Short food supply chains: The experience of the Agroecological Market at the Federal University of Lavras-MG, Brazil

This article aims to understand the experience of the Agroecological Fair at the Federal University of Lavras in Minas Gerais-Brazil as a proximity circuit and counter-hegemonic space, as well as the meaning that family farmers give to this space. The work is the result of the extension project: “Construindo saberes na feira agroecológica na Universidade Federal de Lavras-MG” (Building knowledge at the agroecological fair at the Federal University of Lavras-MG). The methodology followed in the study used quantitative methods such as a standardized questionnaire and others of the qualitative paradigm like observation and interviews conducted during the field work, to which we added document analysis. The main conclusion underlined that the fair is a social construction characterized by establishing relations of proximity between producers and consumers of the same territory, in time and space. The study shows the potential of agroecological fairs, in contrast to global markets, for their contributions to the reconfiguration of the social fabric by articulating a diversity of social actors and dignifying peasant family agriculture, for developing face-to-face links between producers and consumers, for making visible the role of women in the entire production chain as shown by our interlocutors, for a different relationship with nature by placing environmentally healthy products in the experienced space that is the fair. As an experience, the agroecological fair at the Federal University of Lavras opens the possibility of the constitution of identities as agroecological fair participants from the practices and meanings that imply processes in which agroecology takes shape in the territory, involving other actors such as the University and its entire academic community.