Deep Roots

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fits) or subjective ones (involving trust in the producer).

Consumers can gain awareness and information about

the significance of their purchase and relationships with

farmers are of fundamental importance, as they enrich an

everyday experience.

A farmers’ market is a place where the encounter between

sellers and buyers leads to personalized negotiations. Farmers

have a direct role in presenting their products: they document

how they have been grown or raised, how they have been

preserved or processed, the context of places and traditions.

The products contain complex additional information. As well

as gaining direct information about the product, consumers

can ask for further details, clarify any uncertainties about

safety, and judge for themselves the quality and fairness of

the price. Purchasing at the farmers’ market doesn’t mean just

picking something from a shelf.

It is at this social and relational level that a system of family

farming selling at farmers’ markets shows the strength of its

integration, functionality and effectiveness. Trust and repu-

tation are the keys, and this is why the social network is

important. The producers who sell a few kilometres from their

farms have neighbours who see how they work and what they

produce, and word gets around. If the neighbours see them

at the market with questionable products, they ask questions.

Producers are obliged to be honest and customers need to

trust them; they are willing to do so as they know that the

producer’s reputation is in their hands.

Supermarkets can try to imitate the superficial aspects

of a market, but there is always the problem of product

origins. The supermarket staff cannot describe these as they

do not see product quality as an issue of personal prestige.

A model based on the local resources of each context,

diversified according to various local initiatives and

distinctive features, would create difficulties for the tradi-

tional standard economic approach, which is on the one

hand based on accumulating and incorporating technical

progress, and on the other hand endeavouring to reduce

costs. This type of economics can be seen to be inappropri-

ate, with its focus on quantitative criteria for agriculture,

little interest in the particular geographical area and inevi-

table emphasis on company size.

In rich agricultural areas, as the term is understood by

classical economics, characterized by companies growing

monocultures (corn, soy, milk), there are increasing prob-

lems with production methods aiming to continually reduce

costs, using materials too similar to those of competitors from

geographical areas with more appropriate farm sizes. At the

same time there is a need to adapt to new production priori-

ties, where production focuses on qualitative criteria rather

than adopting technologies offering economies of scale.

Terra Madre: interdependence and quality

If we think of a really sustainable food system made by rela-

tionships and biology, we cannot end up without thinking

of Terra Madre. This world meeting of food communities

is organized by Slow Food every other year in Turin, but in

between those meetings, the food communities themselves

organize regional-level meetings in other countries.

Image: Paola Viesi

The production of a traditional farm is always diversified – crops and livestock coexist with sale, processing, social and environmental activities

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