Abstract
Despite being favored by their proximity to the state's main consumer market, families settled in the Metropolitan Region of Porto Alegre (RMPA) experience the same dilemmas and challenges as the various agrarian reform settlements in Brazil. The agroecological production of vegetables has been the path adopted by the settlers to meet the needs of consumers identified with the quality of the product, but also with the ethical principles that govern this way of producing. This article is the result of research that involved conducting 56 in-depth interviews. The central objective was to examine families' social reproduction strategies with an emphasis on relationships established within the scope of RMPA's agroecological fairs. We were able to prove that this form of direct marketing plays a transcendental role in the lives of the settlers. The relationship of trust built with consumers is one of the success factors. The families that operate in these fairs are active agents in this process, seeing themselves as subjects of the production and commercialization processes. The research findings converge on the so-called “food as a common” approach, which aims to recover the value of agri-food products as an essential element of life and not as a simple commodity.
Keywords:
agrarian reform settlements; alternative agri-food networks; family farming; short marketing channels
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