Frutas, legumes e verduras nas feiras-livres de Pelotas e sua contribuição na segurança alimentar e nutricional

Abstract

The food and nutrition security promotion (FNS) aims to, besides other objectives, guarantee the Human Rights to Adequate Eating (HRAE). A healthy eating needs to respect and keep the feeding culture and sovereignty besides being nutritious. From the economic and environmental viewpoint, it must also be sustainable. To do so, it is already developed the supervision of the FNS actions. The production and distribution of food is one of the dimensions of this accompaniment. Concerning the selling of nourishment products, it is found in the free fairs a commerce space of food, but also a place where social and cultural meetings happen. Moreover, in fruits, vegetables and greens (FVG), is found a food that generally are produced by family farmers, food that rescued the bonding with the producer, and constitute a healthy diet. According to what was mentioned above, this study aims to characterize the free fairs, marketers, and the FVG commercialized in these places, in Pelotas, Rio Grande do Sul. Thus, the objective is to learn, under the marketer’s point of view, how the production and commercialization of such type of food happen and is valued. Having this purpose, the quantitative and qualitative methods were utilized concomitantly. During the development of the first, a questionnaire was performed with closed questions. The questions were redirected to the marketers, stalls’ owners, who were present during the data collection period and accepted to participate in the research. It was executed the participant observation and semi structured interviews for the qualitative method application. The found results revealed that the city has approximately 39 fair places, which are mainly distributed in the downtown. The marketers introduced themselves as only producers, producer and retailer, or only retailer. The marketers that only buy and retail food constitute the biggest part of merchants. The fairs were classified as conventional and ecological, and were named according to the type of embraced production. More than 90% of the fairs are conventional, and only three places of ecological fairs in the city. The values attributed to food and the established relationships – as much to FVG as with costumers – revealed themselves under distinct forms in the approach of ecological and conventional marketers. For the first, there is a relationship of care towards the food and the costumer, which is performed conjunctly with the FVG commerce financial importance. For the others, what predominates is only the relation of merchandise that is associated to the food sale. The same way, the ecological marketers reported that their costumers seek quality and origination. On the other hand, according to the conventional marketers, their costumers look for FVG considering the food aspect. It is highlighted that to understanding and approaching all issues, values, and established relationships that are surrounding food are indispensable factors to the promotion of FNS.