The farmer markets and their foodshed, from imagination to reality. The case of Collao market in Gran Concepción, Chile

Abstract

Street markets are ephemeral spaces reoccupying the public space, which offer their visitors a wide range of fresh produce at affordable prices together with the experience they provide. Among these, farmer markets add the ethical variable of offering access to locally grown produce. This article proposes understanding farmer markets as a transitory interface node between the urban space and the productive space, using the Collao market, located in the Greater Concepcion (Chile), as a case study. Analysis is made about the countryside-city connection in two senses. On one hand, the rural-urban sense, which is the route the food takes, building the foodshed map of the market or of the production spaces associated to it. On the other hand, the urban-rural sense, which is related to the one those who go there have in their minds, on imagining where the produce comes from, building the map of the territorial imaginarium. It starts from the hypothesis that in countryside markets, on including the ethical variable, it is possible to find a high level of coincidence between the foodshed and the territorial imaginarium A double qualitative methodology is used. One to rebuild the foodshed by applying questionnaires to the market sellers, and another to rebuild the territorial imaginarium on interviewing those who go to the market. The representation of both maps allows making a comparative analysis of the geographical limits that refute the hypothesis proposed. The discussions aim at revealing the reasons behind the divergence between both and to reflect upon the malleability of the local scale.