Sustentabilidad de los mercados en circuitos cortos de comercialización y su contribución a los sistemas alimentarios

Food systems worldwide are managed by extensive monopolies that convert aliments into a product of the globalized business, blurring its essential role as a human right. This pressures farmers and the agricultural field into productive specializations to respond to these global distribution schemes. Simultaneously, this industrialization intensifies the negative externalities of the agricultural activities on the planet and causes the deterioration of the quality of life of agricultural farmers, family, and community who are the principal providers for food worldwide. Therefore, it is necessary to introduce alternative schemes of distributions that guarantee the strengthening of alimentary systems within the human rights framework. In this sense, forms of circulation with one or zero intermediaries between production and consumption become important, such as short transmission circuits, valuable among other aspects, for their contribution to environmental care, the construction of the social fabric, and the supply of food. local. Specifically in Colombia, the experience of the National Family Agriculture Network-RENAF is found through its campaign "I carry the Colombian countryside", which integrates 73 peasants, ethnic and agro-ecological markets in various departments of the country. This research paper aim is to analyze the sustainability grade in the short circuits markets of commercialization of the campaign “Llevo el Campo Colombiano” (Spanish for “I carry the Colombian field”) of the Cundinamarca Node, of the “Red Nacional de Agricultura Familiar (RENAF; Spanish for the “National Network of Family Farming”), and its contribution to the local food systems. A methodology with a mixed approach was developed with a concurrent triangulation design, utilizing three survey-type instruments with mixed questions to characterize producer families, markets, and consumers, covering 72 producer families, five markets, and 51 consumers. Descriptive statistics were implemented to analyze the data and framework analysis was developed to evaluate sustainability which was based in a set of 25 indicators, grouped according to five attributes of sustainability such as self-management, stability, territorial dynamism, equity, and environmental care. The subsequent analysis of the relationships between the indicators was conducted through multivariate statistics with a multiple correspondence analysis utilizing the R programming language. The indicators related to self-management and environmental care attributions upheld the highest values of contribution to sustainability, followed by the indicators of stability and equity which had similar values. Regarding the markets, the agro-ecological market “Tierra viva” obtained the highest degree of contribution to sustainability, correlated the agro-ecological market “Los Panchos” which achieved the lowest degree of contribution. There are aspects to be strengthened in all of the attributes, highlighting the participation in the construction of public policies and the monitoring of labor practices worthy in the production, that allow the fortification of the dynamic markets and their permanence over time.