Here they roam throughout the entire market, and they have more purchasing options” (Vendor, age 48, verbal statement). The satisfiers here are confidence, the pleasure of the visit, and the exercise of free will.

The perception of satisfiers related to product quality may be linked to the possibility of more direct access to places of production, the freedom of choice permitted by the open-air market, the options permitted by direct access to the products, and the opportunity to maintain friendships. This set of satisfiers is implicit in the words of Interviewee 7: “It is the quality of the product, which came straight from the field. I think that customers here feel more comfortable buying here than in the supermarket. They go from stall to stall to choose the best vegetables, the best fruit. They also chat with us; many have been our clients for many years. I think that’s why” (Vendor, age 55, verbal statement).

The products’ economic advantages at the farmers market extend beyond the market to include the fruit stores. These advantages are represented by the broad mix of options offered by the vendors, freedom in purchasing, the depth of the information available about the product, and production through direct contact with the farmer, allowing orders to be taken and the handling conditions. This can be seen in the following statement by Interviewee 8: “I think it is a convenience that the farmers market offers. The products here are cheaper than the supermarket and the fruit stores. Our products come straight from our fields. We offer variety for the client to choose [laughs]. Many customers say that they are more comfortable buying here. They come here and talk a lot with us; often, they have placed orders and just come to pick them up. They trust us; here, they also don’t pay anyone to carry their purchases. We carry it to their cars for them. They say that our products are fresh and last longer than products sold out there that come from far away, and are all spoiled by the time they arrive [laughs]” (Vendor, age 60, verbal statement).

Even though traditional commercial ventures (supermarkets, fruit stores, small bodega-type markets) continue to spread across the city of Castanhal, its residents still opt to go to the farmers markets to meet their food and leisure needs. This is probably because these spaces’ social relationships are linked to informal conversations, exchanges of cultural experiences, trust, product quality, and fair prices.

Conclusion

Urban street markets seem to persist over time since they are micro-societies with intra- and extra-organizational structures, essentially built on extra-rational criteria by its participants regarding monetary patterns and the political ideals which dominate (or attempt to dominate) traditional trade in urban centers. Urban markets produce, update, and reproduce their own rationality through interpersonal relations within the context of shared values and interconnected knowledge in the relational microscale. Extra-rational elements are represented by satisfiers that emerge from human relationships of sociability, shared experience, and relations that more closely resemble complex symbolic exchanges of values and feelings than simple monetary transactions (e.g., such as those in supermarkets). In other words, urban street markets are ecosocioeconomies. This term is plural because of the variety of perceived sociabilities (good social practices) derived from different intents and rationalities emerging from the interaction between those who run the farmers market, local political agents, market agents, and citizens. They also come from different perceptions of each group’s position in the local governance system and the social technologies that have been developed and utilized in Castanhal and the region.

The experience herein is more closely linked to the possibilities of positioning the urban market as an interactive space, especially in the daily life of local citizens, who seek satisfiers from close relationships based on cultural values and personal feelings than market rationality, which focuses more on maximizing monetary values and time spent. As for the vendors’ power relations, the findings show that the urban societal governance structure was historically constructed, with acceptance and even encouragement of the farmers market, involving an association that was a significant political and social actor in the city and greater region.

No conflicts were seen with regulatory or commercial bodies or the local community. The farmers market appears to be harmoniously inserted within the urban network and context, tying it more closely to new perspectives of humanized urbanism than submission and social exclusion. As for the position of the farmers market within the economic system, although the vendors earn low incomes, they do not appear to feel inferior or belong to an informal underworld (in the view of dualist economic theory, which focuses on the concept of an informal sector in which individuals struggle to escape exclusion). Although the municipal government claims to support revitalization and expansion of the farmers market, this does not seem to be motivated by discourse involving simple requests for permission by vendors or authorization or concessions of public power, which excludes explanations of legal choices.

The urban farmers market was a unique configuration that connected urban consumers and the local agricultural context. Farmers markets differ from other street markets by their mix of products from mass production (such as markets selling industrialized products) or cultural production, as in craft fairs. Urban farmers markets are more characterized by socio-territorial functions and the special features of the products they sell, reflecting local natural resources’ values and unique characteristics.

The connection between urban farmers markets and a locally defined territory seems to position them as focal points in a local production chain and a fulcrum for social relations between people living in urban and rural environments. This centrality characterized by the nature of production and social relationships tends to place the representations or leadership of the fair in a significant role within local societal relations of governance in regions where agricultural activities are still significant. These characteristics may refer to the concept of short sales circuits, which institutionalize socioprodutive rural/urban arrangements, as has been seen in the ongoing work with Responsible Consumer Units in Florianópolis, Brazil (Miranda et al., 2019).

As a territory situated within a micro-society founded on local knowledge and traditions which serve as a stage for maintaining and strengthening relations of closeness and are even immersed in the contradictions of everyday life, the farmers market has established itself as a source of satisfiers which are encountered between the need for leisure and work in the relationship between producers, vendors, and city dwellers, described by Max-Neef (1991) as synergistic satisfiers; in other words, those satisfiers which not only meet a human need but stimulate and contribute to achieving others. With an atmosphere of very sound environmental practices that are ahead of exclusively capitalist logic, the farmers market is located within a social space of urban–rural and economic–social transitions, making it an ecosocioeconomic space.

In the case of urban farmers markets, the ecosocioeconomy has proven promising for: (1) capturing strategies involving multiple actors in order to build solutions to local economic, social, and environmental problems; (2) capturing the intensity of social capital that drives local development in more sustainable bases, both environmental and socially; (3) obtaining a model of urban farmers markets as spaces which exhibit not only the mercantile logic typified by the economy underpinned by market transactions, but also different logics, such as the consumption and use of symbolic exchanges linked to synergistic satisfiers of basic human needs, which extend far beyond purely economic needs; (4) providing an opportunity for reflections on this space which was created and modified, focusing on its importance in strengthening each place’s modus vivendi; (5) recognizing a logic of micro-society which produces itself, update, and reproduces itself in society and time, amid resistance, alterities, empowerment, and local socialization; and, finally, (6) creating spaces for thinking about projects in organized civil society and public policies to stimulate other forms of conceiving and organizing urban space. Therefore, urban street markets may enrich local cultures and knowledge related to life and local natural resources and urban revitalization by recognizing collective urban and interests linked to local development.

The urban farmers market in Castanhal, Pará is consequently seen as a social construction that has established itself over more than three decades (1987–2019), providing well-being for rural farmers and city dwellers in cycles that extend to parents, children, and grandchildren. The main reasons for the permanence of conditions that lead residents to attend and consumers to buy at this rural producer fair seem to stem from axiological satisfiers—confidence in being in fairer socioeconomic relations, understanding of local culture, and cooperating with the generation of solutions local—and existential satisfiers—to be an urban space for mutual leisure of visitor–marketer interaction, the possibility of having quality products originated from culturally sustained productive processes, and sharing values in complex governance arrangements integrated with the rich Amazonian natural environment.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior -- Brasil (CAPES) -- Finance Code 001, and Fundação Araucária de Apoio ao Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico do Estado do Paraná.

ORCID iD

Mario Procopiuck

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